Hybrid Pruning: Towards Precise Pointer and Taint Analysis

Dipanjan Das, Priyanka Bose, Aravind Machiry, Sebastiano Mariani, Yan Shoshitaishvili, Giovanni Vigna, Christopher Kruegel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Pointer and taint analyses are the building blocks for several other static analysis techniques. Unfortunately, these techniques frequently sacrifice precision in favor of scalability by over-approximating program behaviors. Scaling these analyses to real-world codebases written in memory-unsafe languages while retaining precision under the constraint of practical time and resource budgets is an open problem. In this paper, we present a novel technique called hybrid pruning, where we inject the information collected from a program’s dynamic trace, which is accurate by its very nature, into a static pointer or taint analysis system to enhance its precision. We also tackle the challenge of combining static and dynamic analyses, which operate in two different analysis domains, in order to make the interleaving possible. Finally, we show the usefulness of our approach by reducing the false positives emitted by a static vulnerability detector that consumes the improved points-to and taint information. On our dataset of 12 CGC and 8 real-world applications, our hybrid approach cuts down the warnings up to 21 % over vanilla static analysis, while reporting 19 out of 20 bugs in total.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationDetection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment - 19th International Conference, DIMVA 2022, Proceedings
EditorsLorenzo Cavallaro, Daniel Gruss, Giancarlo Pellegrino, Giorgio Giacinto
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages1-22
Number of pages22
ISBN (Print)9783031094835
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Event19th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2022 - Cagliari, Italy
Duration: Jun 29 2022Jul 1 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13358 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference19th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2022
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityCagliari
Period6/29/227/1/22

Keywords

  • Pointer analysis
  • Static vulnerability detection
  • Taint analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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