Biblio

The complexity and scale of modern software programs often lead to overlooked programming errors and security vulnerabilities. Developers often rely on automatic tools, like static analysis tools, to look for bugs and vulnerabilities. Static analysis tools are widely used because they can understand nontrivial program behaviors, scale to millions of lines of code, and detect subtle bugs. However, they are known to generate an excess of false alarms which hinder their utilization as it is counterproductive for developers to go through a long list of reported issues, only to find a few true positives. One of the ways proposed to suppress false positives is to use machine learning to identify them. However, training machine learning models requires good quality labeled datasets. For this purpose, we developed D2A [3], a differential analysis based approach that uses the commit history of a code repository to create a labeled dataset of Infer [2] static analysis output.

Automatic Static Analysis Tools (ASATs) detect coding rule violations, including mistakes and bad practices that frequently occur during programming. While ASATs are widely used in both OSS and industry, the developers do not resolve more than 80% of the detected violations. As one of the reasons, most ASATs users do not customize their ASATs to their projects after installation; the ASATs with the default configuration report many rule violations that confuse developers. To reduce the ratio of such uninteresting warning messages, we propose a method to customize ASATs according to the product source code automatically. Our fundamental hypothesis is: A software project has interesting ASAT rules that are consistent over time. Our method takes source code as input and generates an ASAT configuration. In particular, the method enables optional (i.e., disabled by default) rules that detected no violations on the version because developers are likely to follow the rules in future development. Our method also disables violated rules because developers were unlikely to follow them. To evaluate the method, we applied our method to 643 versions of four JavaScript projects. The generated configurations for all four projects increased the ASAT precision. They also increased recall for two projects. The result shows that our method helps developers to focus on their attractive rule violations. Our implementation of the proposed method is available at https://github.com/devreplay/linter-maintainer

To increase and maintain web application security, developers could use some different methods, one of them is static code analysis. This method could find security vulnerabilities inside a source code without the need of running the program. It could also be automated by using tools, which considered more efficient than manual reviews. One specific method which is commonly used in static code analysis is taint analysis. Taint analysis usually utilizes source code modeling to prepare the code for analysis process to detect any untrusted data flows into security sensitives computations. While this kind of analysis could be very helpful, static code analysis tool for Laravel-based web application is still quite rare, despite its popularity. Therefore, in this research, we want to know how static code (taint) analysis could be utilized to detect security vulnerabilities and how the projects (Laravel-based) should be modeled in order to facilitate this analysis. We then developed a static analysis tool, which models the application’s source code using AST and dictionary to be used as the base of the taint analysis. The tool first parsed the route file of Laravel project to get a list of controller files. Each file in that list would be parsed in order to build the source code representation, before actually being analyzed using taint analysis method. The experiments was done using this tool shows that the tools (with taint analysis) could detect 13 security vulnerabilities from 6 Laravel-based projects with one False Negative. An ineffective sanitizer was the suspected cause of this False Negative. This also shows that proposed modeling technique could be helpful in facilitating taint analysis in Laravel-based projects. For future development and studies, this tool should be tested with more Laravel and even other framework based web application with a wider range of security vulnerabilities.

Business process mining of a large-scale project has many benefits such as finding vulnerabilities, improving processes, collecting data for data science, generating more clear and simple representation, etc. The general way of process mining is to turn event data such as application logs into insights and actions. Observing logs broad enough to depict the whole business logic scenario of a large project can become very costly due to difficult environment setup, unavailability of users, presence of not reachable or hardly reachable log statements, etc. Using static source code analysis to extract logs and arranging them perfect runtime execution order is a potential way to solve the problem and reduce the business process mining operation cost.

A source code static analysis became an industrial standard for program source code issues early detection. As one of requirements to such kind of analysis is high performance to provide response of automatic code checking tool as early as possible as far as such kind of tools integrates to Continuous testing and Integration systems. In this paper we propose a source code static analysis algorithm for solving performance issue of source code static analysis tool in general way.

Privacy protection is a vital part of information security. However, the excessive collections and uses of personal information have intensified in the area of mobile apps (applications). To comprehend the current situation of APP personal information security problem of APP, this paper uses a combined approach of static analysis technology, dynamic analysis technology, and manual review to detect and analyze the installed file of mobile apps. 40 mobile apps are detected as experimental samples. The results demonstrate that this combined approach can effectively detect various issues of personal information security problem in mobile apps. Statistics analysis of the experimental results demonstrate that mobile apps have outstanding problems in some aspects of personal information security such as privacy policy, permission application, information collection, data storage, etc.

