Source Code vs. Binary Code Analysis

True
Source
Code
Analysis
for
Security
Maty SIMAN, CISSP

March

2012

Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction to Compilation and Linkage ......................................................................................................... 4
Benefits of True Source Code Analysis .......................................................................................................... 5
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................. 5
Code Fragments.......................................................................................................................................... 5
Non Compiling Code ................................................................................................................................... 6
Cloud Compiled Language .......................................................................................................................... 6
Non Linking Code ........................................................................................................................................ 6
Compiler Agnostic ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Platform agnostic ......................................................................................................................................... 8
Proprietary Resolving .................................................................................................................................. 9
Advanced Data members Distinction ....................................................................................................... 9
Advanced Array Elements Distinction .....................................................................................................10
Compile Time Resolving .........................................................................................................................11
Compiler Optimization Compensation ........................................................................................................12

Abstract
CISOs have responded to the sharp rise in hacking by asking developers and auditors to
implement secure software development for in-house and outsourced code. In recent
years, “source” code analysis has become the de facto choice to introduce secure
development as well as gauge inherent software risk.
The irony is that source code analysis doesn’t often look at the source at all. In fact, the
majority of the products are using Binary analysis or byte-code analysis (BCA) created
by the compiler. This method saves a great deal of effort when developing the analysis
tools, but lowers drastically the usability and accuracy of the results. For example,
current technical approaches examine code so late in the development cycle or—
worse—after development leaving a high volume of vulnerabilities undiscovered. For
the unfortunate developer and auditor, they are technically incapable of delivering the
CISO’s vision of secure software.
The differences between binary analysis and byte-code analysis have received little
attention. This topic was addressed in just two recent blog posts 1, 2. Worse, true
source code analysis (TSCA) – which seems most logical for SCA, has been largely
ignored. Yet only TSCA can deliver upon the CISO’s promise of building security in.
Further, with the onset of cloud computing there is a new breed of languages used
mainly in cloud computing where the developer develops the code while the cloud
platform provider is responsible for validation, proprietary compilation and execution of
the programs. The code has no manifestation as byte-code nor as binary, and the SCA
must be done on the source code itself. No static analyzer is properly equipped to
address this growing, important segment.
This technical paper fills this gap and explains how developers, auditors and cloud
platform providers benefit from deploying a true source code analysis tool. with detailed
code examples.

1
2

http://blogs.gartner.com/neil_macdonald/2009/07/24/byte-code-analysis-is-not-the-same-as-binary-analysis/
http://www.veracode.com/blog/2009/07/bytecode-analysis-is-not-the-same-as-binary-analysis/

Introduction to Compilation and Linkage
Source Code Analysis is the technique of analyzing source code in order to retrieve
valuable information about the application without ever executing it3.
For purpose of illustration a well-known code-analysis tool is in fact the compilers’
frontend. A compiler is the tool that transforms source code into machine code (or bytecode for managed languages). We can roughly divide the compiler into two parts, the
frontend checks the syntactic and semantic correctness of the code and then loads a
representation of source into memory. The second component, the backend, is used to
write the representation back to disk in its machine-code form (Object Files).

Figure 1 - An operation diagram of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler.4
To complete the overview of the compilation process, we should also mention the linking
phase. Most applications are comprised of several modules. Each resides in its own
source file, which in turn, is transformed into object files, one for each module. A linker is
a tool that takes the object files and combines them together and generates a single
3

The technique of actually executing application in order to get data about applications’ functionality is called Dynamic
Analysis and is not covered within this paper.
4

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Compiler.svg

executable file. While doing so, it resolves the types in the code – finds the correct
definition and usage of each element in the code (variable, function, class, etc…).
Importantly, the compiler’s primary goal is to enable the optimized execution of the
program in its target operating system and hardware. Unfortunately, this means that the
ability of a compiler-based SCA tool to use compiler output in order to fully comprehend
the code itself becomes seriously limited.

