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Automating Software Analysis at Large Scale

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Book cover Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science (MEMICS 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8934))

Abstract

Actual software in use today is not known to follow any uniform normal distribution, whether syntactically—in the language of all programs described by the grammar of a given programming language, or semantically—for example, in the set of reachable states. Hence claims deduced from any given set of benchmarks need not extend to real-world software systems.

When building software analysis tools, this affects all aspects of tool construction: starting from language front ends not being able to parse and process real-world programs, over inappropriate assumptions about (non-)scalability, to failing to meet actual needs of software developers.

To narrow the gap between real-world software demands and software analysis tool construction, an experiment using the Debian Linux distribution has been set up. The Debian distribution presently comprises of more than \(22000\) source software packages. Focussing on C source code, more than \(400\) million lines of code are automatically analysed in this experiment, resulting in a number of improvements in analysis tools on the one hand, but also more than \(700\) public bug reports to date.

Supported by EPSRC/K032011/1: Compositional Security Analysis for Binaries.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Daniel Kroening

  2. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Michael Tautschnig

Authors
  1. Daniel Kroening
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  2. Michael Tautschnig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Tautschnig .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Hliněný

  2. Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic

    Zdeněk Dvořák

  3. Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jiří Jaroš

  4. Charles University, Praha, Czech Republic

    Jan Kofroň

  5. Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jan Kořenek

  6. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Matula

  7. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Karel Pala

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Kroening, D., Tautschnig, M. (2014). Automating Software Analysis at Large Scale. In: Hliněný, P., et al. Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science. MEMICS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8934. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14896-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14896-0_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14895-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14896-0

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