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Poster - Automated Code Repair to Ensure Memory Safety (2020)

Poster
This poster describes an automated technique to repair C source code to eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities.
Publisher

Software Engineering Institute

Abstract

This poster describes an automated approach for fixing memory safety vulnerabilities. Software vulnerabilities (especially spatial memory violations) are a major threat to the DoD. Its systems encompass a huge volume of code that contains an unknown number of vulnerabilities. CMU SEI researchers developed an automated technique to repair C source code to eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities. It first transforms source code to an intermediate representation (IR), retaining mapping. A repair program inserts fat pointers to track bounds and perform a bounds check before accessing memory. It then maps the repairs at the IR level back to source code. The output is repaired source code that is still human-readable and maintainable.