diff --git a/README.tokencap b/README.tokencap new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e7b687 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.tokencap @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +========================================= +strcmp() / memcmp() token capture library +========================================= + + (See ../docs/README for the general instruction manual.) + +This Linux-only companion library allows you to instrument strcmp(), memcmp(), +and related functions to automatically extract syntax tokens passed to any of +these libcalls. The resulting list of tokens may be then given as a starting +dictionary to afl-fuzz (the -x option) to improve coverage on subsequent +fuzzing runs. + +This may help improving coverage in some targets, and do precisely nothing in +others. In some cases, it may even make things worse: if libtokencap picks up +syntax tokens that are not used to process the input data, but that are a part +of - say - parsing a config file... well, you're going to end up wasting a lot +of CPU time on trying them out in the input stream. In other words, use this +feature with care. Manually screening the resulting dictionary is almost +always a necessity. + +As for the actual operation: the library stores tokens, without any deduping, +by appending them to a file specified via AFL_TOKEN_FILE. If the variable is not +set, the tool uses stderr (which is probably not what you want). + +Similarly to afl-tmin, the library is not "proprietary" and can be used with +other fuzzers or testing tools without the need for any code tweaks. It does not +require AFL-instrumented binaries to work. + +To use the library, you *need* to make sure that your fuzzing target is compiled +with -fno-builtin and is linked dynamically. If you wish to automate the first +part without mucking with CFLAGS in Makefiles, you can set AFL_NO_BUILTIN=1 +when using afl-gcc. This setting specifically adds the following flags: + + -fno-builtin-strcmp -fno-builtin-strncmp -fno-builtin-strcasecmp + -fno-builtin-strcasencmp -fno-builtin-memcmp -fno-builtin-strstr + -fno-builtin-strcasestr + +The next step is simply loading this library via LD_PRELOAD. The optimal usage +pattern is to allow afl-fuzz to fuzz normally for a while and build up a corpus, +and then fire off the target binary, with libtokencap.so loaded, on every file +found by AFL in that earlier run. This demonstrates the basic principle: + + export AFL_TOKEN_FILE=$PWD/temp_output.txt + + for i in /queue/id*; do + LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/libtokencap.so \ + /path/to/target/program [...params, including $i...] + done + + sort -u temp_output.txt >afl_dictionary.txt + +If you don't get any results, the target library is probably not using strcmp() +and memcmp() to parse input; or you haven't compiled it with -fno-builtin; or +the whole thing isn't dynamically linked, and LD_PRELOAD is having no effect. + +PS. The library is Linux-only because there is probably no particularly portable +and non-invasive way to distinguish between read-only and read-write memory +mappings. The __tokencap_load_mappings() function is the only thing that would +need to be changed for other OSes. Porting to platforms with /proc//maps +(e.g., FreeBSD) should be trivial. +