[Soot-list] Search for information flow tracking tool

[Chris Pickett]

Hi Sunny,

I have three recommendations:

1) Look at Ahmer Ahmedani's M.Sc. thesis (Sable website), he has both 
implicit (control-flow dependent) and explicit information flow analyses.

2) Look at Richard Halpert's information flow analysis described in our 
PACT'07 paper (Sable website) -- however, it only accounts for explicit 
information flow, so no control flow.

3) Look at Indus for program slicing (Google it...)

Eric, I think Sunny is right, information flow analysis does generally 
include a control flow analysis.  A post-dominator analysis is probably 
the building block you want for it.

Cheers,
Chris

Eric Bodden wrote:
> 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...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
>