Benefits of True Source Code Analysis
Introduction
Take a good look at the following C#/.NET code example:
public void noSC()
{
s = Request["Textbox1"];
Response.Write ("See text below: ")
Response.Write ("Is it vulnerable to XSS? ");
Response.Write(s);
}
Is it potentially vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting? Obviously it is.
However, none of the existing BCA tools will identify it. Only TSCA is capable of finding
it! Why? A semi-colon is missing at the end of the second line and will fail any
compilation process – necessary by BCA tools. The TSCA tool can “forgive” syntactical
errors and still detect the problem.
The compiler performs many actions during its process in order to create the binary files.
These actions were not designed for performing security analysis but rather to make the
code as complete and efficient as possible - making the compiler way too restrictive for
early security analysis in turn preventing the successful discovery of vulnerabilities.
This section will demonstrate some test cases where TSCA inherently performs better
than BCA.

Code Fragments
In the code above there were not one but two errors that will prevent BCA from
finding the vulnerabilities – the missing semicolon discussed before, and also the
‘s’ variable that wasn’t properly declared. A TSCA tool is capable is scanning
code fragments.

Non Compiling Code
The code above, demonstrates the ability of TSCA to scan code not compiled due to
syntactic errors. This capability allows developers to scan incomplete code, allowing the
discovery of vulnerabilities much earlier during the Software development Life Cycle
(SDLC).
This is not just a sales-pitch – actual vulnerabilities slipped through scanning in realworld projects, like the Linux OS (Finding Linux Bugs Before they Become Exploits5).
This example can be extended to non-compiling blocks, non-compiling functions (as
seen above), non compiling classes, and non-compiling namespaces.
All these capabilities are supported easily and natively using TSCA.

Cloud Compiled Language
There is a new breed of languages used mainly in cloud computing where the developer
develops the code while the cloud platform provider is responsible for validation,
proprietary compilation and execution of the programs. The code has no manifestation
as byte-code nor as binary and the SCA must be done on the source code itself.
The most known example is the Force.com platform supplied by Salesforce.com based
on Apex as the server based language and Visualforce as the client based. Obviously,
only TSCA product can support this new paradigm.

Non Linking Code
string s = Request["Textbox1"];
string s2 = "Select * from t_users where name = '"+s+"'";
Results = ExecuteSql(s2);

Is the code above vulnerable to SQL Injection?

Code auditors are familiar with the following scenario:
A customer sends you a source code of his application for your review. You look at the
code, and see that it references many infrastructure libraries, which you didn’t get their
source. You load your favorite BCA tool, try to scan the code, but it doesn’t work. It fails
on “Missing Library” – and then you spend days building stubs for the missing parts just

5

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3831716

to make it work. A lot of hard work without any added value.

While a BCA product will fail to even start the scanning process, a TSCA product will
easily identify the SQL Injection above, even if the actual code of ExecuteSql is missing.
You were able to easily find it manually – why your tool can’t do the same? TSCA can!

Compiler Agnostic
Compilers transform source code into binary/byte code. However, each compiler does
so differently – and the output on the same source code varies from compiler to
compiler. BCA are always on the endless race of supporting more and more compilers,
since they have to read, understand and analyze the different outputs of different
compilers. However, all of them must be able to read the same source – which must
comply with a single standard. By contrast, a TSCA solution doesn’t need to be part of
that rat race – it only needs to understand the single standard of each language.
Following is a list that appears on the technical spec page of BCA provider:












GNU GCC/G++
ARM
Microsoft Visual C++
Green Hills
Wind River Diab
Sun Studio C/C++
Freescale
Metaware
Hitachi h38
IBM VisualAge C/C++
Intel C++



QNX Compiler

The longer the list is, we must admire their efforts in supporting all the platforms, but
wouldn’t it be simpler to just support the published C++ standard (ISO/IEC
14882:20036)? No need for upgrades / updates to support different compilers.

6 http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38110

Platform agnostic
We can take this idea one step further and come to the conclusion that there is no need
for a compiler to actually be part of the code analysis process in order to find security
vulnerabilities. This means that no matter what platform and OS are used to develop the
code, the exact same TSCA can be used to scan any code anywhere – independent of
the environment used for actual development. There is no need to have different
scanning tools on different machines, only to support different development and
execution platforms.
One of the BCA vendors is “proud” of supporting:
PLATFORMS: Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, HP-UX, AIX
With TSCA, the above list is irrelevant – all platforms are supported immediately, no
matter where the actual execution takes place.

