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[qemu.git] / docs / devel / fuzzing.txt

= Fuzzing =

== Introduction ==

This document describes the virtual-device fuzzing infrastructure in QEMU and
how to use it to implement additional fuzzers.

== Basics ==

Fuzzing operates by passing inputs to an entry point/target function. The
fuzzer tracks the code coverage triggered by the input. Based on these
findings, the fuzzer mutates the input and repeats the fuzzing.

To fuzz QEMU, we rely on libfuzzer. Unlike other fuzzers such as AFL, libfuzzer
is an _in-process_ fuzzer. For the developer, this means that it is their
responsibility to ensure that state is reset between fuzzing-runs.

== Building the fuzzers ==

NOTE: If possible, build a 32-bit binary. When forking, the 32-bit fuzzer is
much faster, since the page-map has a smaller size. This is due to the fact that
AddressSanitizer mmaps ~20TB of memory, as part of its detection. This results
in a large page-map, and a much slower fork().

To build the fuzzers, install a recent version of clang:
Configure with (substitute the clang binaries with the version you installed):

    CC=clang-8 CXX=clang++-8 /path/to/configure --enable-fuzzing

Fuzz targets are built similarly to system/softmmu:

    make i386-softmmu/fuzz

This builds ./i386-softmmu/qemu-fuzz-i386

The first option to this command is: --fuzz_taget=FUZZ_NAME
To list all of the available fuzzers run qemu-fuzz-i386 with no arguments.

eg:
    ./i386-softmmu/qemu-fuzz-i386 --fuzz-target=virtio-net-fork-fuzz

Internally, libfuzzer parses all arguments that do not begin with "--".
Information about these is available by passing -help=1

Now the only thing left to do is wait for the fuzzer to trigger potential
crashes.

== Adding a new fuzzer ==
Coverage over virtual devices can be improved by adding additional fuzzers.
Fuzzers are kept in tests/qtest/fuzz/ and should be added to
tests/qtest/fuzz/Makefile.include

Fuzzers can rely on both qtest and libqos to communicate with virtual devices.

1. Create a new source file. For example ``tests/qtest/fuzz/foo-device-fuzz.c``.

2. Write the fuzzing code using the libqtest/libqos API. See existing fuzzers
for reference.

3. Register the fuzzer in ``tests/fuzz/Makefile.include`` by appending the
corresponding object to fuzz-obj-y

Fuzzers can be more-or-less thought of as special qtest programs which can
modify the qtest commands and/or qtest command arguments based on inputs
provided by libfuzzer. Libfuzzer passes a byte array and length. Commonly the
fuzzer loops over the byte-array interpreting it as a list of qtest commands,
addresses, or values.

= Implementation Details =

== The Fuzzer's Lifecycle ==

The fuzzer has two entrypoints that libfuzzer calls. libfuzzer provides it's
own main(), which performs some setup, and calls the entrypoints:

LLVMFuzzerInitialize: called prior to fuzzing. Used to initialize all of the
necessary state

LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput: called for each fuzzing run. Processes the input and
resets the state at the end of each run.

In more detail:

LLVMFuzzerInitialize parses the arguments to the fuzzer (must start with two
dashes, so they are ignored by libfuzzer main()). Currently, the arguments
select the fuzz target. Then, the qtest client is initialized. If the target
requires qos, qgraph is set up and the QOM/LIBQOS modules are initialized.
Then the QGraph is walked and the QEMU cmd_line is determined and saved.

After this, the vl.c:qemu__main is called to set up the guest. There are
target-specific hooks that can be called before and after qemu_main, for
additional setup(e.g. PCI setup, or VM snapshotting).

LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput: Uses qtest/qos functions to act based on the fuzz
input. It is also responsible for manually calling the main loop/main_loop_wait
to ensure that bottom halves are executed and any cleanup required before the
next input.

Since the same process is reused for many fuzzing runs, QEMU state needs to
be reset at the end of each run. There are currently two implemented
options for resetting state:
1. Reboot the guest between runs.
   Pros: Straightforward and fast for simple fuzz targets.
   Cons: Depending on the device, does not reset all device state. If the
   device requires some initialization prior to being ready for fuzzing
   (common for QOS-based targets), this initialization needs to be done after
   each reboot.
   Example target: i440fx-qtest-reboot-fuzz
2. Run each test case in a separate forked process and copy the coverage
   information back to the parent. This is fairly similar to AFL's "deferred"
   fork-server mode [3]
   Pros: Relatively fast. Devices only need to be initialized once. No need
   to do slow reboots or vmloads.
   Cons: Not officially supported by libfuzzer. Does not work well for devices
   that rely on dedicated threads.
   Example target: virtio-net-fork-fuzz