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Running Pysa

This page walks you through the basics of running Pysa. If you want exercises to walk you through using Pysa's more advanced features, check out this tutorial.

Setup#

The setup requires the following 4 types of files.

  1. Source Code (*.py): This is your application's code.
  2. Taint Config (taint.config): This file declares sources, sinks, features, and rules.
  3. Taint Models (.pysa): These files link together the information in your source code and taint.config. They tell Pysa where in our code there exist sources and sinks.
  4. Pysa Configuration (.pyre_configuration): Parts of this file are critical to using Pysa. source_directories tells Pysa the directory containing the source code you want to analyze. taint_models_path tells Pysa where to find the config and model files.

Example#

Let's look at a simple taint analysis example. To follow along, create a directory static_analysis_example and navigate to it. Paste the code snippets into the appropriately named files.

1. Source Code#

# static_analysis_example/source.py
import os
def get_image(url):    command = "wget -q https:{}".format(url)    return os.system(command)
def convert():    image_link = input("image link: ")    image = get_image(image_link)

Notice the following:

  • The input function is a taint source since it gets input directly from the user.
  • The os.system function is a taint sink, since we do not want user-controlled values to flow into it.
  • The return value of input is used as the URL for a wget call, which is executed by os.system. The wget can therefore be doing anything, out of the programmer's control.
  • This data flow should be identified as a potential security issue.

2. Taint Config#

# static_analysis_example/stubs/taint/taint.config
{  sources: [    {      name: "UserControlled",      comment: "use to annotate user input"    }  ],
  sinks: [    {      name: "RemoteCodeExecution",      comment: "use to annotate execution of code"    }  ],
  features: [],
  rules: [    {      name: "Possible shell injection",      code: 5001,      sources: [ "UserControlled" ],      sinks: [ "RemoteCodeExecution" ],      message_format: "Data from [{$sources}] source(s) may reach [{$sinks}] sink(s)"    }  ]}

This declares the valid sources and sinks that Pysa should recognize. We also tell Pysa that data flowing from a UserControlled source to a RemoteCodeExecution sink is a possible shell injection.

3. Taint Models#

# static_analysis_example/stubs/taint/general.pysa
# model for raw_inputdef input(__prompt) -> TaintSource[UserControlled]: ...
# model for os.systemdef os.system(command: TaintSink[RemoteCodeExecution]): ...

This file links together the information in source.py and taint.config. We use it to tell Pysa where in our code there exist sources and sinks.

4. Pysa Configuration#

# static_analysis_example/.pyre_configuration
{  "source_directories": ["."],  "taint_models_path": "stubs/taint"}

Pysa needs to know what directory to analyze, as well as where to find the config and model files.

Analysis#

Now let's run the static analysis:

[~/static_analysis_example] $ pyre analyze Æ› Fixpoint iterations: 2[  {    "line": 9,    "column": 22,    "path": "source.py",    "code": 5001,    "name": "Possible shell injection",    "description":      "Possible shell injection [5001]: Data from [UserControlled] source(s) may reach [RemoteCodeExecution] sink(s)",    "long_description":      "Possible shell injection [5001]: Data from [UserControlled] source(s) may reach [RemoteCodeExecution] sink(s)",    "concise_description":      "Possible shell injection [5001]: Data from [UserControlled] source(s) may reach [RemoteCodeExecution] sink(s)",    "define": "source.convert"  }]

Looking at the output, we see that pyre surfaces the tainted data flow that we expected.

Let's run it again and save the results:

[~/static_analysis_example] $ pyre analyze --save-results-to ./

The --save-results-to option will save more detailed results to ./taint-output.json.

Understanding the results#

See Static Analysis Post Processor.

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