Static Analysis Seminar (SAS)

Course Description

One can ask many interesting questions about a given program such as:

• Does this program terminate?
• Can the pointer p be null?
• Will the value of the variable v be read in the future?
• Do the variables x and y point to the same location in the heap?
• Was the loop counter initialized before it is used?
• Could the secret data pointed to by s leak to some unauthorized party?
• Can method foo call method bar? And which method bar could be called?

The answer to all those interesting questions about a program is undecidable as stated by Rice’s Theorem. However, people usually use static program analysis to get approximate answers to those questions, which works well in many cases. For example, many bug finding tools (e.g., FindBugs) use various static analysis techniques to detect, and possibly fix, bugs in a given program. Additionally, security analysis tools (e.g., AppScan, FlowDroid) also use static analysis to detect security vulnerabilities and data leakages. In this course, we will read research papers that explain the basics of static analysis as well as the state-of-the-art.

General Information

• TUCaN ID: 20-00-0942
• Course Type: Seminar (4CP)
• Language: English
• Kickoff: Tuesday 13.10.15 – 9:50 to 11:30 – Fraunhofer SIT, Raum München
• Class Meetings: Tuesdays – 9:50 to 11:30 – Fraunhofer SIT, Raum München
• Web Page: “https://karimali.ca/sas/”
• Instructor: Karim Ali (see contact information below)
• Office Hours: by appointment
• Teaching Assistant: Johannes Späth

Course Format

This is a seminar-based course where we will announce a list of papers selected for the course before the first week of lectures. Each paper will have a specific date/time to be presented at (see tentative schedule below). Students can then select their paper preferences by the end of the first week of lectures. For each meeting, you’re expected to:

• If you are assigned a paper on that day:
  • you should deliver a 20 minute presentation to introduce that paper
  • you will also lead a 10 minute discussion and answer questions from the audience
• For everybody else:
  • you have to read and submit a review of ONE paper from the list of papers that we will discuss that day (review is 1 page max)
• Everybody should:
  • submit reviews for ALL the presentations delivered by your colleagues on that day, except, obviously, your own presentations
  • participate in the paper discussion

Once the presenters receive their anonymous presentation reviews, they have the chance to submit a short paragraph describing the quality of the reviews they got. The purpose of those activities is to give you a chance to practice a lot of the tasks a researcher encounter: delivering conference presentations, paper reviews, getting feedback about presentation, etc.

Evaluation Criteria

Schedule