Software testing is the most commonly used technique in the industry to certify the correctness of software systems. This includes security properties like access control and data confidentiality. However, information flow control and the detection of information leaks using tests is a demanding task without the use of specialized monitoring and assessment tools.
In this paper, we tackle the challenge of dynamically tracking information flow in third-party Java-based applications using dependent information flow control. Dependent security labels increase the expressiveness of traditional information flow control techniques by allowing to parametrize labels with context-related information and allowing for the specification of more detailed and fine-grained policies. Instead of the fixed security lattice used in traditional approaches that defines a fixed set of security compartments, dependent security labels allow for a dynamic lattice that can be extended at runtime, allowing for new security compartments to be defined using context values.
We present a specification and instrumentation approach for rewriting JVM compiled code with in-lined reference monitors. To illustrate the proposed approach we use an example and a working prototype, SNITCH. SNITCH operates over the static single assignment language Shimple, an intermediate representation for Java bytecode used in the SOOT framework.
We present an efficient and expressive tool for the instrumentation of Java programs at the bytecode-level. BISM (Bytecode-Level Instrumentation for Software Monitoring) is a light-weight Java bytecode instrumentation tool that features an expressive high-level control-flow-aware instrumentation language. The language is inspired by the aspect-oriented programming paradigm in modularizing instrumentation into separate transformers, that encapsulate joinpoint selection and advice inlining. BISM allows capturing joinpoints ranging from bytecode instructions to methods execution and provides comp…
In the domain of Software Engineering, program analysis and understanding has been considered to be a very challenging task since decade, as it demands dedicated time and efforts. The analysis of source code may occasionally be comparatively easier due to its static nature, however, the back end code (Bytecode), especially in terms of Java programming, is complicated to be analysed. In this paper, we present a methodological approach towards understanding the Bytecode of Java programs. We put forward a framework for the debugging process of Java Bytecode. Furthermore, we discuss the debugging …
JBMC is an open-source SAT- and SMT-based bounded model checking tool for verifying Java bytecode. JBMC relies on an operational model of the Java libraries, which conservatively approximates their semantics, to verify assertion violations, array out-of-bounds, unintended arithmetic overflows, and other kinds of functional and runtime errors in Java bytecode. JBMC can be used to either falsify properties or prove program correctness if an upper bound on the depth of the state-space is known. Practical applications of JBMC include but are not limited to bug finding, property checking, test inpu…
Code obfuscation is a popular approach to turn program comprehension and analysis harder, with the aim of mitigating threats related to malicious reverse engineering and code tampering. However, programming languages that compile to high level bytecode (e.g., Java) can be obfuscated only to a limited extent. In fact, high level bytecode still contains high level relevant information that an attacker might exploit. In order to enable more resilient obfuscations, part of these programs might be implemented with programming languages (e.g., C) that compile to low level machine-dependent code. In …
During compilation from Java source code to bytecode, some information is irreversibly lost. In other words, compilation and decompilation of Java code is not symmetric. Consequently, the decompilation process, which aims at producing source code from bytecode, must establish some strategies to reconstruct the information that has been lost. Modern Java decompilers tend to use distinct strategies to achieve proper decompilation. In this work, we hypothesize that the diverse ways in which bytecode can be decompiled has a direct impact on the quality of the source code produced by decompilers. W…
During compilation from Java source code to bytecode, some information is irreversibly lost. In other words, compilation and decompilation of Java code is not symmetric. Consequently, decompilation, which aims at producing source code from bytecode, relies on strategies to reconstruct the information that has been lost. Different Java decompilers use distinct strategies to achieve proper decompilation. In this work, we hypothesize that the diverse ways in which bytecode can be decompiled has a direct impact on the quality of the source code produced by decompilers. In this paper, we assess the…
Software bloat is code that is packaged in an application but is actually not necessary to run the application. The presence of software bloat is an issue for security, for performance, and for maintenance. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique for debloating, which we call coverage-based debloating. We implement the technique for one single language: Java bytecode. We leverage a combination of state-of-the-art Java bytecode coverage tools to precisely capture what parts of a project and its dependencies are used when running with a specific workload. Then, we automatically remove the …
Software piracy, the illegal using, copying, and resale of applications is a major concern for anyone develops software. Software developers also worry about their applications being reverse engineered by extracting data structures and algorithms from an application and incorporated into competitor's code. A defense against software piracy is watermarking, a process that embeds a secret message in a cover software. Watermarking is a method that does not aim to stop piracy copying, but to prove ownership of the software and possibly even the data structures and algorithms used in the software. …
Model-based verification allows to express behavioral correctness conditions like the validity of execution states, boundaries of variables or timing at a high level of abstraction and affirm that they are satisfied by a software system. However, this requires expressive models which are difficult and cumbersome to create and maintain by hand. This paper presents a framework that automatically derives behavioral models from real-sized Java programs. Our framework builds on the EMF/ECore technology and provides a tool that creates an initial model from Java bytecode, as well as a series of tran…
Many programmers have had to deal with an overwritten variable resulting for example from an aliasing problem. The culprit is obviously the last write-access to that memory location before the manifestation of the bug. The usual technique for removing such bugs starts with the debugger by (1) finding the last write and (2) moving the control point of execution back to that time by re-executing the program from the beginning. We wish to automate this. Step (2) is easy if we can somehow mark the last write found in step (1) and control the execution-point to move it back to this time. In this pa…
