Effective software testing with a string-constraint solver

This dissertation presents techniques and tools for improving software reliability, by using an expressive string-constraint solver to make implementation-based testing more effective and more applicable. Concolic testing is a paradigm of implementation-based systematic software testing that combines dynamic symbolic execution with constraint-based systematic execution-path enumeration. Concolic testing is easy to use and effective in finding real errors. It is, however, limited by the expressiveness of the underlying constraint solver. Therefore, to date, concolic testing has not been successfully applied to programs with highly-structured inputs (e.g., compilers), or to Web applications. This dissertation shows that the effectiveness and applicability of concolic testing can be greatly improved by using an expressive and efficient string-constraint solver, i.e., a solver for constraints on string variables. We present the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a novel string-constraint solver. Furthermore, we show novel techniques for two important problems in concolic testing: getting past input validation in programs with highly-structured inputs, and creating inputs that demonstrate security vulnerabilities in Web applications.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Kieżun, Adam

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael D. Ernst.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53291

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53291