Software Security - PREfast project
Individual Project 1: Program Analysis with PREfast and SAL
In this project we will use PREfast, a static analysis
tool for C(++) developed at Microsoft, and the associated
annotation language SAL, on some toy C code.
Learning objectives
Goals of the project are
- to appreciate - if it wasn't clear from the lectures - some of the many things that can go wrong in a C(++) program;
- to understand the capabilities and the limitations of an (almost) state-of-the-art static analysis tool;
- to understand the trade-offs in the design and in the use of such a tool.
Thanks to Jonathan Aldrich and colleagues at CMU for pointers to PREfast and
sample exercises.
Handing in the assignment
The project is due Monday Sept 28 before the lecture
(so we can discuss solutions in class).
Start it well before then so there is the chance to sort out
any technical problems should these arise.
(Sept 21 there is no lecture, so that should give you time).
To hand in your solution, send an email to Michael Colesky (mrc at cs.ru.nl)
with subject "[SS] PREfast assignment" and two attachments:
-
a file called "YourName_prefast_exercise.cpp" with your modified and annotated C++ code, i.e. part I, and
-
a text file YourName_answers.txt or PDF file YourName_answers.pdf
with your answers to the questions in part II
where YourName is your full name, without spaces.
NB1 make sure your full name and student number is also included in both these files, so that if we print them we know whose they are
NB2 don't zip, tar, gzip, compress, bzip, etc. the attachments
NB3 No .doc or other formats apart from PDF and plaintext
Please follow the instructions above to the letter, to save us time
having to deal with solutions without names, in strange formats, etc.
Installing PREfast
We provide a version of PREfast that can be used from the command
line. How to install is described in detail here.
The assignment - Part I - Using the tool
If you've followed the installation instructions for PREfast above,
then you should already have a copy of the exercise file
prefast_exercise.cpp.
Running PREfast, by compiling with the option /analyze, should
produce 7 warnings: C4996, C6386, C6011, C6217, C6282, C6273, C6031.
If you don't get the C4996 warning, the command line option
/W 3 is probably missing; you have to include that, as in
cl /analyze /W 3 prefast_exercise.cpp
Once that, works follow the steps below:
- Get rid of the warnings in prefast_exercise.cpp that PREfast gives, by fixing the code.
Mark places where you changed the code with a comment
//FIXED to keep track of the changes you made.
Keep the changes to the code minimal; the code is completely
silly, no need to completely rewrite it.
- Annotate all buffers that are passed as parameters (i.e. all parameters of type char* or int*), to specify whether they are read from and/or written to, and specify their lengths. This means you have annotate them
- with _In_count_(...) if they are only read from;
- with _Out_cap_(...) if they are only written from;
- with _Inout_count_(...) if they are both read from and written from (but I don't think you need that).
If the length is a compile-time constant, such as 55 or BUF_SIZE, rather than a program variable, you need another suffix c_.
So, for example, you can annotate a buffer with
_Out_cap_(len) or with
_Out_cap_c_(BUF_SIZE). (Why this extra c_ is
needed for constants is a mystery to me.)
There is no need to annotate the size of the argument of execute,
as its size does not really matter.
Fix any new warnings this produces.
- Similarly, annotate the buffers returned as results by my_alloc and do_read to specify their size, using the annotations
_Ret_cap_(...) or _Ret_cap_c_(...).
Fix any new warnings this produces.
- As last step, we will add tainting annotations to trace any input passing from
input to execute without passing through the validation
operation, and
add calls to the validation routine validate in the right places
to fix any problems with missing input validation. The steps for
this are explained in more detail below.
To do this, first
- annotate the first parameter of input with [SA_Post(Tainted=SA_Yes)], which specifies that this parameter will be tainted as postcondition, and
- annotate the parameter of execute with
[SA_Pre(Tainted=SA_No)]
to specify the precondition that this parameter should not be tainted.
So you get
HRESULT input([SA_Post(Tainted=SA_Yes)] _Out_... char *buf) {...
int execute([SA_Pre(Tainted=SA_No)] _In_ char *buf) {...
Now annotate all the procedures that may
handle or produce tainted data using pre- and/or postconditions as above.
These procedures are:
- do_read, as it calls input, which
produces tainted data;
- copy_data, as it is used to copy data coming from
do_read, which is tainted.
To specify that the return value of a function is tainted,
declare it as
[returnvalue:SA_Post(Tainted=SA_Yes)] char* somefunction() { ...
PREfast should now produce warnings C6029, when it spots
that the program is passing tainted data to the function
execute().
Add calls to the validation routine validate
in the right places to make such warnings disappear.
As you may notice, PREfast's tainting analysis is not reliable
unless you annotate all procedures that may handle tainted data
correctly.
The assignment - Part II - Reflection
Briefly answer the following questions
- PREfast tries to check annotations at compile time. Suppose that we have a way to check the annotations at runtime.
(Actually, it is not so straightforward to do this at runtime,
for all annotations, but let's assume it is possible.)
Name one advantage and two disadvantages of doing these checks at runtime
instead of doing them at compile-time. (Hint: there are very generic
advantages and disadvantages when it comes to runtime vs compile-time
checking.)
- Sometimes PREfast only warns about problems after you add
annotations. For example, the tool does not complain about zero()
until after you add an annotation about the size of buf.
An alternative tool design would be
to produce a warning about zero() if there are no annotations
for it. (The warning would then not
so much be that there is a potential buffer overflow problem, but
rather that the tool does not have enough information to
determine whether there is a buffer overflow or not.)
Can you give a plausible explanation why PREfast has been designed so
that it does not complain about such unannotated methods?
Keep your answers concise and to the point.
More information for this project
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