portable-executable-missing-security-features
A portable executable (PE32+) file lacks security features.
Due to changes in binutils-mingw-w64 the historical
advice is incorrect. Current tools do not create safe binaries,
and advertising such settings with genpeimg is pointless.
In short, the flags alone do nothing unless a binary is built specifically to support a missing flag. Merely setting the flag, as recommended below, can actually make a file less secure.
More information can be found via the link in the references.
The following advice is historical. PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW IT.
The package ships a Microsoft Windows Portable Executable (PE) file
that appears to be lacking security hardening features. You can see
which are missing using the pesec tool from the
pev package.
EFI binaries also often trigger this tag. The security flags are
probably meaningless for them, but the flags are easily changed
using the genpeimg tool from the mingw-w64-tools
package.
$ genpeimg -d +d -d +n -d +s $file
Then, to verify that it worked:
$ genpeimg -x $file
...
Optional Characteristics:
dynamic-base nx-compatible no-SEH
Please change the flags, if possible, instead of overriding the tag.
For more information please consult:
The tag is present in Lintian version 2.114.163.
That is the most recent version we know about.
We use semantic versions.
The patch number is a commit step indicator relative to the
2.114.0
release tag in our Git
repository.
You can find the detection logic for this version at commit 8ab6976. For merge requests, please use the latest version in the Lintian check pe.
This tag is experimental.
Visibility: pedantic