* feat(native): report binary hardening for ELF, PE and Mach-O Documents inspect_binary_hardening and its CLI equivalent, including per-property states, supporting evidence, read budgets, and one report per Mach-O slice. Explains that missing protection imports remain unknown, signature presence does not establish validity, and hardened runtime requires inspect_signature. Adds hardening links throughout the documentation. The supplied diff also removes the advanced CodeQL workflow and configuration, along with snapshot-binding mismatch guidance. * fix(native): validate declared payloads and dynamic tables before hardening rows Run the shared range checks for ELF, read imports from the dynamic tables rather than section metadata, and keep an unresolved symbol count apart from an absent table. Check every Mach-O command before building rows and retain only the offsets the rows need. Make the verifier's readelf output wide, check the emitted format before parsing Mach-O, and place the sources before the libraries in the link. * fix(native): share Mach-O segment admission with hardening reads A segment with a section count its cmdsize cannot hold passed the hardening reader and could enable restrict_segment. Move the size, section count and file range checks to a shared admission that readMachoImage and the hardening reader both use, and pin the ELF load-size case with a regression test. * fix(hardening): reject Mach-O section payloads past the slice and empty ELF interpreters Segment admission never checked each section's payload range, so a file-backed section past the slice still produced rows. Decode sections with the section header owner and mark the slice malformed when a payload leaves it; zero-fill and empty sections own no file bytes and are exempt. admitInterp accepted a NUL first byte in a longer extent, which counted an empty interpreter as PIE evidence. It now requires a nonempty path. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KuWHGvzJkrhCqjtEHUwqyH * fix(native): read CFG instrumentation from decoded GuardFlags Use the IMAGE_GUARD_CF_INSTRUMENTED flag that guardFlagRecord already decodes instead of masking the raw GuardFlags word a second time. * fix(native): reject ELF table spans a second PT_LOAD remaps The hardening reader mapped DT_STRTAB, DT_SYMTAB and hash tables through the one PT_LOAD containing the table's first address. A second PT_LOAD starting inside the table could map the rest of it from other file bytes and the reader still reported parsed import evidence. Cap each mapping at the next PT_LOAD that starts inside it, reject a requested range that crosses that boundary, and stop hash reads at the same limit, matching the conflicting-mapping refusal in readElfSymbols. * fix(native): dedupe ELF note tables only on shared boundaries The hardening reader dropped any note table whose bytes another table already covered. A covering SHT_NOTE can hold a non-GNU note whose descriptor is itself a complete GNU property note, while PT_NOTE names that inner note directly. Walking only the outer stream missed the GNU marker and reported CET disabled. Drop an alias only when it starts and ends on boundaries of admitted tables, which are note boundaries of the walked streams. Any other covered alias leaves the feature rows unknown, as a partial overlap already does. * fix(native): admit every Mach-O symbol record after a canary match The Mach-O stack protector scan returned as soon as it found an undefined ___stack_chk_fail, so a later undefined symbol whose n_strx lay outside the string table was never checked. The same damaged table parsed or failed as malformed depending only on record order. Keep the match and finish the bounded record walk. Records after the match are only checked against the string table bounds, so their names are not read or charged to the scan budget. The ELF reader already admits its whole symbol table before matching names. * fix(native): accept ELF load aliases with the same file translation The hardening reader treated every PT_LOAD that starts inside a table, or that also contains the table's address, as a conflicting mapping. A load with the same address-to-file translation names the same file bytes, so tables it overlaps still have one interpretation, and the canonical ElfLoadMap already merges such spans. Treat equivalent loads as one interpretation. A load with a different translation, or the zero-filled tail of an equivalent load, still ends the usable range, so a remapped table is still rejected. * fix(native): keep same-span ELF note tables with different alignments unknown A section and a program header that share endpoints were treated as one note stream even when their effective note alignments differed. Walking the same bytes at 4 and 8 can frame different notes, so dropping the second table could hide a GNU property word and report CET or BTI as disabled. Require matching effective alignment at both endpoints, and no alignment change inside the covered span, before treating a table as an alias. Otherwise mark the feature rows unknown. The fixture's .note.gnu.property section now declares the class's note alignment, as toolchains emit it. * refactor(native): read LC_SYMTAB through the shared fixed-word decoder Move the Mach-O fixed uint32 command layouts out of MachoCommandNames into domain/apple/machoLoadCommands so there is one owner of those offsets. MachoCommandNames and the hardening reader now both decode through it; the hardening reader keeps its own bounds and import policy. * fix(native): skip Mach-O common definitions in canary imports A common definition sets N_UNDF|N_EXT like an import but stores its allocation size in n_value. An object holding only `int __stack_chk_fail;` therefore reported stack_protector: enabled. Require a zero n_value before an undefined external counts as an import, for both nlist widths. * refactor(native): read linkedit data commands through the shared fixed-word decoder readMachoLinkeditDataCommand reproduced the dataoff/datasize offsets that FIXED_WORD_FIELDS already owns. Take the command and decode through decodeMachoFixedWordFields, as