Program Analysis

Catalog description

This course explores the fundamental concepts, algorithms, and engineering processes of analyzing programs for correctness, security, and performance. It is intended as a course for first-year or second-year graduate students in computational majors such as computer science and computer engineering since it covers how to analyze programs rigorously based on program semantics. First, the course will cover basic static analysis algorithms, from dataflow analysis to complex points-to analysis. This part will also cover logical programming and ask students to implement static-analysis algorithms using logical programming. The next part will give an overview of the theory of static analysis, using the framework of abstract interpretation. The third part will focus on dynamic analysis and its instances such as taint tracking. The final part will discuss one application of static analysis in analyzing binary code for security. Upon successful completion of the course students will be able to demonstrate understanding of and implement the basic program analysis algorithms and be able to customize these algorithms for specific applications.