Most programming languages support foreign language interoperation that allows developers to integrate multiple modules implemented in different languages into a single multilingual program. While utilizing various features from multiple languages expands expressivity, differences in language semantics require developers to understand the semantics of multiple languages and their inter-operation. Because current compilers do not support compile-time checking for interoperation, they do not help developers avoid in-teroperation bugs. Similarly, active research on static analysis and bug detection has been focusing on programs written in a single language. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to analyze multilingual programs statically. Unlike existing approaches that extend a static analyzer for a host language to support analysis of foreign function calls, our approach extracts semantic summaries from programs written in guest languages using a modular analysis technique, and performs a whole-program analysis with the extracted semantic summaries. To show practicality of our approach, we design and implement a static analyzer for multilingual programs, which analyzes JNI interoperation between Java and C. Our empirical evaluation shows that the analyzer is scalable in that it can construct call graphs for large programs that use JNI interoperation, and useful in that it found 74 genuine interoperation bugs in real-world Android JNI applications.

Software quality evolution and predictive models to support decisions about resource distribution in software quality assurance tasks are an important part of software engineering research. Recently, a fine-grained just-in-time defect prediction approach was proposed which has the ability to find bug-inducing files within changes instead of only complete changes. In this work, we utilize this approach and improve it in multiple places: data collection, labeling and features. We include manually validated issue types, an improved SZZ algorithm which discards comments, whitespaces and refactorings. Additionally, we include static source code metrics as well as static analysis warnings and warning density derived metrics as features. To assess whether we can save cost we incorporate a specialized defect prediction cost model. To evaluate our proposed improvements of the fine-grained just-in-time defect prediction approach we conduct a case study that encompasses 38 Java projects, 492,241 file changes in 73,598 commits and spans 15 years. We find that static source code metrics and static analysis warnings are correlated with bugs and that they can improve the quality and cost saving potential of just-in-time defect prediction models.

JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that is widely used in web applications. It is dynamic, loosely-typed and prototype-based with first-class functions. The dynamic nature of JavaScript makes it powerful and highly flexible in almost every way. However, this flexibility may result in what is known as code smells. Code smells are characteristics in the source code of a program that usually correspond to a deeper problem. They can lead to a variety of comprehension and maintenance issues and they may impact fault- and change-proneness of the application in the future. We present TAJSlint, an automated code smell detection tool for JavaScript programs that is based on static analysis. TAJSlint includes a set of 14 code smells, 9 of which are collected from various sources and 5 new smells we propose. We conduct an empirical evaluation of TAJSlint on a number of JavaScript projects and show that TAJSlint achieves an overall precision of 98% with a small number of false positives. We also study the prevalence of code smells in these projects.

The main goal of the system is to make it easier to standardize the style of program code written in C++. Based on the results of the review of existing static analyzers, in addition to the main requirements, requirements for the structure of stylistic rules were identified. Based on the results obtained, a system for static analysis of the C++ language has been developed, consisting of a set of modules. The system is implemented using the Python 3.7 programming language. HTML and CSS markup languages were used to generate html reports. To ensure that rules can be stored in the database, the MongoDB database management system and the pymongo driver module were used.

The major energy-hungry components in today's battery-operated embedded devices are mostly peripheral modules like LTE, WiFi, GPS, etc. Inefficient use of these modules causes energy hotspots, namely segments of the embedded software in which the module wastes energy. We study two such hotspots in the current paper, and provide the corresponding detection and removal algorithms based on static analysis techniques. The program code hotspots occur due to unnecessary releasing and re-acquiring of a module (which puts the module in power saving mode for a while) and misplaced acquiring of the module (which makes the module or processor to waste energy in idle mode). The detections are performed according to some relation between extreme (worst-case/best-case) execution times of some program segments and time/energy specifications of the module. The experimental results on our benchmarks show about 28 percent of energy reduction after the hotspot removals.

A modular static analysis decomposes a program's analysis into analyses of its parts, or components. An intercomponent analysis instructs an intra-component analysis to analyse each component independently of the others. Additional analyses are scheduled for newly discovered components, and for dependent components that need to account for newly discovered component information. Modular static analyses are scalable, can be tuned to a high precision, and support the analysis of programs that are highly dynamic, featuring e.g., higher-order functions or dynamically allocated processes.In this paper, we present the engineering aspects of MAF, a static analysis framework for implementing modular analyses for higher-order languages. For any such modular analysis, the framework provides a reusable inter-component analysis and it suffices to implement its intra-component analysis. The intracomponent analysis can be composed from several interdependent and reusable Scala traits. This design facilitates changing the analysed language, as well as the analysis precision with minimal effort. We illustrate the use of MAF through its instantiation for several different analyses of Scheme programs.

