Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Canaries in Wmem
From: Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:54:28 -0500
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Dec 19, 2012, at 7:51 AM, Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> They've been on my to-do list for a while, as emem provides them.
>>
>> However, I've never personally used emem's canaries, and I've never
>> actually heard of or seen anyone else using them. Are they actually
>> useful anymore, or has Moore's law made valgrind the better tool in
>> all situations?
>
>         http://valgrind.org/info/platforms.html
>
> It's not a better tool for developers working on platforms not listed there.  In particular:
>
>         There are many platforms not mentioned here. Some are of little interest (eg. SPARC/*, */AIX). Some would be technically difficult (eg. IA64/*). In particular Windows is not under consideration here because porting to it would require so many changes it would almost be a separate project.
>
> Note also
>
>         http://valgrind.org/downloads/
>
> "Valgrind 3.8.1
>
>         ...
>
> For {x86,amd64,arm,ppc32,ppc64,s390x,mips32}-linux, arm-android (2.3 and later), x86-android (4.0 and later) and {x86,amd64}-darwin (Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7, *with limited support for 10.8*)."
>
> (emphasis mine).
>
> Whether that says we should keep the canaries around is another matter, but it indicates that not everybody can use Valgrind.

Fair enough. The fuzz-bot (I believe) runs on Linux at the moment, so
it could theoretically be fuzzing under valgrind. Gerald, do you know
off the top of your head if that would be feasible in terms of
performance?