Please add "-ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero" for GCC 12 (which is the first release of GCC to provide this flag). It goes well with the other important security flaw mitigation flags already enabled in Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening#dpkg-buildflags While many variables are initialized (due to -Wuninitialized), there is a blind spot for variables passed by reference, padding, and cases where -Wuninitialized just fails to track it. Universally wiping the variables eliminates nearly the entire class of uninitialized stack variable use (https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/457.html) with nearly no overhead (e.g. any duplicate assignments will already be squashed during dead store elimination, etc).