IdSan: An identity-based memory sanitizer for fuzzing binaries

TL;DR

IdSan is a novel binary-only memory sanitizer for AArch64 that detects global, stack, and dynamic memory overflows without source code, using identity-based techniques and optional annotations or debugging info.

Contribution

It introduces an identity-based approach for binary memory sanitization that works without source code and detects overflows in global, stack, and dynamic memory.

Findings

Detects global, stack, and dynamic memory overflows in binaries

Operates without source code or recompilation

Utilizes annotations or debugging info for enhanced detection

Abstract

Most memory sanitizers work by instrumenting the program at compile time. There are only a handful of memory sanitizers that can sanitize a binary program without source code. Most are location-based, and are therefore unable to detect overflows of global variables or variables on the stack. In this paper we introduce an identity-based memory sanitizer for binary AArch64 programs which does not need access to the source code. It is able to detect overflows of stack- and global variables if the user provides some annotations or DWARF debugging information is available, as well as dynamically allocated memory.