In our GCC-based C embedded system we are using the -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections options to allow the linker, when linking the final executable, to remove unused (unreferenced) sections. This works well since years.
In the same system most of the data-structures and buffers are allocated statically (often as static-variables at file-scope).
Of course we have bugs, sometimes nasty ones, where we would like to quickly exclude the possibility of buffer-overflows.
One idea we have is to place canaries in between each bss-section and data-section - each one presenting exactly one symbol (because of -fdata-sections). Like the compiler is doing for functions-stacks when Stack-Smashing and StackProtection is activated. Checking these canaries could be done from the host by reading the canary-addresses "from time to time".
It seems that modifying the linker-script (placing manually the section and adding a canary-word in between) seems feasible, but does it make sense?
Is there a project or an article in the wild? Using my keywords I couldn't find anything.