readMachoSymtabCommand does, keeping the truncation and endianness behavior. * fix(native): skip empty SHT_NOTE sections in ELF hardening A zero-sized SHT_NOTE owns no bytes, so the section directory marks it not file-backed and the hardening reader rejected the whole image as malformed, while readElfImage accepted the same bytes. Skip empty note sections before the file-backing check; they have nothing to walk. * fix(scripts): run hardening verifier commands through the shared owner The binary hardening verifier started its probes and compiler drivers with raw spawnSync, which bypassed the src/process/ supervision that AGENTS.md requires. Every launch now goes through createVerifierCommands, and the temporary root is removed only after the owner closes cleanly. * fix(scripts): clean up hardening verifier commands on Ctrl-C SIGINT or SIGTERM ended Node before withVerifierCleanup ran, so detached compiler trees and the temporary root could outlive the verifier. The verifier now turns those signals into an abort that every owned command receives, so cleanup closes the owner and removes the root before exit. * fix(scripts): fail the hardening verifier when a signal lands outside a command Only the owned commands read the interruption signal, so a SIGINT or SIGTERM during the final cleanup or between commands was recorded and then dropped, and the verifier exited 0. After cleanup settles, the verifier now throws the interruption reason. A failure the operation or its cleanup already raised still leaves first and is not replaced. * fix(native): fail Mach-O slices with a malformed encryption command The hardening reader turned every malformed status from the shared encryption reader into an unknown `encrypted` row, so a short LC_ENCRYPTION_INFO_64 or an encrypted range past the slice still left the slice parsed with a full report. Only two conflicting encryption commands stay an unknown row now. Any other encryption defect fails the slice like other structural command failures. * fix(native): ignore STB_LOCAL undefined ELF symbols as imports A local undefined __stack_chk_fail or __memcpy_chk is never resolved against another object, so it does not establish an external import. Skip STB_LOCAL bindings when reading protector signs, and give the fixture's positive symbols STB_GLOBAL binding. --------- Co-authored-by: Matt Van Horn <455140+mvanhorn@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3.8 KiB
Binary hardening
Use inspect_binary_hardening to read compile-time and link-time hardening from
an explicit local ELF, PE, or Mach-O file. No disassembler, pwntools install, or
target execution is required. Universal Mach-O files return one image per slice.
rea inspect-binary-hardening /absolute/path/to/program --json
rea inspect-binary-hardening /absolute/path/to/program --max-file-bytes 1048576 --json
MCP accepts { "path": "/absolute/path/to/program" }. CLI paths may be relative
to the current directory; MCP paths must be absolute.
Each image has one row per property: property, state, confidence, basis,
location, note, and next_probe. States are enabled, disabled,
partial, unknown, and not_applicable. confidence is observed for a
single header or import, and derived when the state combines several fields,
such as ELF PIE or full RELRO. An image's architecture is its CPU family, or
null when REA has no family for it. machine and slice.architecture keep the
exact identity, such as arm64e.
ELF rows cover PIE (ET_DYN with PT_INTERP or DF_1_PIE), NX (PT_GNU_STACK;
a missing header is unknown and the architecture default is only noted), RELRO
(PT_GNU_RELRO plus BIND_NOW), stack protector and FORTIFY undefined dynamic
imports, CET and AArch64 BTI/PAC GNU property notes, DT_RPATH, DT_RUNPATH, and
whether a SHT_SYMTAB section is present. Only an undefined dynamic import
counts. Imports come from the table DT_SYMTAB declares. A SHT_DYNSYM section
only supplies the symbol count when DT_HASH and DT_GNU_HASH leave it open,
and only if it names the same symbol and string tables. Without that count the
import rows are unknown and give the reason. A missing __stack_chk_fail or fortify import is unknown. That
absence does not establish that the protection was left out of a static or
stripped build. A present import is a sign that some code uses the protection,
not proof that all code does. NX, RELRO, DT_RPATH, and DT_RUNPATH are
not_applicable when e_type is neither ET_EXEC nor ET_DYN, and unknown
for a linked image with no readable program headers.
PE rows read DllCharacteristics for dynamic base, high-entropy VA, NX
compatibility, force integrity, no SEH, and guard CF. cfg_instrumented is the
load-config GuardFlags linker claim when Size covers that field. An
unreadable load configuration, including a TLS failure in that parser, leaves
only cfg_instrumented unknown. Authenticode and debug rows report certificate
and debug directory presence, not signature validity or debug content. A
directory whose address and size disagree is unknown.
Mach-O rows read MH_PIE, MH_ALLOW_STACK_EXECUTION, MH_NO_HEAP_EXECUTION,
an __RESTRICT segment, LC_CODE_SIGNATURE presence, encryption from the
existing encryption reader, the arm64e subtype, and a stack-protector import.
hardened_runtime is unknown with next_probe inspect_signature.
CodeDirectory flags stay with that tool.
The report states presence of build-time features. It does not state
exploitability. inspect_binary_layout is unchanged.
The default read budget is 64 MiB (max_file_bytes, ceiling 512 MiB). A changed
file is refused. A malformed header, a Mach-O segment or encryption command that fails admission, or a program, section,
or segment payload declared outside the file returns no partial report, except that one bad slice in a universal Mach-O leaves the other slices. A symbol table or
symbol name over its budget leaves the import rows unknown and keeps the
header rows. A GNU property note over its budget, or a compressed note section
that may hold one, leaves the CET and BTI/PAC rows unknown and keeps the header
rows. A dynamic-table budget still fails the ELF report. The image is never
executed.