[PRL] Fwd: [Programming] Talk: "Fuzzing Abstract Interpreters" Dave Melski, Tues 1pm

David Van Horn dvanhorn at ccs.neu.edu
Sun Nov 14 16:06:22 EST 2010



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Programming] Talk: "Fuzzing Abstract Interpreters" Dave
Melski, Tues 1pm
Date: 	Sun, 14 Nov 2010 09:28:40 -0500
From: 	Stephen Chong <chong at seas.harvard.edu>
To: 	EECS Programming List <programming at eecs.harvard.edu>



Hi all,
Dave Melski from GrammaTech will be giving a talk at 1pm on Tuesday Nov
16. Details are below. He is also giving a guest lecture in CS 61 at
2:30pm in MD G-115 on reverse-engineering software, which all are
welcome to attend.

Cheers,
Steve.

Title: Fuzzing Abstract Interpreters
Time: 1pm, Tuesday Nov 16,
Room: TBA
Abstract:

     Sound static analysis tools have many applications, including
     assisting with validation of other software. However, analysis tools
     must themselves also be validated, and usually offer little
     assistance in the way of “pulling themselves up by their own
     bootstraps.” Often the problem is made more acute by the complexity
     of the algorithms needed to achieve scalability and precision:
     attempts to implement such algorithms may include implementation
     errors that lead to unsound results, no matter how beautiful the
     theory backing the algorithms.

     GrammaTech uses the /Transformer Specification Language/ /(TSL)/,
     developed at the University of Wisconsin, to specify instruction-set
     semantics and automatically generate machine-code analyzers. TSL
     greatly simplifies the process of writing analyses. Perhaps as a
     consequence, we have many analyzers that need validation. In this
     talk, I will describe infrastructure we have developed to test the
     soundness of our semantic specifications using fuzzing and
     comparison of abstract and concrete executions. Obviously, testing
     cannot prove soundness, but this technique has helped us to find
     many errors and increase our confidence in our analyzers.



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