[LLVMdev] [PROPOSAL] Adding support for -fstack-protector-strong

John Criswell criswell at illinois.edu
Tue Oct 2 08:52:57 PDT 2012


On 10/1/12 9:26 PM, Magee, Josh wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I plan to implement "Stack Smashing Protection - Strong" support in LLVM.
> Below is a description of this feature and an overview of the implementation
> plan.  I have divided up the implementation into stages that can be delivered
> incrementally.
>
> I'm looking for any feedback (suggestions, requests, etc) before I actually
> begin the work.

If you're looking for a project to learn about LLVM and Clang, then I 
think this is a great project.  If the LLVM  /Clang community wants this 
feature so that it is feature-compatible with GCC, then I think 
including this feature into LLVM/Clang makes sense.

If you want to protect applications from attack, then I think there are 
far more productive and interesting things to work on than stack 
protectors.  Stack protectors are really a hack and, at best, only 
protect against a single kind of attack (and with buffer overread 
attacks, I'm not even sure if they do that very well).  Even if they 
work against stack buffer overflows, stack protectors don't protect the 
application from heap overflows, invalid free attacks, dangling pointer 
attacks, and non-control data attacks.

The fastest countermeasure that I think is worth looking at is Control 
Flow Integrity (CFI); CFI adds checks to return instructions and 
indirect jumps to ensure that they're jumping to a valid target 
address.  As far as I know, there's no control-hijack attack that works 
against it, although non-control data attacks are still possible.  The 
fastest CFI implementation at present has an average overhead of 7.74% 
on 32-bit x86, and by using a very conservative callgraph, you can use 
it without whole program analysis.  I've got the LLVM implementation 
from the authors at LeHigh and am updating the code for x86_64 and LLVM 
3.1 for use in one of my research projects.  If you're interested in the 
code, I can ask them if they'd be willing to release the code as 
open-source.

Optimizations for memory safety tools like ASan, SAFECode, and SoftBound 
would be even better since they also stop non-control data attacks.  
Getting good performance out of them is difficult, though, and depending 
on what sorts of overhead you're willing to tolerate, getting good 
performance is still an open research question.

You might want to check out the memory safety menagerie 
(http://sva.cs.illinois.edu/menagerie).  It has lots of papers on 
various techniques and optimizations for those techniques.  You might 
find something that will give you the security you want at the 
performance you need.

In short, I think working on something that provides more comprehensive 
protection is better than working on a partial hack.

My two (maybe four?) cents.

-- John T.

