xref: /openbmc/qemu/docs/devel/fuzzing.rst (revision 4011a686)
1========
2Fuzzing
3========
4
5This document describes the virtual-device fuzzing infrastructure in QEMU and
6how to use it to implement additional fuzzers.
7
8Basics
9------
10
11Fuzzing operates by passing inputs to an entry point/target function. The
12fuzzer tracks the code coverage triggered by the input. Based on these
13findings, the fuzzer mutates the input and repeats the fuzzing.
14
15To fuzz QEMU, we rely on libfuzzer. Unlike other fuzzers such as AFL, libfuzzer
16is an *in-process* fuzzer. For the developer, this means that it is their
17responsibility to ensure that state is reset between fuzzing-runs.
18
19Building the fuzzers
20--------------------
21
22*NOTE*: If possible, build a 32-bit binary. When forking, the 32-bit fuzzer is
23much faster, since the page-map has a smaller size. This is due to the fact that
24AddressSanitizer maps ~20TB of memory, as part of its detection. This results
25in a large page-map, and a much slower ``fork()``.
26
27To build the fuzzers, install a recent version of clang:
28Configure with (substitute the clang binaries with the version you installed).
29Here, enable-sanitizers, is optional but it allows us to reliably detect bugs
30such as out-of-bounds accesses, use-after-frees, double-frees etc.::
31
32    CC=clang-8 CXX=clang++-8 /path/to/configure --enable-fuzzing \
33                                                --enable-sanitizers
34
35Fuzz targets are built similarly to system targets::
36
37    make qemu-fuzz-i386
38
39This builds ``./qemu-fuzz-i386``
40
41The first option to this command is: ``--fuzz-target=FUZZ_NAME``
42To list all of the available fuzzers run ``qemu-fuzz-i386`` with no arguments.
43
44For example::
45
46    ./qemu-fuzz-i386 --fuzz-target=virtio-scsi-fuzz
47
48Internally, libfuzzer parses all arguments that do not begin with ``"--"``.
49Information about these is available by passing ``-help=1``
50
51Now the only thing left to do is wait for the fuzzer to trigger potential
52crashes.
53
54Useful libFuzzer flags
55----------------------
56
57As mentioned above, libFuzzer accepts some arguments. Passing ``-help=1`` will
58list the available arguments. In particular, these arguments might be helpful:
59
60* ``CORPUS_DIR/`` : Specify a directory as the last argument to libFuzzer.
61  libFuzzer stores each "interesting" input in this corpus directory. The next
62  time you run libFuzzer, it will read all of the inputs from the corpus, and
63  continue fuzzing from there. You can also specify multiple directories.
64  libFuzzer loads existing inputs from all specified directories, but will only
65  write new ones to the first one specified.
66
67* ``-max_len=4096`` : specify the maximum byte-length of the inputs libFuzzer
68  will generate.
69
70* ``-close_fd_mask={1,2,3}`` : close, stderr, or both. Useful for targets that
71  trigger many debug/error messages, or create output on the serial console.
72
73* ``-jobs=4 -workers=4`` : These arguments configure libFuzzer to run 4 fuzzers in
74  parallel (4 fuzzing jobs in 4 worker processes). Alternatively, with only
75  ``-jobs=N``, libFuzzer automatically spawns a number of workers less than or equal
76  to half the available CPU cores. Replace 4 with a number appropriate for your
77  machine. Make sure to specify a ``CORPUS_DIR``, which will allow the parallel
78  fuzzers to share information about the interesting inputs they find.
79
80* ``-use_value_profile=1`` : For each comparison operation, libFuzzer computes
81  ``(caller_pc&4095) | (popcnt(Arg1 ^ Arg2) << 12)`` and places this in the
82  coverage table. Useful for targets with "magic" constants. If Arg1 came from
83  the fuzzer's input and Arg2 is a magic constant, then each time the Hamming
84  distance between Arg1 and Arg2 decreases, libFuzzer adds the input to the
85  corpus.
86
87* ``-shrink=1`` : Tries to make elements of the corpus "smaller". Might lead to
88  better coverage performance, depending on the target.
89
90Note that libFuzzer's exact behavior will depend on the version of
91clang and libFuzzer used to build the device fuzzers.
92
93Generating Coverage Reports
94---------------------------
95
96Code coverage is a crucial metric for evaluating a fuzzer's performance.
97libFuzzer's output provides a "cov: " column that provides a total number of
98unique blocks/edges covered. To examine coverage on a line-by-line basis we
99can use Clang coverage:
100
101 1. Configure libFuzzer to store a corpus of all interesting inputs (see
102    CORPUS_DIR above)
103 2. ``./configure`` the QEMU build with ::
104
105    --enable-fuzzing \
106    --extra-cflags="-fprofile-instr-generate -fcoverage-mapping"
107
108 3. Re-run the fuzzer. Specify $CORPUS_DIR/* as an argument, telling libfuzzer
109    to execute all of the inputs in $CORPUS_DIR and exit. Once the process
110    exits, you should find a file, "default.profraw" in the working directory.
