Tutorial: Detecting Memory Vulnerabilities in the Components of System Code using PROMPT
Tuba Yavuz, Ken Yihang Bai · 2020
Analyzing real-world software is challenging due to complexity of the software frameworks or APIs they depend on. In this paper, we present a tool, PROMPT, that facilitates analysis of software components using programming model guided symbolic execution. PROMPT has a specification component, PROSE, that lets users define a programming model, which consists of a set of data constraints and life-cycle rules that define control-flow constraints among sequentially composed API functions. Given a PROSE model and a software component, PROMPT symbolically executes the component while enforcing the specified programming model. PROMPT has been implemented on top of the KLEE symbolic execution engine and has been applied to Linux device drivers from the video, sound, and network subsystems. PROMPT detected two new and two known memory vulnerabilities in some of the device drivers. The proposed tutorial on PROMPT will empower practitioners as well as researchers in analyzing components of system code for deep memory vulnerabilities.