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json/tests/fuzzing.md
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Niels Lohmann 1e101ecac1 Add BON8 support (#2998)
* Add BON8 support

Add to_bon8/from_bon8 and input_format_t::bon8 for BON8, a binary format
that uses the byte values that cannot begin a UTF-8 character as type
markers, so strings need no length prefix. It is the most compact of the
supported binary formats on the benchmark files.

The reader is non-recursive like the other binary readers. A string ends
at the first byte that cannot continue it, so the reader hands the one or
two bytes it reads past a string back to the value that follows. The
writer produces the canonical representation of the specification, except
for NFC normalization; its output is identical to that of the reference
implementation (HikoGUI) on all files of the test data.

The round-trip tests need the .bon8 files of json_test_data 3.2.0.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Address review comments

- Reuse detail::validate_one_utf8 to check strings in to_bon8; the error
  now names the first byte of the invalid sequence.
- Document that to_bon8 leaves bytes in the output adapter on an
  exception, and that string_open is only an output of write_bon8_marker.
- Explain why the pushback buffer of the BON8 reader cannot overflow.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Select the BON8 float prefix by type

get_bon8_float_prefix only depends on the type of its argument, so make
the type a template parameter instead of passing an unused value.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Rename a test variable that Flawfinder mistakes for read()

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Fix the BON8 CI failures

- compare the float in write_bon8_float with number_float_t constants,
  so GCC does not warn about a float-to-double conversion
- mark check_bon8_utf8's context as used when exceptions are disabled
- choose the compact float prefix in a helper rather than with nested
  conditional operators (clang-tidy)
- use auto for the cast in the BON8 integer reader (clang-tidy)
- write the int32 minimum test values as long long literals (MSVC C4146)

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Amalgamate

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Read BON8 strings in bulk from contiguous input

- copy the valid UTF-8 of a string in one step when the input is
  contiguous (twitter.json is read in 1.68 instead of 2.52 ms,
  jeopardy.json in 196 instead of 297 ms, close to CBOR and MessagePack)
- share the new valid_utf8_prefix() with the writer's UTF-8 check, which
  now skips ASCII 8 bytes at a time
- let the fuzzer check that contiguous and stream input give the same
  value or error, and test both paths in the unit tests
- clarify that a second 0xFF after a string is an empty string

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Link the BON8 functions from the other binary format pages

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Name the bulk scan flag after the input, not BON8

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Read BSON keys in bulk from contiguous input

BSON keys (and array indices) are C-style strings, which were read byte
by byte. For contiguous input they are now read up to their \x00-byte in
one step, using the same bulk_scan flag as BON8 strings: twitter.json is
read in 1.46 instead of 2.01 ms, citm_catalog.json in 2.93 instead of
3.33 ms, jeopardy.json in 182 instead of 207 ms. canada.json, whose keys
are almost all one-digit array indices, takes 2 % longer.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Fix the BON8 CI failures of the bulk-read tests

- skip the contiguous-versus-stream tests of BON8 strings and BSON keys
  when exceptions are disabled: they catch the parse errors of invalid
  input, and without exceptions the library aborts instead
- use static_cast for the int64 test value (google-readability-casting)

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Move the explicit basic_json instantiation into its own test file

Linking test-regression3_cpp20 with clang and MinGW failed with
"relocation truncated to fit: IMAGE_REL_AMD64_REL32 against `.rdata'",
as test-regression2 did before #5511. The explicit instantiation of
basic_json<> for #4825 compiles every member function, including the
BON8 reader and writer, into that object, and it was already close to
the limit (2,226,104 bytes on develop, 2,234,960 with BON8; clang -O1,
C++20).

Give the instantiation a file of its own: unit-regression3 is now
1,594,736 bytes and unit-explicit_instantiation 1,095,064. The new file
mentions JSON_HAS_CPP_17 and JSON_HAS_CPP_20 so it keeps being built
for the C++17 standard the regression was about.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Convert the bytes of the BON8 test strings explicitly

The str() helper constructed a std::string from a byte range, which
converts each unsigned char implicitly; -fsanitize=integer reports that
for bytes of 0x80 and above (ci_test_clang_sanitizer).

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
2026-09-27 16:56:21 +02:00

4.9 KiB

Fuzz testing

Each parser of the library (JSON, BJData, BON8, BSON, CBOR, MessagePack, and UBJSON) can be fuzz tested. Currently, libFuzzer and afl++ are supported.

