DUA-forensics: a fine-grained dependence analysis and instrumentation framework based on Soot

Abstract

We describe DUA-Forensics, our open-source Java-bytecode program analysis and instrumentation system built on top of Soot. DUA-Forensics has been in development for more than six years and has supported multiple research projects on efficient monitoring, test-suite augmentation, fault localization, symbolic execution, and change-impact analysis. Three core features of Soot have proven essential: the Java bytecode processor, the Jimple intermediate representation, and the API to access and manipulate Jimple programs. On top of these foundations, DUA-Forensics offers a number of features of potential interest to the Java-analysis community, including (1) a layer that facilitates the instrumentation of Jimple code, (2) a library modeling system for efficient points-to, data-flow, and symbolic analysis, and (3) a fine-grained dependence analysis component. These features have made our own research more productive, reliable, and effective.