Relocatable addressing model for symbolic execution

David Trabish, Noam Rinetzky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Symbolic execution (SE) is a widely used program analysis technique. Existing SE engines model the memory space by associating memory objects with concrete addresses, where the representation of each allocated object is determined during its allocation. We present a novel addressing model where the underlying representation of an allocated object can be dynamically modified even after its allocation, by using symbolic addresses rather than concrete ones. We demonstrate the benefits of our model in two application scenarios: dynamic inter- and intra-object partitioning. In the former, we show how the recently proposed segmented memory model can be improved by dynamically merging several object representations into a single one, rather than doing that a-priori using static pointer analysis. In the latter, we show how the cost of solving array theory constraints can be reduced by splitting the representations of large objects into multiple smaller ones. Our preliminary results show that our approach can significantly improve the overall effectiveness of the symbolic exploration.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationISSTA 2020 - Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis
EditorsSarfraz Khurshid, Corina S. Pasareanu
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages51-62
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450380089
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Jul 2020
Event29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2020 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: 18 Jul 202022 Jul 2020

Publication series

NameISSTA 2020 - Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

Conference

Conference29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period18/07/2022/07/20

Keywords

  • Addressing model
  • Memory partitioning
  • Symbolic execution

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Relocatable addressing model for symbolic execution'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this