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: the x86 processor fuzzer

Overview

The sandsifter audits x86 processors for hidden instructions and hardware bugs, by systematically generating machine code to search through a processor's instruction set, and monitoring execution for anomalies. Sandsifter has uncovered secret processor instructions from every major vendor; ubiquitous software bugs in disassemblers, assemblers, and emulators; flaws in enterprise hypervisors; and both benign and security-critical hardware bugs in x86 chips.

With the multitude of x86 processors in existence, the goal of the tool is to enable users to check their own systems for hidden instructions and bugs.

To run a basic audit against your processor:

sudo ./sifter.py --unk --dis --len --sync --tick -- -P1 -t

demo_sandsifter

The computer is systematically scanned for anomalous instructions. In the upper half, you can view the instructions that the sandsifter is currently testing on the processor. In the bottom half, the sandsifter reports anomalies it finds.

The search will take from a few hours to a few days, depending on the speed of and complexity of your processor. When it is complete, summarize the results:

./summarize.py data/log

demo_summarizer

Typically, several million undocumented instructions on your processor will be found, but these generally fall into a small number of different groups. After binning the anomalies, the summarize tool attempts to assign each instruction to an issue category:

Press 'Q' to quit and obtain a text based summary of the system scan:

The results of a scan can sometimes be difficult for the tools to automatically classify, and may require manual analysis. For help analyzing your results, feel free to send the ./data/log file to xoreaxeaxeax@gmail.com. No personal information, other than the processor make, model, and revision (from /proc/cpuinfo) are included in this log.

Results

Scanning with the sandsifter has uncovered undocumented processor features across dozens of opcode categories, flaws in enterprise hypervisors, bugs in nearly every major disassembly and emulation tool, and critical hardware bugs opening security vulnerabilities in the processor itself.

Details of the results can be found in the project whitepaper.

(TODO: detailed results enumeration here)

Building

Sandsifter requires first installing the Capstone disassembler: http://www.capstone-engine.org/. Capstone can typically be installed with:

sudo apt-get install libcapstone3 libcapstone-dev
sudo pip install capstone

Sandsifter can be built with:

make

and is then run with

sudo ./sifter.py --unk --dis --len --sync --tick -- -P1 -t

Flags

Flags are passed to the sifter with --flag, and to the injector with -- -f.

Example:

sudo ./sifter.py --unk --dis --len --sync --tick -- -P1 -t

Sifter flags:

--len
	search for length differences in all instructions (instructions that
	executed differently than the disassembler expected, or did not
	exist when the disassembler expected them to

--dis
	search for length differences in valid instructions (instructions that
	executed differently than the disassembler expected)

--unk
	search for unknown instructions (instructions that the disassembler doesn't
	know about but successfully execute)

--ill
	the inverse of --unk, search for invalid disassemblies (instructions that do
	not successfully execute but that the disassembler acknowledges)

--tick
	periodically write the current instruction to disk

--save
	save search progress on exit

--resume
	resume search from last saved state

--sync
	write search results to disk as they are found

--low-mem
	do not store results in memory

Injector flags:

-b
	mode: brute force

-r
	mode: randomized fuzzing

-t
	mode: tunneled fuzzing

-d
	mode: externally directed fuzzing

-R
	raw output mode

-T
	text output mode

-x
	write periodic progress to stderr

-0
	allow null dereference (requires sudo)

-D
	allow duplicate prefixes

-N
	no nx bit support

-s seed
	in random search, seed value

-B brute_depth
	in brute search, maximum search depth

-P max_prefix
	maximum number of prefixes to search

-i instruction
	instruction at which to start search (inclusive)

-e instruction
	instruction at which to end search (exclusive)

-c core
	core on which to perform search

-X blacklist
	blacklist the specified instruction

-j jobs
	number of simultaneous jobs to run

-l range_bytes
	number of base instruction bytes in each sub range

Keys

m: Mode - change the search mode (brute force, random, or tunnel) for the sifter

q: Quit - exit the sifter

p: Pause - pause or unpause the search

Algorithms

The scanning supports four different search algorithms, which can be set at the command line, or cycled via hotkeys.

Tips

References

Author

sandsifter is a research effort from Christopher Domas (@xoreaxeaxeax).