Proprietary Resolving
Resolving is the process where the compiler/linker correlates between references of
same code elements in different places in the application. The standard
compilers/linkers perform the resolving process in a way that fits their own needs, but
very often it is not aligned with the needs of finding security vulnerabilities. This section
describes the tweaks that can be done at the resolving stage of TSCA in order to
improve the process of finding security vulnerabilities.
Advanced Data members Distinction
By default, compilers treat similar data member of different object as the same
reference. This can be seen for example by using Visual-Studio’s “Find All References”
function:

It can be easily seen that VS.Net returned both c1.member and c2.member, although
they are completely two different objects. This may lead to false positives and false
negatives during the process of finding security vulnerabilities.
clsContainer c1 = new clsContainer();
clsContainer c2 = new clsContainer();
c1.s = Request["Textbox1"];
Response.Write(c2.s);

So, is there an XSS here? No but many BCA tools falsely identify this issue as XSS,
leading to a false positive.
Advanced Array Elements Distinction
Advanced compilers treat all array elements as the same object (i.e. Viewstate[“a”] and
Viewstate[“b”] are considered as the same object; although, obviously they are not)
Viewstate["key1"] = Request["Textbox1"];
Response.Write(Viewstate["key1"]);
Response.Write(Viewstate["key2"]);

The code above contains a single XSS. Most BCA will either find two XSS (one of which
is False Positive), or won’t find any (meaning one False Negative). By using advance
array elements distinction technique at the proprietary resolving stage, TSCAs are able
to find the one XSS in that code.

Compile Time Resolving
Some types of code structures are traditionally resolved at runtime and not during
compilation as more information is needed. An interesting point is that even if the
compiler DOES have the necessary information, it will still wait with the resolving until
the application is actually being executed. Let’s look at polymorphism as an example of
this issue. Examine the following code:
clsContainer c1;
clsSpecificContainer c3;
. . .
. . .
c1.printSelf();
c3.printSelf();

Assuming that “clsSpecificContatiner” inherits from “clsContainer”, we don’t know what
instance of “printSelf” will be executed at the line “c1.printSelf()” as it depends on the
actual object assigned into c1 (either clsContainer.printSelf() or
clsSpecificContainer.printSelf()); However, we do know that clsContainer.printSelf won’t
be executed at line “c3.printSelf”. Still, the compiler doesn’t make use of this extra
information, and leaves both lines as virtual-call to clsContainer.printSelf:

L_0055:
L_0056:
L_005b:
L_005c:
L_005d:
L_0062:

ldloc.0
callvirt instance void clsContainer::printSelf()
nop
ldloc.1
callvirt instance void clsContainer::printSelf()
nop

Wouldn’t you expect to find a virtual call to clsSepcificContainer ::printSelf on line
L_005d.
This has great impact on the analysis performed by BCA – as they have difficulties in
finding the appropriate call, since the compiler “masks” the relevant information. TSCA is
capable of easily narrowing down the results to the relevant calls only.

Compiler Optimization Compensation
One of the many roles compilers fulfill is to optimize the created code in terms of
efficiency and size. For example, compiler might remove “irrelevant” line, or dead blocks.
Developers often ask to see vulnerabilities within dead blocks – for example, as part of
their debug process:
public void DeadCode()
{
bool debug = true;
string s = Request["Textbox1"];
if (debug == true)
{
Response.Write("Data retrieved");
}
else
{
Response.Write("Hello " + s);
}
}

Tools that rely on compiled binaries fail to address such request. They are completely
blind to the content of “dead code” and miss the XSS on the code. Although this XSS
manifests itself only on production, it’s extremely important to know about its existence
during development.
With TSCA, the developers can choose whether to see vulnerabilities in dead code or
not, which are left out of reach from BCA tools.

Source Code vs. Binary Code Analysis

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