TY - JOUR
T1 - ILEA
T2 - Inter-language analysis across Java and C
AU - Tan, Gang
AU - Morrisett, Greg
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2007/10
Y1 - 2007/10
N2 - Java bug finders perform static analysis to find implementation mistakes that can lead to exploits and failures; Java compilers perform static analysis for optimization. If Java programs contain foreign function calls to C libraries, however, static analysis is forced to make either optimistic or pessimistic assumptions about the foreign function calls, since models of the C libraries are typically not available. We propose ILEA (stands for Inter-LanguagE Analysis), which is a framework that enables existing Java analyses to understand the behavior of C code. Our framework includes: (1) a novel specification language, which extends the Java Virtual Machine Language (JVML) with a few primitives that approximate the effects that the C code might have; (2) an automatic specification extractor, which builds models of the C code. Comparing to other possible specification languages, our language is expressive, yet facilitates construction of automatic specification extractors. Furthermore, because the specification language is based on the JVML, existing Java analyses can be easily migrated to utilize specifications in the language. We also demonstrate the utility of the specifications generated, by modifying an existing nonnull analysis to identify null-related bugs in Java applications that contain C libraries. Our preliminary experiments identified dozens of null-related bugs.
AB - Java bug finders perform static analysis to find implementation mistakes that can lead to exploits and failures; Java compilers perform static analysis for optimization. If Java programs contain foreign function calls to C libraries, however, static analysis is forced to make either optimistic or pessimistic assumptions about the foreign function calls, since models of the C libraries are typically not available. We propose ILEA (stands for Inter-LanguagE Analysis), which is a framework that enables existing Java analyses to understand the behavior of C code. Our framework includes: (1) a novel specification language, which extends the Java Virtual Machine Language (JVML) with a few primitives that approximate the effects that the C code might have; (2) an automatic specification extractor, which builds models of the C code. Comparing to other possible specification languages, our language is expressive, yet facilitates construction of automatic specification extractors. Furthermore, because the specification language is based on the JVML, existing Java analyses can be easily migrated to utilize specifications in the language. We also demonstrate the utility of the specifications generated, by modifying an existing nonnull analysis to identify null-related bugs in Java applications that contain C libraries. Our preliminary experiments identified dozens of null-related bugs.
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M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:67650077422
VL - 42
SP - 39
EP - 56
JO - ACM SIGPLAN Notices
JF - ACM SIGPLAN Notices
SN - 1523-2867
IS - 10
ER -