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Dynamic taint tracking, a technique that traces relationships between values as a program executes, has been used to support a variety of software engineering tasks. Some taint tracking systems only consider data flows and ignore control flows. As a result, relationships between some values are not reflected by the analysis. Many applications of taint tracking either benefit from or rely on these relationships being traced, but past works have found that tracking control flows resulted in over-tainting, dramatically reducing the precision of the taint tracking system. In this article, we introduce Conflux, alternative semantics for propagating taint tags along control flows. Conflux aims to reduce over-tainting by decreasing the scope of control flows and providing a heuristic for reducing loop-related over-tainting. We created a Java implementation of Conflux and performed a case study exploring the effect of Conflux on a concrete application of taint tracking, automated debugging. In addition to this case study, we evaluated Conflux’s accuracy using a novel benchmark consisting of popular, real-world programs. We compared Conflux against existing taint propagation policies, including a state-of-the-art approach for reducing control-flow-related over-tainting, finding that Conflux had the highest F1 score on 43 out of the 48 total tests.

Thu 13 Oct

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

13:30 - 15:30
Technical Session 27 - Dynamic and Concolic AnalysisResearch Papers / NIER Track / Journal-first Papers at Banquet A
Chair(s): ThanhVu Nguyen George Mason University
13:30
20m
Research paper
LISSA: Lazy Initialization with Specialized Solver Aid
Research Papers
Juan Manuel Copia IMDEA Software Institute; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Pablo Ponzio Dept. of Computer Science FCEFQyN, University of Rio Cuarto, Nazareno Aguirre University of Rio Cuarto and CONICET, Argentina, Alessandra Gorla IMDEA Software Institute, Marcelo F. Frias Dept. of Software Engineering Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires
13:50
10m
Vision and Emerging Results
Outcome-Preserving Input Reduction for Scientific Data Analysis Workflows
NIER Track
Anh Duc Vu Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Timo Kehrer University of Bern, Christos Tsigkanos University of Bern, Switzerland
Pre-print
14:00
20m
Research paper
SymFusion: Hybrid Instrumentation for Concolic Execution
Research Papers
Emilio Coppa Sapienza University of Rome, Heng Yin UC Riverside, Camil Demetrescu Sapienza University Rome
Pre-print
14:20
20m
Research paper
Scalable Sampling of Highly-Configurable Systems: Generating Random Instances of the Linux Kernel
Research Papers
David Fernandez-Amoros UNED, Ruben Heradio UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia), Christoph Mayr-Dorn JOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITY LINZ, Alexander Egyed Johannes Kepler University Linz
14:40
20m
Paper
A Practical Approach for Dynamic Taint Tracking with Control-Flow RelationshipsVirtual
Journal-first Papers
Katherine Hough , Jonathan Bell Northeastern University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
15:00
20m
Research paper
Prioritized Constraint-Aided Dynamic Partial-Order ReductionVirtual
Research Papers
Jie Su Xidian University, Cong Tian Xidian University, Zuchao Yang Xidian University, Jiyu Yang Xidian University, Bin Yu Xidian University, Zhenhua Duan Xidian University