111 4. Execute these commands to generate a detailed HTML coverage-report::
112
113      llvm-profdata merge -output=default.profdata default.profraw
114      llvm-cov show ./path/to/qemu-fuzz-i386 -instr-profile=default.profdata \
115      --format html -output-dir=/path/to/output/report
116
117Adding a new fuzzer
118-------------------
119
120Coverage over virtual devices can be improved by adding additional fuzzers.
121Fuzzers are kept in ``tests/qtest/fuzz/`` and should be added to
122``tests/qtest/fuzz/meson.build``
123
124Fuzzers can rely on both qtest and libqos to communicate with virtual devices.
125
1261. Create a new source file. For example ``tests/qtest/fuzz/foo-device-fuzz.c``.
127
1282. Write the fuzzing code using the libqtest/libqos API. See existing fuzzers
129   for reference.
130
1313. Add the fuzzer to ``tests/qtest/fuzz/meson.build``.
132
133Fuzzers can be more-or-less thought of as special qtest programs which can
134modify the qtest commands and/or qtest command arguments based on inputs
135provided by libfuzzer. Libfuzzer passes a byte array and length. Commonly the
136fuzzer loops over the byte-array interpreting it as a list of qtest commands,
137addresses, or values.
138
139The Generic Fuzzer
140------------------
141
142Writing a fuzz target can be a lot of effort (especially if a device driver has
143not be built-out within libqos). Many devices can be fuzzed to some degree,
144without any device-specific code, using the generic-fuzz target.
145
146The generic-fuzz target is capable of fuzzing devices over their PIO, MMIO,
147and DMA input-spaces. To apply the generic-fuzz to a device, we need to define
148two env-variables, at minimum:
149
150* ``QEMU_FUZZ_ARGS=`` is the set of QEMU arguments used to configure a machine, with
151  the device attached. For example, if we want to fuzz the virtio-net device
152  attached to a pc-i440fx machine, we can specify::
153
154    QEMU_FUZZ_ARGS="-M pc -nodefaults -netdev user,id=user0 \
155    -device virtio-net,netdev=user0"
156
157* ``QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS=`` is a set of space-delimited strings used to identify
158  the MemoryRegions that will be fuzzed. These strings are compared against
159  MemoryRegion names and MemoryRegion owner names, to decide whether each
160  MemoryRegion should be fuzzed. These strings support globbing. For the
161  virtio-net example, we could use one of ::
162
163    QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS='virtio-net'
164    QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS='virtio*'
165    QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS='virtio* pcspk' # Fuzz the virtio devices and the speaker
166    QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS='*' # Fuzz the whole machine``
167
168The ``"info mtree"`` and ``"info qom-tree"`` monitor commands can be especially
169useful for identifying the ``MemoryRegion`` and ``Object`` names used for
170matching.
171
172As a generic rule-of-thumb, the more ``MemoryRegions``/Devices we match, the
173greater the input-space, and the smaller the probability of finding crashing
174inputs for individual devices. As such, it is usually a good idea to limit the
175fuzzer to only a few ``MemoryRegions``.
176
177To ensure that these env variables have been configured correctly, we can use::
178
179    ./qemu-fuzz-i386 --fuzz-target=generic-fuzz -runs=0
180
181The output should contain a complete list of matched MemoryRegions.
182
183OSS-Fuzz
184--------
185QEMU is continuously fuzzed on `OSS-Fuzz` __(https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz).
186By default, the OSS-Fuzz build will try to fuzz every fuzz-target. Since the
187generic-fuzz target requires additional information provided in environment
188variables, we pre-define some generic-fuzz configs in
189``tests/qtest/fuzz/generic_fuzz_configs.h``. Each config must specify:
190
191- ``.name``: To identify the fuzzer config
192
193- ``.args`` OR ``.argfunc``: A string or pointer to a function returning a
194  string.  These strings are used to specify the ``QEMU_FUZZ_ARGS``
195  environment variable.  ``argfunc`` is useful when the config relies on e.g.
196  a dynamically created temp directory, or a free tcp/udp port.
197
198- ``.objects``: A string that specifies the ``QEMU_FUZZ_OBJECTS`` environment
199  variable.
200
201To fuzz additional devices/device configuration on OSS-Fuzz, send patches for
202either a new device-specific fuzzer or a new generic-fuzz config.
