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+==============================================
+Control Flow Verification Tool Design Document
+==============================================
+
+.. contents::
+   :local:
+
+Objective
+=========
+
+This document provides an overview of an external tool to verify the protection
+mechanisms implemented by Clang's *Control Flow Integrity* (CFI) schemes
+(``-fsanitize=cfi``). This tool, provided a binary or DSO, should infer whether
+indirect control flow operations are protected by CFI, and should output these
+results in a human-readable form.
+
+This tool should also be added as part of Clang's continuous integration testing
+framework, where modifications to the compiler ensure that CFI protection
+schemes are still present in the final binary.
+
+Location
+========
+
+This tool will be present as a part of the LLVM toolchain, and will reside in
+the "/llvm/tools/llvm-cfi-verify" directory, relative to the LLVM trunk. It will
+be tested in two methods:
+
+- Unit tests to validate code sections, present in "/llvm/unittests/llvm-cfi-
+  verify".
+- Integration tests, present in "/llvm/tools/clang/test/LLVMCFIVerify". These
+  integration tests are part of clang as part of a continuous integration
+  framework, ensuring updates to the compiler that reduce CFI coverage on
+  indirect control flow instructions are identified.
+
+Background
+==========
+
+This tool will continuously validate that CFI directives are properly
+implemented around all indirect control flows by analysing the output machine
+code. The analysis of machine code is important as it ensures that any bugs
+present in linker or compiler do not subvert CFI protections in the final
+shipped binary.
+
+Unprotected indirect control flow instructions will be flagged for manual
+review. These unexpected control flows may simply have not been accounted for in
+the compiler implementation of CFI (e.g. indirect jumps to facilitate switch
+statements may not be fully protected).
+
+It may be possible in the future to extend this tool to flag unnecessary CFI
+directives (e.g. CFI directives around a static call to a non-polymorphic base
+type). This type of directive has no security implications, but may present
+performance impacts.
+
+Design Ideas
+============
+
+This tool will disassemble binaries and DSO's from their machine code format and
+analyse the disassembled machine code. The tool will inspect virtual calls and
+indirect function calls. This tool will also inspect indirect jumps, as inlined
+functions and jump tables should also be subject to CFI protections. Non-virtual
+calls (``-fsanitize=cfi-nvcall``) and cast checks (``-fsanitize=cfi-*cast*``)
+are not implemented due to a lack of information provided by the bytecode.
+
+The tool would operate by searching for indirect control flow instructions in
+the disassembly. A control flow graph would be generated from a small buffer of
+the instructions surrounding the 'target' control flow instruction. If the
+target instruction is branched-to, the fallthrough of the branch should be the
+CFI trap (on x86, this is a ``ud2`` instruction). If the target instruction is
+the fallthrough (i.e. immediately succeeds) of a conditional jump, the
+conditional jump target should be the CFI trap. If an indirect control flow
+instruction does not conform to one of these formats, the target will be noted
+as being CFI-unprotected.
+
+Note that in the second case outlined above (where the target instruction is the
+fallthrough of a conditional jump), if the target represents a vcall that takes
+arguments, these arguments may be pushed to the stack after the branch but
+before the target instruction. In these cases, a secondary 'spill graph' in
+constructed, to ensure the register argument used by the indirect jump/call is
+not spilled from the stack at any point in the interim period. If there are no
+spills that affect the target register, the target is marked as CFI-protected.
+
+Other Design Notes
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Only machine code sections that are marked as executable will be subject to this
+analysis. Non-executable sections do not require analysis as any execution
+present in these sections has already violated the control flow integrity.
+
+Suitable extensions may be made at a later date to include anaylsis for indirect
+control flow operations across DSO boundaries. Currently, these CFI features are
+only experimental with an unstable ABI, making them unsuitable for analysis.