Data security has become an increasing concern with rampant data security regulation changes and the rampant deployment of technology. The necessity to lock down user data has never been greater. This research contributes to the secure software development of Android applications by identifying data processing concerns following the guidelines put forth by the Open Web Application Security Project “(OWASP) Mobile Top 10.” We found that 43.62% of the applications contained at least one security violation. We will be using an open source tool static analysis tool, MobSF, to review the security of 200 health related Android applications. The security of healthcare related applications should be given special attention, as they store and process highly sensitive information such as blood pressures, pulse rate, body photos, mental-state, OBGYN status, and sleep patterns. Partial automation techniques were utilized. This paper also suggests possible security remediations for the identified security concerns.

Many popular metrics used for the quantification of the quality or complexity of a codebase (e.g. cyclomatic complexity) were developed in the 1970s or 1980s when source code sizes were significantly smaller than they are today, and before a number of modern programming language features were introduced in different languages. Thus, the many thresholds that were suggested by researchers for deciding whether a given function is lacking in a given quality dimension need to be updated. In the pursuit of this goal, we study a number of open-source high-performance codes, each of which has been in development for more than 15 years—a characteristic which we take to imply good design to score them in terms of their source codes' quality and to relax the above-mentioned thresholds. First, we employ the LLVM/Clang compiler infrastructure and introduce a Clang AST tool to gather AST-based metrics, as well as an LLVM IR pass for those based on a source code's static call graph. Second, we perform statistical analysis to identify the reference thresholds of 22 code quality and callgraph-related metrics at a fine grained level.

Android Operating System becomes a major target for malicious attacks. Static analysis approach is widely used to detect malicious applications. Most of existing studies on static analysis frameworks are limited to certain features. This paper presents an Android Static Analysis Framework (ASAF) which models the overall static analysis phases and approaches for Android applications. ASAF can be implemented for different purposes including Android malicious apps detection. The proposed framework utilizes a parsing tool, Android Static Parse (ASParse) which is also introduced in this paper. Through the extendibility of the ASParse tool, future research studies can easily extend the parsed features and the parsed files to perform parsing based on their specific requirements and goals. Moreover, a case study is conducted to illustrate the implementation of the proposed ASAF.

WebAssembly is a new W3C standard, providing a portable target for compilation for various languages. All major browsers can run WebAssembly programs, and its use extends beyond the web: there is interest in compiling cross-platform desktop applications, server applications, IoT and embedded applications to WebAssembly because of the performance and security guarantees it aims to provide. Indeed, WebAssembly has been carefully designed with security in mind. In particular, WebAssembly applications are sandboxed from their host environment. However, recent works have brought to light several limitations that expose WebAssembly to traditional attack vectors. Visitors of websites using WebAssembly have been exposed to malicious code as a result. In this paper, we propose an automated static program analysis to address these security concerns. Our analysis is focused on information flow and is compositional. For every WebAssembly function, it first computes a summary that describes in a sound manner where the information from its parameters and the global program state can flow to. These summaries can then be applied during the subsequent analysis of function calls. Through a classical fixed-point formulation, one obtains an approximation of the information flow in the WebAssembly program. This results in the first compositional static analysis for WebAssembly. On a set of 34 benchmark programs spanning 196kLOC of WebAssembly, we compute at least 64% of the function summaries precisely in less than a minute in total.

Software developers make mistakes that can lead to failures of a software product. One approach to detect defects is static analysis: examine code without execution. Currently, various source code static analysis tools are widely used to detect defects. However, source code analysis is not enough. The reason for this is the use of third-party binary libraries, the unprovability of the correctness of all compiler optimizations. This paper introduces BinSide : binary static analysis framework for defects detection. It does interprocedural, context-sensitive and flow-sensitive analysis. The framework uses platform independent intermediate representation and provide opportunity to analyze various architectures binaries. The framework includes value analysis, reaching definition, taint analysis, freed memory analysis, constant folding, and constant propagation engines. It provides API (application programming interface) and can be used to develop new analyzers. Additionally, we used the API to develop checkers for classic buffer overflow, format string, command injection, double free and use after free defects detection.

Ransomware is one of the fastest growing threats to internet security. New Ransomware attacks happen around the globe, on a weekly basis. These attacks happen to individual users and groups, from almost any type of business. Many of these attacks involve Ransomware as a service, where one attacker creates a template Malware, which can be purchased and modified by other attackers to perform specific actions. The District Ransomware was a less well-known strain. This work focuses on statically and dynamically analyzing the District Ransomware and presenting the results.

Power system security assessment and enhancement in grids with high penetration of renewables is critical for pragmatic power system planning. Static Security Assessment (SSA) is a fast response tool to assess system stability margins following considerable contingencies assuming post fault system reaches a steady state. This paper presents a contingency ranking methodology using static security indices to rank credible contingencies considering severity. A Modified IEEE 9 bus system integrating renewables was used to test the approach. The static security indices used independently provides accurate results in identifying severe contingencies but further assessment is needed to provide an accurate picture of static security assessment in an increased time frame of the steady state. The indices driven for static security assessment could accurately capture and rank contingencies with renewable sources but due to intermittency of the renewable source various contingency ranking lists are generated. This implies that using indices in future grids without consideration on intermittent nature of renewables will make it difficult for the grid operator to identify severe contingencies and assist the power system operator to make operational decisions. This makes it necessary to integrate the behaviour of renewables in security indices for practical application in real time security assessment.