203
204Build details:
205
206- The Dockerfile that sets up the environment for building QEMU's
207  fuzzers on OSS-Fuzz can be fund in the OSS-Fuzz repository
208  __(https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz/blob/master/projects/qemu/Dockerfile)
209
210- The script responsible for building the fuzzers can be found in the
211  QEMU source tree at ``scripts/oss-fuzz/build.sh``
212
213Building Crash Reproducers
214-----------------------------------------
215When we find a crash, we should try to create an independent reproducer, that
216can be used on a non-fuzzer build of QEMU. This filters out any potential
217false-positives, and improves the debugging experience for developers.
218Here are the steps for building a reproducer for a crash found by the
219generic-fuzz target.
220
221- Ensure the crash reproduces::
222
223    qemu-fuzz-i386 --fuzz-target... ./crash-...
224
225- Gather the QTest output for the crash::
226
227    QEMU_FUZZ_TIMEOUT=0 QTEST_LOG=1 FUZZ_SERIALIZE_QTEST=1 \
228    qemu-fuzz-i386 --fuzz-target... ./crash-... &> /tmp/trace
229
230- Reorder and clean-up the resulting trace::
231
232    scripts/oss-fuzz/reorder_fuzzer_qtest_trace.py /tmp/trace > /tmp/reproducer
233
234- Get the arguments needed to start qemu, and provide a path to qemu::
235
236    less /tmp/trace # The args should be logged at the top of this file
237    export QEMU_ARGS="-machine ..."
238    export QEMU_PATH="path/to/qemu-system"
239
240- Ensure the crash reproduces in qemu-system::
241
242    $QEMU_PATH $QEMU_ARGS -qtest stdio < /tmp/reproducer
243
244- From the crash output, obtain some string that identifies the crash. This
245  can be a line in the stack-trace, for example::
246
247    export CRASH_TOKEN="hw/usb/hcd-xhci.c:1865"
248
249- Minimize the reproducer::
250
251    scripts/oss-fuzz/minimize_qtest_trace.py -M1 -M2 \
252      /tmp/reproducer /tmp/reproducer-minimized
253
254- Confirm that the minimized reproducer still crashes::
255
256    $QEMU_PATH $QEMU_ARGS -qtest stdio < /tmp/reproducer-minimized
257
258- Create a one-liner reproducer that can be sent over email::
259
260    ./scripts/oss-fuzz/output_reproducer.py -bash /tmp/reproducer-minimized
261
262- Output the C source code for a test case that will reproduce the bug::
263
264    ./scripts/oss-fuzz/output_reproducer.py -owner "John Smith <john@smith.com>"\
265      -name "test_function_name" /tmp/reproducer-minimized
266
267- Report the bug and send a patch with the C reproducer upstream
268
269Implementation Details / Fuzzer Lifecycle
270-----------------------------------------
271
272The fuzzer has two entrypoints that libfuzzer calls. libfuzzer provides it's
273own ``main()``, which performs some setup, and calls the entrypoints:
274
275``LLVMFuzzerInitialize``: called prior to fuzzing. Used to initialize all of the
276necessary state
277
278``LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput``: called for each fuzzing run. Processes the input and
279resets the state at the end of each run.
280
281In more detail:
282
283``LLVMFuzzerInitialize`` parses the arguments to the fuzzer (must start with two
284dashes, so they are ignored by libfuzzer ``main()``). Currently, the arguments
285select the fuzz target. Then, the qtest client is initialized. If the target
286requires qos, qgraph is set up and the QOM/LIBQOS modules are initialized.
287Then the QGraph is walked and the QEMU cmd_line is determined and saved.
288
289After this, the ``vl.c:qemu_main`` is called to set up the guest. There are
290target-specific hooks that can be called before and after qemu_main, for
291additional setup(e.g. PCI setup, or VM snapshotting).
292
293``LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput``: Uses qtest/qos functions to act based on the fuzz
294input. It is also responsible for manually calling ``main_loop_wait`` to ensure
295that bottom halves are executed and any cleanup required before the next input.
296
297Since the same process is reused for many fuzzing runs, QEMU state needs to
298be reset at the end of each run. There are currently two implemented
299options for resetting state:
300
301- Reboot the guest between runs.
302  - *Pros*: Straightforward and fast for simple fuzz targets.
303
304  - *Cons*: Depending on the device, does not reset all device state. If the
305    device requires some initialization prior to being ready for fuzzing (common
306    for QOS-based targets), this initialization needs to be done after each
307    reboot.
308
309  - *Example target*: ``i440fx-qtest-reboot-fuzz``
310
311- Run each test case in a separate forked process and copy the coverage
312   information back to the parent. This is fairly similar to AFL's "deferred"
313   fork-server mode [3]
314
315  - *Pros*: Relatively fast. Devices only need to be initialized once. No need to
316    do slow reboots or vmloads.
317
318  - *Cons*: Not officially supported by libfuzzer. Does not work well for
319     devices that rely on dedicated threads.
320
321  - *Example target*: ``virtio-net-fork-fuzz``
322