Why does this memory address %fs:0x28 ( fs[0x28] ) have a random value?

Question

I've written a piece of C code and I've disassembled it as well as read the registers to understand how the program works in assembly.

int test(char *this){
    char sum_buf[6];
    strncpy(sum_buf,this,32);
    return 0;
}

The piece of my code that I've been examining is the test function. When I disassemble the output my test function I get ...

   0x00000000004005c0 <+12>:        mov    %fs:0x28,%rax
=> 0x00000000004005c9 <+21>:        mov    %rax,-0x8(%rbp)
... stuff ..
   0x00000000004005f0 <+60>:        xor    %fs:0x28,%rdx
   0x00000000004005f9 <+69>:        je     0x400600 <test+76>
   0x00000000004005fb <+71>:        callq  0x4004a0 <__stack_chk_fail@plt>
   0x0000000000400600 <+76>:        leaveq 
   0x0000000000400601 <+77>:        retq 

What I would like to know is what mov %fs:0x28,%rax is really doing?

Answer 1

On x86_64, segmented addressing is no longer used, but both the FS and GS registers can be used as base-pointer addresses in order to access special operating system data-structures. So what you're seeing is a value loaded at an offset from the value held in the FS register, and not bit manipulation of the contents of the FS register.

Specifically what's taking place, is that FS:0x28 on Linux is storing a special sentinel stack-guard value, and the code is performing a stack-guard check. For instance, if you look further in your code, you'll see that the value at FS:0x28 is stored on the stack, and then the contents of the stack are recalled and an XOR is performed with the original value at FS:0x28. If the two values are equal, which means that the zero-bit has been set because XOR'ing two of the same values results in a zero-value, then we jump to the test routine, otherwise we jump to a special function that indicates that the stack was somehow corrupted, and the sentinel value stored on the stack was changed.

If using GCC, this can be disabled with:

-fno-stack-protector