>
> Thank you!
> Josh
>
>
> ======================================
> Stack-protector-strong support in LLVM
> ======================================
>
> Introduction
> ------------
> Stack Smashing Protection (SSP) aims to protect against buffer overflow attacks
> by placing a 'canary' value on the stack that is validated upon exiting a
> function.
>
> LLVM currently supports SSP.  Specifically it supports two modes:
>    -fstack-protector-all
>      - enables stack protectors for all functions
>    -fstack-protector
>      - Uses a heuristic to apply stack protectors only to functions that need it
>      - The heuristic checks for:
>        character arrays >= SSP_BUFFER_SIZE (default:8-bytes)
>        aggregates containing arrays >= SSP_BUFFER_SIZE *
>        alloca >= SSP_BUFFER_SIZE, or variable-sized alloca
>
> These two options/modes are analogous to the options/modes supported by GCC.
>
> * Note, there have been relatively recent commits to LLVM trunk improve the
>    state of SSP (e.g., checking for aggregates).
>
>
> A short proposal was made to add a new SSP option to GCC: -fstack-protector-strong. [1]
> Note, I am not the original author of the proposal.  I just want to add it to LLVM :-).
> Briefly, this option aims to enable heuristics that provide stronger protection
> than -fstack-protector, but avoid the overkill of -fstack-protector-all.  This
> option has been accepted into the Google branch of GCC and presumably will
> make its way into mainline GCC eventually.
>
> The remainder of this documents discusses stack-protector-strong and presents
> the proposed implementation work needed to support it in LLVM.
>
> Requirements
> ------------
> The requirements of -fstack-protector-strong are:
>    A) Stack protectors should be enabled for functions when:
>      1) An address of a local variable is taken in such a way as to expose the
>         address of a stack location.
>        - Example: the address of a local on the RHS of an assignment, the
>          address of a local passed into function.
>        - Note, source level addr-of expressions could be eliminated during
>          optimization, in which case they would not expose a stack address.
>      2) There is an array, regardless of type or size.
>      3) There is an aggregate which contains an array, regardless of array type or size.
>
>    B) The stack should be laid out such that:
>      1) Larger arrays and arrays nested in aggregates are closest to the stack guard.
>      2) Smaller arrays and arrays nested in aggregates are second closet to the stack guard.
>      3) Variables that have their address taken are third closet to the stack guard.
>      4) Scalars and pointers are furthest away from the stack guard.
>
>
> The original proposal [1] lists an additional requirement that stack protectors
> should be enabled for functions that have register local variables.  This
> requirement seems like it must be an error in the original proposal because it
> does not make any sense.  Register-keyword specified variables have no special
> effect on CodeGen (the only effect is that the compiler will error if you
> attempt to take an address-of such a variable.)  If this was intended to refer
> to variables that can be kept entirely in registers for their lifetime then
> protectors are also not needed since such a variable would not expose any stack
> address.  In fact, the GCC patch does not implement this either, see [2].
>
>
> Implementation
> --------------
> The bulk of the work required for stack-protector-strong is already implemented
> for the existing stack-protector support.
> The proposed work is:
>    1 Adding a new IR attribute "sspstrong":
>      ssp       - SSP on, use basic heuristic
>      sspstrong - SSP on, use strong heuristic
>      sspreq    - SSP on, required for function
>      - Note, I am proposing the IR attribute because it fits nicely into the
>        existing structure.  An alternative choice would be to add a new CodeGen
>        option that would cause ssp-specified functions to be analyzed using the
>        strong heuristic.  I prefer the attribute because it allows for finer
>        granularity (i.e., you could have one CU with both ssp and sspstrong
>        specified functions.
>      - Initially, sspstrong would work the same as sspreq.  Once the "strong"
>        heuristic is implemented, then it would be used for sspstrong.
>
>    2  Adding the necessary command line switches to Clang:
>      - -fstack-protector-strong
>      - (-cc1) -stack-protector=n
>               0 = disabled
>               1 = ssp
>               2 = sspstrong  [new]
>               3 = sspreq
>          - Logically, placing sspstrong at index 2 seems most appropriate.
>            However, it could be placed at 3 to avoid redefining the existing
>            semantics that 2 == sspreq.
>
>    
>    3 Add Clang SSP attributes.
>      - Clang-level attributes that match the IR attributes and allow ssp,
>        sspstrong, and sspreq to be specified on a function-by-function basis.
>      - Already implemented privately for ssp and sspreq.  Only sspstrong would
>        need to be added.  Ultimately all attributes would be contributed to the
>        community.
>
>    4 Implement 'strong' heuristic in CodeGen/StackProtector.cpp
>      - Mostly relaxing checks in current StackProtector pass.  For example, when
>        strong attribute is present, relax rules requiring arrays of char type,
>        ssp-buffer-size, etc.
>      - Add analysis to check for taking the address of local variables.
>      - Make the IR attribute 'sspstrong' to enable this heuristic.
>
>    5 Implement finer data layout rules.
>      - Most support is already there (e.g., large objects assigned before small
>        objects).  What is needed is to extend the existing code to allow finer
>        granularity and distinction between different SSP-triggering objects.
>      - Some minor refactoring desired.  For example, in
>        CodeGen/SelectionDAG/FunctionLoweringInfo.cpp, there are checks for
>        determining if an object would trigger a stack protectr (MayNeedSP).  These
>        checks are inconsistent with the checks in StackProtector.  Both of these spots
>        should use a common (i.e., same) check.
>
>    6) Updating/adding documentation.
>          
>
> Note that the appropriate regression tests (updating existing tests and adding
> new ones) will be included with each stage.
>
>
> Conclusion
> ----------
> stack-protector-strong support builds upon the existing stack protector
> implementation in LLVM.  The primary implementation changes will be extending
> analysis to meet the strong requirements and fine tuning the stack layout.  The
> most visible change will be the addition of a new IR attribute: sspstrong.
>
>
> References
> ----------
> [1] Original Proposal: https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/document/d/1xXBH6rRZue4f296vGt9YQcuLVQHeE516stHwt8M9xyU/edit?hl=en_US&ndplr=1&pli=1
> [2] Code Review for patch to GCC implenting -fstack-protector-strong: http://codereview.appspot.com/5461043
>
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