Automatic variable initialization

Summary:

Add an option to initialize automatic variables with either a pattern or with

zeroes. The default is still that automatic variables are uninitialized. Also

add attributes to request uninitialized on a per-variable basis, mainly to disable

initialization of large stack arrays when deemed too expensive.

This isn't meant to change the semantics of C and C++. Rather, it's meant to be

a last-resort when programmers inadvertently have some undefined behavior in

their code. This patch aims to make undefined behavior hurt less, which

security-minded people will be very happy about. Notably, this means that

there's no inadvertent information leak when:

The compiler re-uses stack slots, and a value is used uninitialized.

The compiler re-uses a register, and a value is used uninitialized.

Stack structs / arrays / unions with padding are copied.

This patch only addresses stack and register information leaks. There's many

more infoleaks that we could address, and much more undefined behavior that

could be tamed. Let's keep this patch focused, and I'm happy to address related

issues elsewhere.

To keep the patch simple, only some undef is removed for now, see

replaceUndef . The padding-related infoleaks are therefore not all gone yet.

This will be addressed in a follow-up, mainly because addressing padding-related

leaks should be a stand-alone option which is implied by variable

initialization.

There are three options when it comes to automatic variable initialization:

0. Uninitialized This is C and C++'s default. It's not changing. Depending on code generation, a programmer who runs into undefined behavior by using an uninialized automatic variable may observe any previous value (including program secrets), or any value which the compiler saw fit to materialize on the stack or in a register (this could be to synthesize an immediate, to refer to code or data locations, to generate cookies, etc). 1. Pattern initialization This is the recommended initialization approach. Pattern initialization's goal is to initialize automatic variables with values which will likely transform logic bugs into crashes down the line, are easily recognizable in a crash dump, without being values which programmers can rely on for useful program semantics. At the same time, pattern initialization tries to generate code which will optimize well. You'll find the following details in `patternFor`: - Integers are initialized with repeated 0xAA bytes (infinite scream). - Vectors of integers are also initialized with infinite scream. - Pointers are initialized with infinite scream on 64-bit platforms because it's an unmappable pointer value on architectures I'm aware of. Pointers are initialize to 0x000000AA (small scream) on 32-bit platforms because 32-bit platforms don't consistently offer unmappable pages. When they do it's usually the zero page. As people try this out, I expect that we'll want to allow different platforms to customize this, let's do so later. - Vectors of pointers are initialized the same way pointers are. - Floating point values and vectors are initialized with a negative quiet NaN with repeated 0xFF payload (e.g. 0xffffffff and 0xffffffffffffffff). NaNs are nice (here, anways) because they propagate on arithmetic, making it more likely that entire computations become NaN when a single uninitialized value sneaks in. - Arrays are initialized to their homogeneous elements' initialization value, repeated. Stack-based Variable-Length Arrays (VLAs) are runtime-initialized to the allocated size (no effort is made for negative size, but zero-sized VLAs are untouched even if technically undefined). - Structs are initialized to their heterogeneous element's initialization values. Zero-size structs are initialized as 0xAA since they're allocated a single byte. - Unions are initialized using the initialization for the largest member of the union. Expect the values used for pattern initialization to change over time, as we refine heuristics (both for performance and security). The goal is truly to avoid injecting semantics into undefined behavior, and we should be comfortable changing these values when there's a worthwhile point in doing so. Why so much infinite scream? Repeated byte patterns tend to be easy to synthesize on most architectures, and otherwise memset is usually very efficient. For values which aren't entirely repeated byte patterns, LLVM will often generate code which does memset + a few stores. 2. Zero initialization Zero initialize all values. This has the unfortunate side-effect of providing semantics to otherwise undefined behavior, programs therefore might start to rely on this behavior, and that's sad. However, some programmers believe that pattern initialization is too expensive for them, and data might show that they're right. The only way to make these programmers wrong is to offer zero-initialization as an option, figure out where they are right, and optimize the compiler into submission. Until the compiler provides acceptable performance for all security-minded code, zero initialization is a useful (if blunt) tool.

I've been asked for a fourth initialization option: user-provided byte value.

This might be useful, and can easily be added later.

Why is an out-of band initialization mecanism desired? We could instead use

-Wuninitialized! Indeed we could, but then we're forcing the programmer to

provide semantics for something which doesn't actually have any (it's

uninitialized!). It's then unclear whether int derp = 0; lends meaning to 0 ,

or whether it's just there to shut that warning up. It's also way easier to use

a compiler flag than it is to manually and intelligently initialize all values

in a program.

Why not just rely on static analysis? Because it cannot reason about all dynamic

code paths effectively, and it has false positives. It's a great tool, could get

even better, but it's simply incapable of catching all uses of uninitialized

values.

Why not just rely on memory sanitizer? Because it's not universally available,

has a 3x performance cost, and shouldn't be deployed in production. Again, it's

a great tool, it'll find the dynamic uses of uninitialized variables that your

test coverage hits, but it won't find the ones that you encounter in production.

What's the performance like? Not too bad! Previous publications [0] have cited

2.7 to 4.5% averages. We've commmitted a few patches over the last few months to

address specific regressions, both in code size and performance. In all cases,

the optimizations are generally useful, but variable initialization benefits

from them a lot more than regular code does. We've got a handful of other

optimizations in mind, but the code is in good enough shape and has found enough

latent issues that it's a good time to get the change reviewed, checked in, and

have others kick the tires. We'll continue reducing overheads as we try this out

on diverse codebases.

Is it a good idea? Security-minded folks think so, and apparently so does the

Microsoft Visual Studio team [1] who say "Between 2017 and mid 2018, this

feature would have killed 49 MSRC cases that involved uninitialized struct data

leaking across a trust boundary. It would have also mitigated a number of bugs

involving uninitialized struct data being used directly.". They seem to use pure

zero initialization, and claim to have taken the overheads down to within noise.

Don't just trust Microsoft though, here's another relevant person asking for

this [2]. It's been proposed for GCC [3] and LLVM [4] before.

What are the caveats? A few!

Variables declared in unreachable code, and used later, aren't initialized. This goto, Duff's device, other objectionable uses of switch. This should instead be a hard-error in any serious codebase.

Volatile stack variables are still weird. That's pre-existing, it's really the language's fault and this patch keeps it weird. We should deprecate volatile [5].

As noted above, padding isn't fully handled yet.

I don't think these caveats make the patch untenable because they can be

addressed separately.

Should this be on by default? Maybe, in some circumstances. It's a conversation

we can have when we've tried it out sufficiently, and we're confident that we've

eliminated enough of the overheads that most codebases would want to opt-in.

Let's keep our precious undefined behavior until that point in time.

How do I use it:

I've also posted an RFC to cfe-dev: http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2018-November/060172.html

rdar://problem/39131435

Reviewers: pcc, kcc, rsmith

Subscribers: JDevlieghere, jkorous, dexonsmith, cfe-commits

Differential Revision: https://reviews.llvm.org/D54604