flawfinder

Flawfinder is a simple program that examines C/C++ source code and reports possible security weaknesses (“flaws”) sorted by risk level. It’s very useful for quickly finding and removing at least some potential security problems before a program is widely released to the public.

Flawfinder works by using a built-in database of C/C++ functions with well-known problems, such as buffer overflow risks (e.g., strcpy(), strcat(), gets(), sprintf(), and the scanf() family), format string problems ([v][f]printf(), [v]snprintf(), and syslog()), race conditions (such as access(), chown(), chgrp(), chmod(), tmpfile(), tmpnam(), tempnam(), and mktemp()), potential shell metacharacter dangers (most of the exec() family, system(), popen()), and poor random number acquisition (such as random()). The good thing is that you don’t have to create this database - it comes with the tool. Flawfinder then takes the source code text, and matches the source code text against those names, while ignoring text inside comments and strings (except for flawfinder directives). Flawfinder also knows about gettext (a common library for internationalized programs), and will treat constant strings passed through gettext as though they were constant strings; this reduces the number of false hits in internationalized programs.

Flawfinder produces a list of “hits” (potential security flaws), sorted by risk; by default the riskiest hits are shown first. This risk level depends not only on the function, but on the values of the parameters of the function. For example, constant strings are often less risky than fully variable strings in many contexts. In some cases, flawfinder may be able to determine that the construct isn’t risky at all, reducing false positives.