Thesis
Using code instrumentation for debugging and constraint checking
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2009
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100631
Abstract
In software engineering the need for secure and high quality software has spurred intense research activity in the areas on software debugging, testing and constraint analysis. Code instrumentation is a common technique used to track application behaviour. The most popular usages for code instrumentation are software debugging, performance analysis, monitoring, distributed computing and aspect oriented programming. Typical instrumentation techniques provide information about code coverage during software testing activities. Current approaches make use of instrumentation by inserting additional code that monitors the behavior of a specific component. This thesis presents and applies two novel approaches that use an instrumentation technique: (1) A Runtime Debugging approach is aimed at detecting and resolving runtime faults in object-oriented code. The approach relies on bytecode instrumentation in order to provide code coverage for predefined unit tests. The results are analysed using Reverse Engineered techniques. The approach consists in merging both succesfull and faulty code execution traces and detecting the faults by analysing the differences in the output traces. (2) A Security Constraint Checking approach uses the notion of security consistency in designs. Byte code instrumentation techniques are used to provide code coverage for selected unit tests. Direct acyclic graphs are constructed from the output traces using reverse engineered techniques. The graphs contain object method calls in a similar manner to UML Sequence Diagrams. This approach uses the results of the instrumentation to check for consistency with design generated security constraints. Furthermore this approach analyzes these views for security inconsistencies, and generates a set of recommendations.
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Details
- Title
- Using code instrumentation for debugging and constraint checking
- Creators
- Filaret Ilas
- Contributors
- Orest Jacob Pilskalns (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525162201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis