This is just good enough to cause no performance regressions and pass
the virtual-dispatch tests we have for `security.TaintTracking`. In
particular, it fixes the tests for `UncontrolledProcessOperation.ql`
when enabling `DefaultTaintTracking.qll`.
The data flow library conflates pointers and their objects in some
places but not others. For example, a member function call `x.f()` will
cause flow from `x` of type `T` to `this` of type `T*` inside `f`. It
might be ideal to avoid that conflation, but that's not realistic
without using the IR.
We've had good experience in the taint tracking library with conflating
pointers and objects, and it improves results for field flow, so perhaps
it's time to try it out for all data flow.
These partial defs don't do any harm, but they could hurt performance.
In typical C++ snapshots, between 5% and 20% of all calls are to `const`
functions.
g++ doesn't support this code:
sorry, unimplemented: non-trivial designated initializers not supported
twoIntFields sSwapped = { .m2 = source(), .m1 = 0 };
so we need to build it in clang mode.
Data flow probably never worked when a variable declared in a
`ConditionDeclExpr` was modeled with `BlockVar`. That combination did
not come up in testing before the last commit.
The data flow library conflates pointers and objects enough for the
`definitionByReference` predicate to be too strict in some cases. It was
too permissive in other cases that are now (or will be) handled better
by field flow.
See also the change note entry.
This commit removes fields from the responsibilities of `FlowVar.qll`.
The treatment of fields in that file was slow and imprecise.
It then adds another copy of the shared global data flow library, used
only to find local field flow, and it exposes that local field flow
through `localFlow` and `localFlowStep`.
This has a performance cost. It adds two cached stages to any query that
uses `localFlow`: the stage from `DataFlowImplCommon`, which is shared
with all queries that use global data flow, and a new stage just for
`localFlowStep`.
To compensate for the lack of field flow, the taint tracking library has
previously considered taint to flow from fields to their containing
structs and back again from the structs to any of their fields. This
leads to false flow between unrelated fields and is not needed now that
we have proper flow through fields.
Because `ConstructorFieldInit` (member initializer lists) are not part
of the control flow graph, there was no data flow from the initial value
of parameters to their uses in member initializers. This commit adds the
necessary flow under the assumption that parameters are not overwritten
in member initializers.
This allows a member initializer list to be seen as a sequence of field
assignments. For example, the constructor
C() : a(taint()) { }
now has data flow similar to
C() { this.a = taint(); }
