Secure Coding mailing list archives
Static Vs. Binary
From: jsteven at cigital.com (John Steven)
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:20:52 -0400
Something occurred to me last night as I pondered where this discussion?s tendrils are taking us. An point I only made implicitly is this: The question<for years<has been ?conduct your SA on source code or binary??. You can see that there are interesting subtleties in even those languages that target intermediate representational formats (like Java and the .NET family of languages that compiles to MSIL). The garbage-collection-optimization problems that plague those asking ?How do I assure password String cleanup in Java? are of the same ilk as the gcc optimizations that trouble the C/C++ realm. Yes, this question is still pertinent. It _is_ interesting to those looking for thorough/sound analysis to consider fidelity and resolution at this level. People are beginning to echo what I've been saying for years, "this problem extends beyond the initial compile into the runtime optimizations and runtime compilers". My previous post reiterates that there's a lot more to it than most people consider. I think I allowed that clarification to muddle my more strategic point: ----------------- Whereas THE question used to be source code vs. binary representation, the question is NOW: "What set of IOC-container/XML combos, aspect weaver results, method/class-level annotations, and other such tomfoolery governs the execution of my application beyond what the compiler initially output? ----------------- As Fortify, Veracode, and others punch out this 'static analysis on binaries via SAAS' battle, they and the organizations they serve would do well to keep this question in mind... Or risk the same failures that the current crop of parser-based static-analysis tools face against dynamic approaches. -jOHN On 7/29/09 8:44 AM, "John Steven" <jsteven at cigital.com> wrote:
All, The question of ?Is my answer going to be high-enough resolution to support manual review?? or ?...to support a developer fixing the problem?? comes down to ?it depends?. And, as we all know, I simply can?t resist an ?it depends? kind of subtlety. Yes, Jim, if you?re doing a pure JavaSE application, and you don?t care about non-standards compilers (jikes, gcj, etc.), then the source and the binary are largely equivalent (at least in terms of resolution).... Larry mentioned gcj. Ease of parsing, however, is a different story (for instance, actual dependencies are way easier to pull out of a binary than the source code, whereas stack-local variable names are easiest in source). Where you care about ?a whole web application? rather than a pure-Java module, you have to concern yourself with JSP and all the other MVC technologies. Placing aside the topic of XML-based configuration files, you?ll want to know what (container) your JSPs were compiled to target. In this case, source code is different than binary. Similar factors sneak themselves in across the Java platform. Then you?ve got the world of Aspect Oriented programming. Spring and a broader class of packages that use AspectJ to weave code into your application will dramatically change the face of your binary. To get the same resolution out of your source code, you must in essence Oapply? those point cuts yourself... Getting binary-quality resolution from source code therefore means predicting what transforms will occur at what point-cut locations. I doubt highly any source-based approach will get this thoroughly correct. Finally, from the perspective of dynamic analysis, one must consider the post-compiler transforms that occur. Java involves both JIT and Hotspot (using two hotspot compilers: client and server, each of which conducting different transforms), which neither binary nor source-code-based static analysis are likely to correctly predict or account for. The binary image that runs is simply not that which is fed to classloader.defineClass[] as a bytestream. ...and (actually) finally, one of my favorite code-review techniques is to ask for both a .war/ear/jar file AND the source code. This almost invariable get?s a double-take, but it?s worth the trouble. How many times do you think a web.xml match between the two? What exposure might you report if they were identical? ... What might you test for If they?re dramatically different? Ah... Good times, ---- John Steven Senior Director; Advanced Technology Consulting Direct: (703) 404-5726 Cell: (703) 727-4034 Key fingerprint = 4772 F7F3 1019 4668 62AD 94B0 AE7F EEF4 62D5 F908 Blog: http://www.cigital.com/justiceleague Papers: http://www.cigital.com/papers/jsteven http://www.cigital.com Software Confidence. Achieved. On 7/28/09 4:36 PM, "ljknews" <ljknews at mac.com> wrote:At 8:39 AM -1000 7/28/09, Jim Manico wrote:A quick note, in the Java world (obfuscation aside), the source and "binary" is really the same thing. The fact that Fortify analizes source and Veracode analizes class files is a fairly minor detail.It seems to me that would only be true for those using a Java bytecode engine, not those using a Java compiler that creates machine code.
Current thread:
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc., (continued)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Tom Brennan (Jul 28)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Arian J. Evans (Jul 28)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Jim Manico (Jul 28)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. ljknews (Jul 28)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. John Steven (Jul 29)
- Source or Binary Brad Andrews (Jul 29)
- Source or Binary Kenneth Van Wyk (Jul 29)
- Source or Binary silky (Jul 29)
- Source or Binary Paco Hope (Jul 30)
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- Static Vs. Binary John Steven (Jul 30)
- Static Vs. Binary Pravir Chandra (Jul 30)
- Static Vs. Binary Kenneth Van Wyk (Jul 30)
- Static Vs. Binary John Steven (Aug 04)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Arian J. Evans (Aug 04)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Chris Wysopal (Aug 04)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Arian J. Evans (Aug 04)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Wall, Kevin (Aug 04)
- IBM Acquires Ounce Labs, Inc. Arian J. Evans (Aug 04)
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