sanitiser-integration-reference

Overview

Pure-reference catalog of the five clang sanitisers (ASan, UBSan, MSan, TSan, LSan) used with coverage-guided fuzz targets - what each detects, build flags, runtime options, compatibility matrix, performance overhead. Consumed by the per-language fuzzer skills and fuzz-target authoring. For corpus discipline see corpus-management-reference.

When to use

• Choosing which sanitisers to enable for a fuzz target.
• Interpreting a crash artefact's sanitiser report.
• Tuning sanitiser runtime options for false positives / performance.
• CI-gating builds with sanitisers enabled.

How to use

1. Identify the fuzz target's language and threat model (memory safety, undefined behavior, uninitialised reads, or data races).
2. Pick sanitisers from the summary table below; default to ASan + UBSan for most C / C++ targets.
3. Check the compatibility matrix before combining - ASan + UBSan is fine, but ASan + MSan and anything + TSan are not, so split those into separate binaries.
4. Build with -fsanitize=fuzzer,<sanitisers> plus -fno-sanitize-recover=all and -fno-omit-frame-pointer -g.
5. Set runtime options (ASAN_OPTIONS, UBSAN_OPTIONS) so the fuzzer aborts on first error.
6. When a crash lands, read the sanitiser report top-down: bug class, access, crash-site frame, then allocation / free site.
7. For MSan-required libraries, build a separate MSan-only binary with all dependencies instrumented and run it as a second campaign.

The five sanitisers

Full per-sanitiser detail - complete detect lists, the ASAN_OPTIONS / UBSAN_OPTIONS runtime-option tables, the MSan whole-program requirement, and LSan's embedded vs standalone modes: references/sanitiser-catalog.md.

Compatibility matrix

Can multiple sanitisers run in the same binary?

The standard fuzzing pair is ASan + UBSan (catches most memory + UB issues, manageable slowdown):

clang -g -O1 -fsanitize=fuzzer,address,undefined \
      -fno-sanitize-recover=all \
      -fno-omit-frame-pointer fuzz_target.cc -o fuzz_target

For MSan-required projects (e.g., crypto libraries), build a separate MSan-only binary and run it as a second fuzzing campaign.

libFuzzer + sanitiser composition

The -fsanitize=fuzzer,address,undefined flag composes the libFuzzer engine with ASan + UBSan in one binary. Each sanitiser contributes its instrumentation.

Per llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html (opens in new window):

# Build
clang -g -O1 \
  -fsanitize=fuzzer,address,undefined \
  -fno-sanitize-recover=all \
  fuzz_target.cc -o fuzz_target

# Run
ASAN_OPTIONS=abort_on_error=1:halt_on_error=1 \
UBSAN_OPTIONS=print_stacktrace=1:halt_on_error=1 \
  ./fuzz_target -max_total_time=3600 corpus/

Reading a sanitiser report

ASan output structure:

==1234==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow on address 0x7f...
READ of size 4 at 0x7f... thread T0
    #0 0x4015a3 in process_input src/parser.c:42:5
    #1 0x4012f0 in LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput fuzz_target.cc:10:3
    ...
0x7f... is located 0 bytes to the right of 16-byte region 0x7f..., 0x7f...)
allocated by thread T0 here:
    #0 0x40e7c0 in __interceptor_malloc
    #1 0x4015a3 in process_input src/parser.c:39:9

Key fields:

• Bug class: heap-buffer-overflow, stack-use-after-return, use-after-free, double-free, memory-leak
• Access: READ or WRITE, size
• Stack: Top frame = crash site; below = call chain
• Allocation site: Where the corrupted memory was allocated
• Freed site (UAF): Where the memory was freed

Parse this for bug-report-from-failure to extract the failure assertion.

Per-language sanitiser support

Java / Kotlin (Jazzer) uses JVM-level sanitisers (sanitisers for unsafe-API misuse, deserialisation gadgets, ReDoS) rather than clang's; see [jazzer-jvm-fuzzing.

Python (Atheris) uses per-module instrumentation + the host process's libFuzzer; you can attach ASan to the Python interpreter itself.

Worked example

A team fuzzes a C++ PNG parser. They choose ASan + UBSan (the standard pair) and build with:

clang -g -O1 -fsanitize=fuzzer,address,undefined \
      -fno-sanitize-recover=all -fno-omit-frame-pointer \
      png_fuzzer.cc -o png_fuzzer

Running under ASAN_OPTIONS=abort_on_error=1:halt_on_error=1, the fuzzer trips within minutes. The report opens with heap-buffer-overflow ... READ of size 4, top frame process_input src/parser.c:42, allocated at src/parser.c:39 (a 16-byte region). The bug class plus the allocation site pin it to an off-by-one in the chunk-length handling. The parser has no MSan dependency requirement, so they skip the separate MSan binary and hand the report to bug-report-from-failure.

Anti-patterns

Limitations

• Performance trade-offs. ASan + UBSan ≈ 2-3x slowdown; TSan ≈ 10-15x. Long fuzz campaigns need budget planning.
• Sanitiser incompatibility. No single binary catches everything; multiple campaigns required.
• Heap-buffer-overflow on rdtsc edges. Some sanitisers have per-architecture false-positive surfaces.
• Build system integration. Pre-existing build systems may need invasive changes (CMake -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS=-fsanitize=...).
• Library compatibility. Some C / C++ libraries hand-roll memory tricks (custom allocators, intrusive lists) that sanitisers misflag.

References

• LLVM AddressSanitizer - clang.llvm.org/docs/AddressSanitizer.html (opens in new window).
• LLVM UBSan - clang.llvm.org/docs/UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer.html (opens in new window).
• LLVM MemorySanitizer - clang.llvm.org/docs/MemorySanitizer.html (opens in new window).
• LLVM ThreadSanitizer - clang.llvm.org/docs/ThreadSanitizer.html (opens in new window).
• LLVM libFuzzer - llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html (opens in new window).
• Sanitiser catalog detail: references/sanitiser-catalog.md.
• Sibling references: corpus-management-reference.
• Consumed by: libfuzzer-cpp, afl-plus-plus, cargo-fuzz-rust, atheris-python-fuzzing, jazzer-jvm-fuzzing, ossfuzz-integration.