Oracle America, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Cisco Technology, Inc.

Maksim V Panchenko

Fu-Hwa Wang

Jan Civlin

Joe Epstein

Chandrashekhar R Garud

Dmitri Shtilman

In one embodiment, methods are described to provide a binary translation and randomization system. Relocation metadata is received, which comprises, for each of a plurality of execution units in an executable file, a mapping from the executable file into an address space range. For at least one of the plurality of execution units, the mapping is modified to replace instructions within the address space range with a relocated copy of the instructions at a randomly located address space range. An order of the plurality of execution units may thus be modified. An image is generated from the executable file using the relocation metadata, and an execution of the image is caused. The randomization may be carried out in two passes to provide executable files that are uniquely randomized for each computer and for each execution.

Binary translation and randomization system for application security

A system and method for performing efficient program instrumentation for memory profiling. A computing system comprises a memory profiler comprising a static binary instrumentation (SBI) tool and a dynamic binary analysis (DBA) tool. The profiler is configured to selectively instrument memory access operations of a software application. Instrumentation may be bypassed completely for an instruction if the instruction satisfies some predetermined conditions. Some sample conditions include the instruction accesses an address within a predetermined read-only area, the instruction accesses an address within a user-specified address range, and/or the instruction is a load instruction accessing a memory location determined from a data flow graph to store an initialized value. An instrumented memory access instruction may have memory checking analysis performed only upon an initial execution of the instruction in response to determining during initial execution that a read data value of the instruction is initialized. Both unnecessary instrumentation and memory checking analysis may be reduced.

Method and system for efficient tracing and profiling of memory accesses during program execution

A method and system for providing a binary instrumentation tool to detect memory problems in a runtime application executing on a computer system includes identifying one or more functions or statements in the runtime application. A plurality of compiler annotations defining essential functional characteristic data of each of the plurality of functions is generated by a compiler when compiling the user program from source code to an executable binary code. A program error detector is configured to provide a checker code based on guidelines provided by of the plurality of compiler annotations associated with the function. The program error detector generates a modified function code for the identified function by inserting the checker code into a function code for the corresponding function. A modified executable binary code for the runtime application is then generated by replacing the function code for the function with the corresponding modified function code. When the modified executable binary code is run, the checker code associated with the function invokes a checker. The invoked checker provides performance data analysis that allows identification of program errors including memory errors in the runtime application.

Method and system for detecting memory problems in user programs

A code, which may be a post-link binary or a pre-link object file, can be transformed to optimize code fragments that implement loading a constant from memory. A constant loading code fragment includes address computing operations that compute (or copy) an address representation of a constant for consumption by a memory access operation, and the memory access operation that loads the constant. Information from control flow analysis, data flow analysis, and binary structure/configuration analysis are examined to identify code fragments of a code that implement constant loading. A tool transforms the code to convert the identified code fragments. To optimize, the tool may convert operations, eliminate operations, convert indirect calls to direct calls, inline functions called indirectly, eliminate unused constant data, modify relocations, etc. This optimization can also be applied recursively. The same tool or another tool can subsequently analyze the transformed code one more times to identify additional opportunities for optimizations revealed by the transformation or to apply the transformation for a different profile of the application.

Code transformation to optimize fragments that implement constant loading

Performance information can be utilized for comparison of resolving an external object reference through a linking module against accessing the external object directly ('relocation processing'). With the performance information, a determination of whether performing relocation processing on a runtime linked external object reference provides improved runtime performance sufficient to outweigh the runtime linking overhead incurred from the relocation processing is made. If the improvement in runtime performance is sufficient, then the runtime linked external object reference, or the code section that includes the reference, is marked to indicate that relocation processing should be applied.

Intelligent processing of external object references for dynamic linking

A method for optimizing executable code includes identifying a plurality of instructions in the executable code matching a predetermined instruction pattern, assessing whether the binary number conforms to a predetermined bit pattern, and transforming the plurality of instructions into transformed instructions when the binary number conforms to the bit pattern.

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Union City, CA, United States of America

Maksim V Panchenko