Detecting and escaping infinite loops using Bolt
Name
825776078-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
4.34 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9ffb9cee35d0b76bb16e7d1bb931e6e0
Author(s)
Kling, Michael (Michael W.)
Advisor(s)
Martin Rinard.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
In this thesis we present Bolt, a novel system for escaping infinite loops. If a user suspects that an executing program is stuck in an infinite loop, the user can use the Bolt user interface, which attaches to the running process and determines if the program is executing in an infinite loop. If that is the case, the user can direct the interface to automatically explore multiple strategies to escape the infinite loop, restore the responsiveness of the program, and recover useful output. Bolt operates on stripped x86 and x64 binaries, analyzes both single-thread and multi-threaded programs, dynamically attaches to the program as-needed, dynamically detects the loops in a program and creates program state checkpoints to enable exploration of different escape strategies. This makes it possible for Bolt to detect and escape infinite loops in off-the-shelf software, without available source code, or overhead in standard production use.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-91).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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