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AddressSanitizer

AddressSanitizer (ASan) is a fast compiler-based tool for detecting memory bugs in native code. It is comparable to Valgrind (Memcheck tool), but, unlike it, ASan:

• + detects overflows on stack and global objects
• - does not detect uninitialized reads and memory leaks
• + is much faster (two-three times slowdown compared to Valgrind’s 20-100x)
• + has less memory overhead

This document describes how to build and run parts of the Android platform with AddressSanitizer. If you are looking to build a standalone (i.e. SDK/NDK) application with AddressSanitizer, see the AddressSanitizerOnAndroid public project site instead.

AddressSanitizer consists of a compiler (external/clang) and a runtime library (external/compiler-rt/lib/asan).

Note: Use the current master branch to gain access to the SANITIZE_TARGET feature and the ability to build the entire Android platform with AddressSanitizer at once. Otherwise, you are limited to usingLOCAL_SANITIZE.

Building with Clang

As a first step to building an ASan-instrumented binary, make sure that your code builds with Clang. This is done by default on the master branch, so there should be nothing you need to do. If you believe that the module you'd like to test is being built with GCC, you can switch to Clang by adding LOCAL_CLANG:=true to the build rules. Clang may find bugs in your code that GCC missed.

Building executables with AddressSanitizer

Add LOCAL_SANITIZE:=address to the build rule of the executable.

LOCAL_SANITIZE:=address

When a bug is detected, ASan prints a verbose report both to the standard output and to logcat and then crashes the process.

Building shared libraries with AddressSanitizer

Due to the way ASan works, a library built with ASan cannot be used by an executable that's built without ASan.

Note: In runtime situations where an ASan library is loaded into an incorrect process, you will see unresolved symbol messages starting with _asan or _sanitizer.

To sanitize a shared library that is used in multiple executables, not all of which are built with ASan, you'll need two copies of the library. The recommended way to do this is to add the following to Android.mkfor the module in question:

LOCAL_SANITIZE:=addressLOCAL_MODULE_RELATIVE_PATH := asan

This puts the library in /system/lib/asan instead of /system/lib. Then, run your executable with:LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/system/lib/asan

For system daemons, add the following to the appropriate section of /init.rc or /init.$device$.rc.

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /system/lib/asan

Warning: The LOCAL_MODULE_RELATIVE_PATH setting moves your library to /system/lib/asan, meaning that clobbering and rebuilding from scratch will result in the library missing from /system/lib, and probably an unbootable image. That's an unfortunate limitation of the current build system. Don't clobber; do make -j $N and adb sync.

Verify the process is using libraries from /system/lib/asan when present by reading /proc/$PID/maps. If it's not, you may need to disable SELinux, like so:

adb rootadb shell setenforce 0# restart the process with adb shell kill $PID# if it is a system service, or may be adb shell stop; adb shell start.

Better stack traces

AddressSanitizer uses a fast, frame-pointer-based unwinder to record a stack trace for every memory allocation and deallocation event in the program. Most of Android is built without frame pointers. As a result, you will often get only one or two meaningful frames. To fix this, either rebuild the library with ASan (recommended!), or with:

LOCAL_CFLAGS:=-fno-omit-frame-pointerLOCAL_ARM_MODE:=arm

Or set ASAN_OPTIONS=fast_unwind_on_malloc=0 in the process environment. The latter can be very CPU-intensive, depending on the load.

Symbolization

Initially, ASan reports contain references to offsets in binaries and shared libraries. There are two ways to obtain source file and line information:

• Ensure llvm-symbolizer binary is present in /system/bin. Llvm-symbolizer is built from sources in: third_party/llvm/tools/llvm-symbolizer
• Filter the report through the external/compiler-rt/lib/asan/scripts/symbolize.py script.

The second approach can provide more data (i.e. file:line locations) because of the availability of symbolized libraries on the host.

AddressSanitizer in the apps

AddressSanitizer cannot see into Java code, but it can detect bugs in the JNI libraries. For that, you'll need to build the executable with ASan, which in this case is /system/bin/app_process(32|64). This will enable ASan in all apps on the device at the same time, which is a bit stressful, but nothing that a 2GB RAM device cannot handle.

Add the usual LOCAL_SANITIZE:=address to the app_process build rule in frameworks/base/cmds/app_process. Ignore the app_process__asan target in the same file for now (if it is still there at the time you read this). Edit the Zygote record insystem/core/rootdir/init.zygote(32|64).rc to add the following lines:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /system/lib/asan:/system/libsetenv ASAN_OPTIONSallow_user_segv_handler=true

Build, adb sync, fastboot flash boot, reboot.

Using the wrap property

The approach in the previous section puts AddressSanitizer into every application in the system (actually, into every descendant of the Zygote process). It is possible to run only one (or several) applications with ASan, trading some memory overhead for slower application startup.

This can be done by starting your app with the “wrap.” property, the same one that’s used to run apps under Valgrind. The following example runs the Gmail app under ASan:

adb rootadb shell setenforce 0  # disable SELinuxadb shell setprop wrap.com.google.android.gm "asanwrapper"

In this context, asanwrapper rewrites /system/bin/app_process to /system/bin/asan/app_process, which is built with AddressSanitizer. It also adds /system/lib/asan at the start of the dynamic library search path. This way ASan-instrumented libraries from /system/lib/asan are preferred to normal libraries in /system/lib when running with asanwrapper.

Again, if a bug is found, the app will crash, and the report will be printed to the log.

SANITIZE_TARGET

The master branch has support for building the entire Android platform with AddressSanitizer at once.

Run the following commands in the same build tree.

make -j42SANITIZE_TARGET=address make -j42

In this mode, userdata.img contains extra libraries and must be flashed to the device as well. Use the following command line:

fastboot flash userdata && fastboot flashall

At the moment of this writing, modern Nexus and Pixel devices boot to the UI in this mode.

This works by building two sets of shared libraries: normal in /system/lib (the first make invocation), ASan-instrumented in /data/asan/lib (the second make invocation). Executables from the second build overwrite the ones from the first build. ASan-instrumented executables get a different library search path that includes /data/asan/lib before /system/lib through the use of "/system/bin/linker_asan" in PT_INTERP.

The build system clobbers intermediate object directories when the $SANITIZE_TARGET value has changed. This forces a rebuild of all targets while preserving installed binaries under /system/lib.

Some targets cannot be built with ASan:

• Statically linked executables.
• LOCAL_CLANG:=false targets
• LOCAL_SANITIZE:=false will not be ASan'd for SANITIZE_TARGET=address

Executables like these are skipped in the SANITIZE_TARGET build, and the version from the first make invocation is left in /system/bin.

Libraries like this are simply built without ASan. They can contain some ASan code anyway from the static libraries they depend upon.

Supporting documentation

AddressSanitizerOnAndroid public project site

AddressSanitizer and Chromium

Other Google Sanitizers

From:https://source.android.com/devices/tech/debug/asan