readme.md
1# Test Flatbuffers library with help of libFuzzer
2Test suite of Flatbuffers library has fuzzer section with tests are based on libFuzzer library.
3
4> LibFuzzer is in-process, coverage-guided, evolutionary fuzzing engine.
5LibFuzzer is linked with the library under test, and feeds fuzzed inputs to the library via a specific fuzzing entrypoint (aka “target function”);
6the fuzzer then tracks which areas of the code are reached, and generates mutations on the corpus of input data in order to maximize the code coverage.
7The code coverage information for libFuzzer is provided by LLVM’s SanitizerCoverage instrumentation.
8
9For details about **libFuzzer** see: https://llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html
10
11To build and run these tests LLVM compiler (with clang frontend) and CMake should be installed before.
12
13The fuzzer section include three tests:
14- `verifier_fuzzer` checks stability of deserialization engine for `Monster` schema;
15- `parser_fuzzer` checks stability of schema and json parser under various inputs;
16- `scalar_parser` focused on validation of the parser while parse numeric scalars in schema and/or json files;
17
18## Run tests with a specific locale
19The grammar of the Flatbuffers library is based on printable-ASCII characters.
20By design, the Flatbuffers library should be independent of the global or thread locales used by an end-user application.
21Set environment variable `FLATBUFFERS_TEST_LOCALE` to run a fuzzer with a specific C-locale:
22```sh
23>FLATBUFFERS_TEST_LOCALE="" ./scalar_parser
24>FLATBUFFERS_TEST_LOCALE="ru_RU.CP1251" ./parser_fuzzer
25```
26
27## Run fuzzer
28These are examples of running a fuzzer.
29Flags may vary and depend on a version of the libFuzzer library.
30For details, run a fuzzer with `-help` flag: `./parser_fuzzer -help=1`
31
32`./verifier_fuzzer -reduce_depth=1 -use_value_profile=1 -shrink=1 ../.corpus_verifier/`
33
34`./parser_fuzzer -reduce_depth=1 -use_value_profile=1 -shrink=1 ../.corpus_parser/`
35
36`./scalar_fuzzer -reduce_depth=1 -use_value_profile=1 -shrink=1 -max_len=3000 ../.corpus_parser/ ../.seed_parser/`
37
38Flag `-only_ascii=1` is useful for fast number-compatibility checking while run `scalar_fuzzer`:
39`./scalar_fuzzer -only_ascii=1 -reduce_depth=1 -use_value_profile=1 -shrink=1 -max_len=3000 -timeout=10 -rss_limit_mb=2048 -jobs=2 ../.corpus_parser/ ../.seed_parser/`
40
41Run with a specific C-locale:
42`FLATBUFFERS_TEST_LOCALE="ru_RU.CP1251" ./scalar_fuzzer -reduce_depth=1 -use_value_profile=1 -shrink=1 -max_len=3000 -timeout=10 -rss_limit_mb=2048 ../.corpus_parser/ ../.seed_parser/`
43
44## Merge (minimize) corpus
45The **libFuzzer** allow to filter (minimize) corpus with help of `-merge` flag:
46> -merge
47 If set to 1, any corpus inputs from the 2nd, 3rd etc. corpus directories that trigger new code coverage will be merged into the first corpus directory.
48 Defaults to 0. This flag can be used to minimize a corpus.
49
50Merge several seeds to one (a new collected corpus to the seed collection, for example):
51`./scalar_fuzzer -merge=1 ../.seed_parser/ ../.corpus_parser/`
52
53## Know limitations
54- LLVM 7.0 std::regex library has problem with stack overflow, maximum length of input for `scalar_fuzzer` run should be limited to 3000.
55 Example: `./scalar_fuzzer -max_len=3000`
56