Dr. Dobbs Article on Buffer Overflow Prevention with GCC

This article: http://www.drdobbs.com/security/anatomy-of-a-stack-smashing-attack-and-h/240001832 is very helpful for *NIX developer working with GCC compiler(s), especially those targeting x86_64 CPU architecture.

The article goes to great length explaining how the buffer overflow protection is built into GCC. The protection is known as GCC Stack Smashing Protector (SSP).