PREVAIL

a Polynomial-Runtime EBPF Verifier using an Abstract Interpretation Layer

A new eBPF verifier.

The version discussed in the PLDI paper is available here.

Getting Started

Dependencies from vanilla Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential git cmake libboost-dev libyaml-cpp-dev
sudo apt install libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev

Dependencies from vanilla Windows

• Install git
• Install Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 and choose the "C++ build tools" workload (Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 has support for CMake Version 3.25).
• Install nuget.exe

Installation

Clone:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/vbpf/ebpf-verifier.git
cd ebpf-verifier

Make on Ubuntu:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

Make on Windows (which uses a multi-configuration generator):

cmake -B build
cmake --build build --config Release

Running with Docker

Build and run:

docker build -t verifier .
docker run -it verifier ebpf-samples/cilium/bpf_lxc.o 2/1
1,0.009812,4132
# To run the Linux verifier you'll need a privileged container:
docker run --privileged -it verifier ebpf-samples/linux/cpustat_kern.o --domain=linux

Example:

ebpf-verifier$ ./check ebpf-samples/cilium/bpf_lxc.o 2/1
1,0.008288,4064

The output is three comma-separated values:

• 1 or 0, for "pass" and "fail" respectively
• The runtime of the fixpoint algorithm (in seconds)
• The peak memory consumption, in kb, as reflected by the resident-set size (rss)

Usage:

A new eBPF verifier
Usage: ./check [OPTIONS] path [section]

Positionals:
  path FILE REQUIRED          Elf file to analyze
  section SECTION             Section to analyze

Options:
  -h,--help                   Print this help message and exit
  -l                          List sections
  -d,--dom,--domain DOMAIN:{cfg,linux,stats,zoneCrab}
                              Abstract domain
  --termination               Verify termination
  --assume-assert             Assume assertions
  -i                          Print invariants
  -f                          Print verifier's failure logs
  -s                          Apply additional checks that would cause runtime failures
  -v                          Print both invariants and failures
  --no-division-by-zero       Do not allow division by zero
  --no-simplify               Do not simplify
  --line-info                 Print line information
  --asm FILE                  Print disassembly to FILE
  --dot FILE                  Export control-flow graph to dot FILE

You can use @headers as the path to instead just show the output field headers.

A standard alternative to the --asm flag is llvm-objdump -S FILE.

The cfg can be viewed using dot and the standard PDF viewer:

sudo apt install graphviz
./check ebpf-samples/cilium/bpf_lxc.o 2/1 --dot cfg.dot
dot -Tpdf cfg.dot > cfg.pdf

Testing the Linux verifier

To run the Linux verifier, you must use sudo:

sudo ./check ebpf-samples/linux/cpustat_kern.o tracepoint/power/cpu_idle --domain=linux