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authorStephen Hines <srhines@google.com>2015-04-01 18:49:24 +0000
committerGerrit Code Review <noreply-gerritcodereview@google.com>2015-04-01 18:49:26 +0000
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+===============================
+Fuzzer -- a library for coverage-guided fuzz testing.
+===============================
+
+This library is intended primarily for in-process coverage-guided fuzz testing
+(fuzzing) of other libraries. The typical workflow looks like this:
+
+ * Build the Fuzzer library as a static archive (or just a set of .o files).
+ Note that the Fuzzer contains the main() function.
+ Preferably do *not* use sanitizers while building the Fuzzer.
+ * Build the library you are going to test with -fsanitize-coverage=[234]
+ and one of the sanitizers. We recommend to build the library in several
+ different modes (e.g. asan, msan, lsan, ubsan, etc) and even using different
+ optimizations options (e.g. -O0, -O1, -O2) to diversify testing.
+ * Build a test driver using the same options as the library.
+ The test driver is a C/C++ file containing interesting calls to the library
+ inside a single function:
+ extern "C" void TestOneInput(const uint8_t *Data, size_t Size);
+ * Link the Fuzzer, the library and the driver together into an executable
+ using the same sanitizer options as for the library.
+ * Collect the initial corpus of inputs for the
+ fuzzer (a directory with test inputs, one file per input).
+ The better your inputs are the faster you will find something interesting.
+ Also try to keep your inputs small, otherwise the Fuzzer will run too slow.
+ * Run the fuzzer with the test corpus. As new interesting test cases are
+ discovered they will be added to the corpus. If a bug is discovered by
+ the sanitizer (asan, etc) it will be reported as usual and the reproducer
+ will be written to disk.
+ Each Fuzzer process is single-threaded (unless the library starts its own
+ threads). You can run the Fuzzer on the same corpus in multiple processes.
+ in parallel. For run-time options run the Fuzzer binary with '-help=1'.
+
+
+The Fuzzer is similar in concept to AFL (http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/),
+but uses in-process Fuzzing, which is more fragile, more restrictive, but
+potentially much faster as it has no overhead for process start-up.
+It uses LLVM's "Sanitizer Coverage" instrumentation to get in-process
+coverage-feedback https://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/wiki/AsanCoverage
+
+The code resides in the LLVM repository and is (or will be) used by various
+parts of LLVM, but the Fuzzer itself does not (and should not) depend on any
+part of LLVM and can be used for other projects. Ideally, the Fuzzer's code
+should not have any external dependencies. Right now it uses STL, which may need
+to be fixed later. See also F.A.Q. below.
+
+Examples of usage in LLVM:
+ * clang-format-fuzzer. The inputs are random pieces of C++-like text.
+ * Build (make sure to use fresh clang as the host compiler):
+ cmake -GNinja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
+ -DLLVM_USE_SANITIZER=Address -DLLVM_USE_SANITIZE_COVERAGE=YES \
+ /path/to/llvm -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
+ ninja clang-format-fuzzer
+ * Optionally build other kinds of binaries (asan+Debug, msan, ubsan, etc)
+ * TODO: commit the pre-fuzzed corpus to svn (?).
+ * Run:
+ clang-format-fuzzer CORPUS_DIR
+
+Toy example (see SimpleTest.cpp):
+a simple function that does something interesting if it receives bytes "Hi!".
+ # Build the Fuzzer with asan:
+ % clang++ -std=c++11 -fsanitize=address -fsanitize-coverage=3 -O1 -g \
+ Fuzzer*.cpp test/SimpleTest.cpp
+ # Run the fuzzer with no corpus (assuming on empty input)
+ % ./a.out
+
+===============================================================================
+F.A.Q.
+
+Q. Why Fuzzer does not use any of the LLVM support?
+A. There are two reasons.
+First, we want this library to be used outside of the LLVM w/o users having to
+build the rest of LLVM. This may sound unconvincing for many LLVM folks,
+but in practice the need for building the whole LLVM frightens many potential
+users -- and we want more users to use this code.
+Second, there is a subtle technical reason not to rely on the rest of LLVM, or
+any other large body of code (maybe not even STL). When coverage instrumentation
+is enabled, it will also instrument the LLVM support code which will blow up the
+coverage set of the process (since the fuzzer is in-process). In other words, by
+using more external dependencies we will slow down the fuzzer while the main
+reason for it to exist is extreme speed.
+
+Q. What about Windows then? The Fuzzer contains code that does not build on
+Windows.
+A. The sanitizer coverage support does not work on Windows either as of 01/2015.
+Once it's there, we'll need to re-implement OS-specific parts (I/O, signals).
+
+Q. When this Fuzzer is not a good solution for a problem?
+A.
+ * If the test inputs are validated by the target library and the validator
+ asserts/crashes on invalid inputs, the in-process fuzzer is not applicable
+ (we could use fork() w/o exec, but it comes with extra overhead).
+ * Bugs in the target library may accumulate w/o being detected. E.g. a memory
+ corruption that goes undetected at first and then leads to a crash while
+ testing another input. This is why it is highly recommended to run this
+ in-process fuzzer with all sanitizers to detect most bugs on the spot.
+ * It is harder to protect the in-process fuzzer from excessive memory
+ consumption and infinite loops in the target library (still possible).
+ * The target library should not have significant global state that is not
+ reset between the runs.
+ * Many interesting target libs are not designed in a way that supports
+ the in-process fuzzer interface (e.g. require a file path instead of a
+ byte array).
+ * If a single test run takes a considerable fraction of a second (or
+ more) the speed benefit from the in-process fuzzer is negligible.
+ * If the target library runs persistent threads (that outlive
+ execution of one test) the fuzzing results will be unreliable.
+
+Q. So, what exactly this Fuzzer is good for?
+A. This Fuzzer might be a good choice for testing libraries that have relatively
+small inputs, each input takes < 1ms to run, and the library code is not expected
+to crash on invalid inputs.
+Examples: regular expression matchers, text or binary format parsers.