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There are security hazards around writable + executable code. They don't apply to patching before execution (e.g. the install step) since nothing needs to be executed at that point. I don't think the security concerns apply during load time either - what does it matter if the text section is edited before it gets marked read-only&executable? It just means you're running a slightly different program, exactly as if it was edited during install.

In the memcpy case, where the library call is probably in a dynamically linked library anyway, it's particularly trivial to bind to one of N implementations of memcpy at load time. That only patches code if library calls are usually implemented that way.

Patching .text does tend to mess up using the same shared pages across multiple executables though which is a shame, and somewhat argues for install time specialisation.




On certain platforms, it would break code signatures if they are tied to the pages the code is on.


  > On certain platforms, it would break code signatures
macos?


Yeah, or iOS. Or other platforms that adopt a similar model




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