> Attribute malloc indicates that a function is malloc-like, i.e., that the pointer P returned by the function cannot alias any other pointer valid when the function returns, and moreover no pointers to valid objects occur in any storage addressed by P. In addition, the GCC predicts that a function with the attribute returns non-null in most cases.

But it doesn't provide any operations to do the things in this paragraph (create new pointers). The operation that does this is malloc itself.

This will typically not cause problems, but it would if LTO got so good you could include libc in it.