[docs] Update Scudo documentation

Summary:
The documentation has fallen a bit behind, update it with the latest evolution
of the allocator:
- clarify a couple of expectations regarding what is meant to be achieved;
- update the header format;
- document `-fsanitize=scudo`.

Reviewers: alekseyshl, flowerhack

Reviewed By: alekseyshl

Subscribers: llvm-commits

Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D41670

git-svn-id: https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk@321811 91177308-0d34-0410-b5e6-96231b3b80d8
This commit is contained in:
Kostya Kortchinsky 2018-01-04 18:31:22 +00:00
parent 7ad07c388d
commit 014bd602e9

View File

@ -26,32 +26,45 @@ meaning Shield in Spanish and Portuguese).
Design
======
Allocator
---------
Scudo can be considered a Frontend to the Sanitizers' common allocator (later
referenced as the Backend). It is split between a Primary allocator, fast and
efficient, that services smaller allocation sizes, and a Secondary allocator
that services larger allocation sizes and is backed by the operating system
memory mapping primitives.
Scudo was designed with security in mind, but aims at striking a good balance
between security and performance. It is highly tunable and configurable.
Chunk Header
------------
Every chunk of heap memory will be preceded by a chunk header. This has two
purposes, the first one being to store various information about the chunk,
the second one being to detect potential heap overflows. In order to achieve
this, the header will be checksumed, involving the pointer to the chunk itself
this, the header will be checksummed, involving the pointer to the chunk itself
and a global secret. Any corruption of the header will be detected when said
header is accessed, and the process terminated.
The following information is stored in the header:
- the 16-bit checksum;
- the unused bytes amount for that chunk, which is necessary for computing the
size of the chunk;
- the class ID for that chunk, which is the "bucket" where the chunk resides
for Primary backed allocations, or 0 for Secondary backed allocations;
- the size (Primary) or unused bytes amount (Secondary) for that chunk, which is
necessary for computing the size of the chunk;
- the state of the chunk (available, allocated or quarantined);
- the allocation type (malloc, new, new[] or memalign), to detect potential
mismatches in the allocation APIs used;
- the offset of the chunk, which is the distance in bytes from the beginning of
the returned chunk to the beginning of the backend allocation;
- a 8-bit salt.
the returned chunk to the beginning of the Backend allocation;
This header fits within 8 bytes, on all platforms supported.
The checksum is computed as a CRC32 (made faster with hardware support)
of the global secret, the chunk pointer itself, and the 8 bytes of header with
the checksum field zeroed out.
the checksum field zeroed out. It is not intended to be cryptographically
strong.
The header is atomically loaded and stored to prevent races. This is important
as two consecutive chunks could belong to different threads. We also want to
@ -60,9 +73,9 @@ local copies of the header for this purpose.
Delayed Freelist
-----------------
A delayed freelist allows us to not return a chunk directly to the backend, but
A delayed freelist allows us to not return a chunk directly to the Backend, but
to keep it aside for a while. Once a criterion is met, the delayed freelist is
emptied, and the quarantined chunks are returned to the backend. This helps
emptied, and the quarantined chunks are returned to the Backend. This helps
mitigate use-after-free vulnerabilities by reducing the determinism of the
allocation and deallocation patterns.
@ -107,13 +120,21 @@ and then use it with existing binaries as follows:
LD_PRELOAD=`pwd`/scudo-allocator.so ./a.out
Clang
-----
With a recent version of Clang (post rL317337), the allocator can be linked with
a binary at compilation using the ``-fsanitize=scudo`` command-line argument, if
the target platform is supported. Currently, the only other Sanitizer Scudo is
compatible with is UBSan (eg: ``-fsanitize=scudo,undefined``). Compiling with
Scudo will also enforce PIE for the output binary.
Options
-------
Several aspects of the allocator can be configured through the following ways:
- by defining a ``__scudo_default_options`` function in one's program that
returns the options string to be parsed. Said function must have the following
prototype: ``extern "C" const char* __scudo_default_options()``.
prototype: ``extern "C" const char* __scudo_default_options(void)``.
- through the environment variable SCUDO_OPTIONS, containing the options string
to be parsed. Options defined this way will override any definition made