Corpus creation

For most effective fuzzing, a corpus should be provided. A corpus is a directory with some simple input files that cover several features of the parser and is hence a good starting point for mutations.

TEST_DATA_VERSION=3.2.0
wget https://github.com/nlohmann/json_test_data/archive/refs/tags/v$TEST_DATA_VERSION.zip
unzip v$TEST_DATA_VERSION.zip
rm v$TEST_DATA_VERSION.zip
for FORMAT in json bjdata bon8 bson cbor msgpack ubjson
do
  rm -fr corpus_$FORMAT
  mkdir corpus_$FORMAT
  find json_test_data-$TEST_DATA_VERSION -size -5k -name "*.$FORMAT" -exec cp "{}" "corpus_$FORMAT" \;
done
rm -fr json_test_data-$TEST_DATA_VERSION

The generated corpus can be used with both libFuzzer and afl++. The remainder of this documentation assumes the corpus directories have been created in the tests directory.

libFuzzer

To use libFuzzer, you need to pass -fsanitize=fuzzer as FUZZER_ENGINE. In the tests directory, call

make fuzzers FUZZER_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer"

This creates a fuzz tester binary for each parser that supports these command line options.

In case your default compiler is not a Clang compiler that includes libFuzzer (Clang 6.0 or later), you need to set the CXX variable accordingly. Note the compiler provided by Xcode (AppleClang) does not contain libFuzzer. Please install Clang via Homebrew calling brew install llvm and add CXX=$(brew --prefix llvm)/bin/clang to the make call:

make fuzzers FUZZER_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer" CXX=$(brew --prefix llvm)/bin/clang

Then pass the corpus directory as command-line argument (assuming it is located in tests):

./parse_cbor_fuzzer corpus_cbor

The fuzzer should be able to run indefinitely without crashing. In case of a crash, the tested input is dumped into a file starting with crash-.

afl++

To use afl++, you need to pass -fsanitize=fuzzer as FUZZER_ENGINE. It will be replaced by a libAFLDriver.a to re-use the same code written for libFuzzer with afl++. Furthermore, set afl-clang-fast++ as compiler.

CXX=afl-clang-fast++ make fuzzers FUZZER_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer" 

Then the fuzzer is called like this in the tests directory:

afl-fuzz -i corpus_cbor -o out  -- ./parse_cbor_fuzzer 

The fuzzer should be able to run indefinitely without crashing. In case of a crash, the tested input is written to the directory out.

OSS-Fuzz

The library is further fuzz-tested 24/7 by Google's OSS-Fuzz project. It uses the same fuzzers target as above and also relies on the FUZZER_ENGINE variable. See the used build script for more information.

In case the build at OSS-Fuzz fails, an issue will be created automatically.

Handling OSS-Fuzz reports

OSS-Fuzz files the crashes it finds in its own issue tracker, not on GitHub. So that each report can be traced to the change that fixed it, and each fix to the report it answers, fixes follow these conventions:

  • Reference the OSS-Fuzz issue in the pull request, next to any GitHub issue it closes, as OSS-Fuzz: <id> (for example, OSS-Fuzz: 563659413), and in the commit message. The ID alone does not disclose the crash. If the report was triaged into a GitHub issue, link the OSS-Fuzz issue there too.
  • Turn the reproducer into a unit test. Download the testcase from the OSS-Fuzz report, reduce it if possible, and add it as a regression test to the unit test of the affected format (e.g., tests/src/unit-bjdata.cpp), with a comment naming the OSS-Fuzz issue. This way the input is checked by every CI run rather than only by OSS-Fuzz, and it stays covered even if OSS-Fuzz later closes the report as not reproducible.
  • Keep the fuzzer drivers and the unit tests in sync. The round-trip checks of the UBJSON and BJData drivers are also run on a fixed corpus in the unit tests (see tests/src/round_trip_corpus.hpp and the "round-trip invariants" test cases), so a regression shows up in CI first. When a driver's checks change, change the unit tests with them.
  • Record in the report whether the bug shipped. OSS-Fuzz asks whether a crash was a short-lived regression or affects a released version; answer it when the fix is merged, as it decides whether the fix needs a release note or a security advisory (see the security policy).

After the fix is merged, OSS-Fuzz re-runs the reproducer on its next build and marks the report as verified and closed. If it does not, the fix is incomplete.