Active Learning of Points-To Specifications

11/09/2017

∙

by   Osbert Bastani, et al.

∙

0

∙

share

When analyzing programs, large libraries pose significant challenges to static points-to analysis. A popular solution is to have a human analyst provide points-to specifications that summarize relevant behaviors of library code, which can substantially improve precision and furthermore handle missing code such as native code. We propose Atlas, a tool that automatically infers points-to specifications. Atlas synthesizes unit tests that exercise the library code, and then infers points-to specifications based on observations from these executions. Atlas automatically infers specifications for the Java standard library, and produces better results for a client static information flow analysis on a benchmark of 46 Android apps compared to using existing handwritten specifications.