Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis

[b4yuan]

Summary

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of this repository.

What is CodeQL

CodeQL is a static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities. It is primarily intra-function but does provide some support for inter-function analysis. By integrating CodeQL into a GitHub Actions workflow, it can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation (https://codeql.github.com/ and https://codeql.github.com/docs/).

What this PR does

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that

• Runs on every pull request (functionality to run on every push to main branches is included as a comment for convenience).
• Runs daily.
• Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
• Does not display results for git submodules, focusing only on our own codebase.

Validation

To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Using the workflow results

If this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be automatically run on every push to the main branch and on every pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, follow these steps:

1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Is this a good idea?

We are researchers at Purdue University in the USA. We are studying the potential benefits and costs of using CodeQL on open-source repositories of embedded software.

We wrote up a report of our findings so far. The TL;DR is “CodeQL outperforms the other freely-available static analysis tools, with fairly low false positive rates and lots of real defects”. You can read about the report here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.00205

Review of engineering hazards

License: see the license at https://github.com/github/codeql-cli-binaries/blob/main/LICENSE.md:

Here's what you may also do with the Software, but only with an Open Source Codebase and subject to the License Restrictions provisions below:

Perform analysis on the Open Source Codebase.

If the Open Source Codebase is hosted and maintained on GitHub.com, generate CodeQL databases for or during automated analysis, CI, or CD.

False positives: We find that around 20% of errors are false positives, but that these FPs are polarized and only a few rules contribute to most FPs. We find that the top rules contributing to FPs are: cpp/uninitialized-local, cpp/missing-check-scanf, cpp/suspicious-pointer-scaling, cpp/unbounded-write, cpp/constant-comparison, and cpp/inconsistent-null-check. Adding a filter to filter out certain rules that contribute to a high FP rate can be done simply in the workflow file.

[Mirppc]

I dont see how this is a benefit to the goal of the project.

Some time Later:

I see some very bad limitations. on linux the codebase seems to only support (per the documentation) ubuntu distro and X86_64. The Twin project is far more portable than that. So unless you can show that this pull request will not impede arm development, riscV and other architectures, as well as being an impediment for use on distros beyond Ubuntu i would call for a rejection of this pull request. This isnt the only security analysis software out there, if things get to the point of looking at such technology for integration into the twin project i am sure it can be done.

Heck it is already done when it is packaged and built on the OpenBuildService.

[b4yuan]

@Mirppc CodeQL is a static analysis tool; the vulnerabilities it finds are not OS-dependent. It will certainly not impede arm development as it analyzes source code.

[Mirppc]

@Mirppc CodeQL is a static analysis tool; the vulnerabilities it finds are not OS-dependent. It will certainly not impede arm development as it analyzes source code.

it does when it does not support some of the systems that twin does support. i seriously dont see the point of it's inclusion in twin.

I will put this bluntly. I build and use twin on system hardware that CodeQL does not support. It's inclusion in has a high chance of making it so that twin is no longer usable or build able on those systems. The added size (as space is a big concern in ram and storage) will also act as an impediment.

[Machiry]

@Mirppc We are adding a Workflow (a single YAML file) that will run CodeQL (a static analysis tool) on GitHub machines (hosted by GitHub) and does not add to the size of the repository (except for a single YAML file) or the resulting code base or target binary.

Your build will work as is. This does not affect the current system or the target binary in any way. All the existing build setup and scripts will just work fine as they were before.

The advantage of adding this pull request is that it will find any issues in the code before hand without affecting the existing project. You can think of this as a glorified linter.

As said in our initial text, we used CodeQL and found several critical issues in embedded software (Details:https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.00205). We believe adding this Workflow will provide value to the project by finding such issues before hand.

[b4yuan]

@Mirppc Pinging to check in on a possible followup to this PR?