[Soot-list] Search for information flow tracking tool

[Eric Bodden]

To my best knowledge, information flow analysis only tracks data flow
and not control flow. In your example, there is no data flowing from x
to y. That's why I believe that an information flow analysis could not
give you the answers you need. (There *may* be information flow
analyses which do what you need, though.)

Slicing definitely takes control flow dependencies into account and
hence would point to x, when being queried on y.

Eric

On 28/01/2008, Sunny <sunfire001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Eric and Alvin.
>
> Thanks for your quick responses!
>
> Actually I am not quite sure whether this analysis belongs to information
> flow tracking or slicing. But I read WASSIM A. MASRI's dissertation which
> has the following definitions for the two cocepts:
>
>
> Information flow: Information flow occurs from object y (source) to object x
> (target or sink) whenever information stored in y is propagated directly or
> indirectly to object x, .i.e., if information about y can be inferred by
> examining x.
> Program Slicing: Program Slicing is concerned with finding all statements in
> a program that directly or indirectly influence another statement in a
> program.
>
> So I think this analysis is closer to the information flow tracking.
> Anyways, they are closely related to each other and I will certainly take a
> look at those tools you mentioned. Thank you for your time!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sunny
>
>
> On Jan 28, 2008 2:30 PM, Alvin Yan <feiya200 at cs.uregina.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > It sounds like a forward data flow analysis to me. You can take a look at
> the package soot.jimple.toolkits there're all kinds of analysis,
> >
> > or extend Soot's flow analysis to write your own. There's a good example
> in the Soot's survivor's guide.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Sunny
> > Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 9:41 AM
> > To: soot-list at sable.mcgill.ca
> > Subject: [Soot-list] Search for information flow tracking tool
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> >
> > I am new in the field of data/control flow analysis, and my current
> project
> > requires me to find the set of variables that can affect the value of
> another
> > variable. For instance...
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>


-- 
Eric Bodden
Sable Research Group
McGill University, Montréal, Canada