CQuATS is a management system that aims to collect heterogeneous code safety and security analysers/tools (primarily for 'C' code), bringing them together into a coherent, easy-to-use system. You can also think of it as an "automation-UI" kind of tool.
It's primarily targeted at 'C' developers on Linux, with C++ code being supported too, to some extent. Essentially, CQuATS allows a developer to easily setup code analysis, etc tools to run over his/her code-base and/or binaries. Categories it covers:
- Static Analysers
- Dynamic Analysers
- Profilers
- Security
A menu system (based on Kconfig) makes it very easy for a developer to setup the system and have it run all tests / profiling / etc. When done, a detailed log contains all results.
License: GPLv2
The key philosophy behind CQuATS is simple: A very large proportion of security vulnerabilities - and hence, (technical) attacks - is rooted in the fact that the vulnerability is, at root, a software bug. Identifying and weeding out potential or hidden bugs, concerns and "code smells", is something that developers traditionally struggle with, especially given the complexity of large software projects / products. This tool is an attempt to address these concerns, and hopefully, make our software more robust, stable and immune to potential vulnerabilities/bugs.
CQuATS integrates a set of diverse tools into a coherent whole. The particular tools that currently integrate into the framework are documented in a Google sheet [1]. Please do refer to this sheet for details on which tools exactly are covered, and the current status.
Note: The githib page has a Wiki section; it currently contains the 'TODO' file (moved out of the code & into the wiki).
- Step 1.
Once installed (via git or download), invoke the 'menuconfig' script, which is essentially a thin wrapper over the 'make menuconfig' to configure and setup the CQuATS run. (FYI, the run produces the required configuration info in an ASCII text file here: kbuild/.config ).
CQuATS has a few dependencies; ensure these packages/utils are installed on your box:
- make
- spatch
- xterm
- perf
- Step 2.
Invoke the 'run_cquats' script. The actual work is carried out here. An 'Execution Matrix' - the tasks to be carried out (CSV) - are displayed: An example run:
...
Execution Matrix
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Space, Type, Suite, ToolName, Description, Run-Command +
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1. user-land, static,-na- ,coccinelle,Coccinelle static analyser,V=1 /home/kaiwan/cquats/cquats_fc26/tools/static/coccinelle/coccichk /home/kaiwan/scratchpad/source_trees/bash-4.4
2. user-land,dynamic,valgrind,memcheck ,Valgrind memcheck dynamic analyser,valgrind --tool=memcheck --trace-children=yes --time-stamp=yes --errors-for-leak-kinds=definite ps -a
3. user-land,dynamic profiling,Perf ,perf ,Perf dynamic CPU profiler,/home/kaiwan/cquats/cquats_fc26/.scratch_cquats/.cquats.perf.sh
4. user-land, static,-na- ,flawfinder,Flawfinder security static analyser,flawfinder --context --minlevel=2 --falsepositive /home/kaiwan/scratchpad/source_trees/bash-4.4
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
[...]
-
The run_cquats script now parses and "runs" the commands as specified via the 'execution matrix', one by one.
-
Step 3.
All output (as well as stderr) is auto-redirected to a log file (which is ./log_cquats.txt by default); it contains all message with timestamps, etc as far as possible. Examine the log file (log_cquats.txt) carefully. Also, for some cases (like perf), there might be reports generated; you will find them under the 'reports' folder.
Ref: [1] http://bit.ly/CQuATS
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