Web applications have become an essential resource to access the services of diverse subjects (e.g., financial, healthcare) available on the Internet. Despite the efforts that have been made on its security, namely on the investigation of better techniques to detect vulnerabilities on its source code, the number of vulnerabilities exploited has not decreased. Static analysis tools (SATs) are often used to test the security of applications since their outcomes can help developers in the correction of the bugs they found. The conducted investigation made over SATs stated they often generate errors (false positives (FP) and false negatives (FN)), whose cause is recurrently associated with very diverse coding styles, i.e., similar functionality is implemented in distinct manners, and programming practices that create ambiguity, such as the reuse and share of variables. Based on a common practice of using multiple forms in a same webpage and its processing in a single file, we defined a use case for user login and register with six coding styles scenarios for processing their data, and evaluated the behaviour of three SATs (phpSAFE, RIPS and WAP) with them to verify and understand why SATs produce FP and FN.

Mobile antivirus technologies incorporate static analysis which involves the analysis of programs without its execution. This process relies on pattern matching against a signature repository to identify malware, which can be easily tricked by transformation techniques such as obfuscation. Obfuscation as an evasion technique renders character strings disguised and incomprehensive, to prevent tampering and reengineering, which poses to be a valuable technique malware developers adopt to evade detection. This paper attempts to study the detection efficiency of static analyzers against obfuscated Android malware. This study is the first step in a larger project attempting to improve the efficiency of malware detectors.

Due to the advantages and limitations of the two kinds of vulnerability mining methods of static and dynamic analysis of android applications, the paper proposes a method of Android application vulnerability mining based on dynamic and static combination. Firstly, the static analysis method is used to obtain the basic vulnerability analysis results of the application, and then the input test case of dynamic analysis is constructed on this basis. The fuzzy input test is carried out in the real machine environment, and the application security vulnerability is verified with the taint analysis technology, and finally the application vulnerability report is obtained. Experimental results show that compared with static analysis results, the method can significantly improve the accuracy of vulnerability mining.

The Android application market will conduct various security analysis on each application to predict its potential harm before put it online. Since almost all the static analysis tools can only detect malicious behaviors in the Java layer, more and more malwares try to avoid static analysis by taking the malicious codes to the Native layer. To provide a solution for the above situation, there's a new research aspect proposed in this paper and defined as Inter-language Static Analysis. As all the involved technologies are introduced, the current research results of them will be captured in this paper, such as static analysis in Java layer, binary analysis in Native layer, Java-Native penetration technology, etc.

As a modern power transmission network, smart grid connects abundant terminal devices and plays an important role in our daily life. However, along with its growth are the security threats. Different from the separated environment previously, an adversary nowadays can destroy the power system by attacking its terminal devices. As a result, it's critical to ensure the security and safety of terminal devices. To achieve it, detecting the pre-existing vulnerabilities in the terminal program and enhancing its security, are of great importance and necessity. In this paper, we introduce Cker, a novel vulnerability detection tool for smart grid devices, which generates an program model based on device sources and sets rules to perform model checking. We utilize the static analysis to extract necessary information and build corresponding program models. By further checking the model with pre-defined vulnerability patterns, we achieve security detection and error reporting. The evaluation results demonstrate that our method can effectively detect vulnerabilities in smart devices with an acceptable accuracy and false positive rate. In addition, as Cker is realized by pure python, it can be easily scaled to other platforms.

Static security assessment is of great significance to ensure the stable transmission of electric power and steady operation of load. The scale of power system trends to expand due to the development of interconnected grid, and the security analysis of the entire network has become time-consuming. On the basis of synthesizing the efficiency and accuracy, a new method is developed. This method adopts a novel dynamic power flow (DPF) model considering the influence of governor deadband and amplitude-limit on the steady state quantitatively. In order to reduce the computation cost, a contingency screening algorithm based on binary search method is proposed. Static security assessment based on the proposed DPF models is applied to calculate the security margin constrained by severe contingencies. The ones with lower margin are chosen for further time-domain (TD) simulation analysis. The case study of a practical grid verifies the accuracy of the proposed model compared with the conventional one considering no governor nonlinearity. Moreover, the test of a practical grid in China, along with the TD simulation, demonstrates that the proposed method avoids massive simulations of all contingencies as well as provides detail information of severe ones, which is effective for security analysis of practical power grids.