Useful GCC address sanitizer checks not enabled by default

Some useful address sanitizer checks are disabled by default because they are relatively expensive (or, as for the std::vector checking, need to be enabled for all translation units).

Use after return

The address sanitizer warns when a variable is used after it has gone out of scope in a function, but it does not warn when the variable is used after the function return. That can, however, be enabled by adding detect_stack_use_after_return=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable.

Example

int *ptr;

__attribute__((noinline))
void foo(void)
{
  int a;
  ptr = &a;
}

int main(void)
{
  foo();
  return *ptr;  // Error
}

Compile as

gcc -O -fsanitize=address file.c

and add detect_stack_use_after_return=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable before running the program

env ASAN_OPTIONS="detect_stack_use_after_return=1" ./a.out

Pointer comparison

It is not valid to compare two pointers from different objects using the relational operators <, <=, >, and >=. This can be detected by compiling with -fsanitize=address,pointer-compare and adding detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable.

Note: -fsanitize=pointer-compare was added in GCC 8.

Example

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
  char *p = malloc(42);
  char *q = malloc(42);

  int tmp = p < q;  // Error

  free(p);
  free(q);

  return tmp;
}

Compile as

gcc -fsanitize=address,pointer-compare file.c

and add detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable before running the program

env ASAN_OPTIONS="detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1" ./a.out

Pointer subtraction

It is not valid to subtract pointers that point into different objects. This can be detected by compiling with -fsanitize=address,pointer-subtract and adding detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable.

Note: -fsanitize=pointer-subtract was added in GCC 8.

Example

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
  char *p = malloc(42);
  char *q = malloc(42);

  int tmp = p - q;  // Error

  free(p);
  free(q);

  return tmp;
}

Compile as

gcc -O -fsanitize=address,pointer-subtract file.c

and add detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1 to the ASAN_OPTIONS environment variable before running the program

env ASAN_OPTIONS="detect_invalid_pointer_pairs=1" ./a.out

std::vector checking

The address sanitizer does not detect out-of-bounds accesses to the unused capacity of a vector, such as

std::vector<int> v(2);
int* p = v.data();
v.pop_back();
return p[1];  // Error

because the memory is valid, even though it is an error to use it. It is possible to make the address sanitizer warn for this by compiling with -D_GLIBCXX_SANITIZE_VECTOR which makes libstdc++ annotate the memory so that the validity can be tracked. The annotations must be present on all vector operations or none, so this macro must be defined to the same value for all translation units that create, destroy or modify vectors.

Note: _GLIBCXX_SANITIZE_VECTOR was added in the GCC 8 libstdc++.

Example

#include <vector>

int main()
{
  std::vector<int> v(2);
  int* p = v.data();
  v.pop_back();
  return p[1];  // Error
}

Compile as

g++ -O -fsanitize=address -D_GLIBCXX_SANITIZE_VECTOR file.cpp