What is %gs in Assembly

Question

void return_input (void)
{ 
   char array[30]; 

   gets (array); 
   printf("%s\n", array); 
}

After compiling it in gcc, this function is converted to the following Assembly code:

push   %ebp
mov    %esp,%ebp
sub    $0x28,%esp
mov    %gs:0x14,%eax
mov    %eax,-0x4(%ebp)
xor    %eax,%eax
lea    -0x22(%ebp),%eax
mov    %eax,(%esp)
call   0x8048374 
lea    -0x22(%ebp),%eax
mov    %eax,(%esp)
call   0x80483a4 
mov    -0x4(%ebp),%eax
xor    %gs:0x14,%eax
je     0x80484ac 
call   0x8048394 
leave  
ret  

I don't understand two lines:

mov    %gs:0x14,%eax
xor    %gs:0x14,%eax

What is %gs, and what exactly these two lines do?

This is compilation command:

cc -c -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -ggdb file.c

Answer 1

GS is a segment register, its use in linux can be read up on here (its basically used for per thread data).

mov    %gs:0x14,%eax
xor    %gs:0x14,%eax

this code is used to validate that the stack hasn't exploded or been corrupted, using a canary value stored at GS+0x14, see this.

gcc -fstack-protector=strong is on by default in many modern distros; you can use gcc -fno-stack-protector to not add those checks. (On x86, thread-local storage is cheap so GCC keeps the randomized canary value there, making it somewhat harder to leak.)

Answer 2

ES, FS, GS: Extra Segment Registers Can be used as extra segment registers; also used in special instructions that span segments (like string copies). taken from here

http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~pinghc/x86AssmTutorial.htm

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hope it helps