2.1 KiB
Fuzz-testing Bitcoin Core
A special test harness test_bitcoin_fuzzy is provided to provide an easy
entry point for fuzzers and the like. In this document we'll describe how to
use it with AFL.
Building AFL
It is recommended to always use the latest version of afl:
wget http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/releases/afl-latest.tgz
tar -zxvf afl-latest.tgz
cd afl-<version>
make
export AFLPATH=$PWD
Instrumentation
To build Bitcoin Core using AFL instrumentation (this assumes that the
AFLPATH was set as above):
./configure --disable-ccache --disable-shared --enable-tests CC=${AFLPATH}/afl-gcc CXX=${AFLPATH}/afl-g++
export AFL_HARDEN=1
cd src/
make test/test_bitcoin_fuzzy
We disable ccache because we don't want to pollute the ccache with instrumented objects, and similarly don't want to use non-instrumented cached objects linked in.
The fuzzing can be sped up significantly (~200x) by using afl-clang-fast and
afl-clang-fast++ in place of afl-gcc and afl-g++ when compiling. When
compiling using afl-clang-fast/afl-clang-fast++ the resulting
test_bitcoin_fuzzy binary will be instrumented in such a way that the AFL
features "persistent mode" and "deferred forkserver" can be used. See
https://github.com/mcarpenter/afl/tree/master/llvm_mode for details.
Preparing fuzzing
AFL needs an input directory with examples, and an output directory where it will place examples that it found. These can be anywhere in the file system, we'll define environment variables to make it easy to reference them.
mkdir inputs
AFLIN=$PWD/inputs
mkdir outputs
AFLOUT=$PWD/outputs
Example inputs are available from:
Extract these (or other starting inputs) into the inputs directory before starting fuzzing.
Fuzzing
To start the actual fuzzing use:
$AFLPATH/afl-fuzz -i ${AFLIN} -o ${AFLOUT} -m52 -- test/test_bitcoin_fuzzy
You may have to change a few kernel parameters to test optimally - afl-fuzz
will print an error and suggestion if so.