How to turn off gcc compiler optimization to enable buffer overflow

That's a good problem. In order to solve that problem you will also have to disable ASLR otherwise the address of g() will be unpredictable.

Disable ASLR:

sudo bash -c 'echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space'

Disable canaries:

gcc overflow.c -o overflow -fno-stack-protector

After canaries and ASLR are disabled it should be a straight forward attack like the ones described in Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit

Here is a list of security features used in ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features You don't have to worry about NX bits, the address of g() will always be in a executable region of memory because it is within the TEXT memory segment. NX bits only come into play if you are trying to execute shellcode on the stack or heap, which is not required for this assignment.

Now go and clobber that EIP!

Urm, all of the answers so far have been wrong with Rook's answer being correct.

Entering:

echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space

Followed by:

gcc -fno-stack-protector -z execstack -o bug bug.c

Disables ASLR, SSP/Propolice and Ubuntu's NoneXec (which was placed in 9.10, and fairly simple to work around see the mprotect(2) technique to map pages as executable and jmp) should help a little, however these "security features" are by no means infallible. Without the `-z execstack' flag, pages have non-executable stack markings.