Detecting and escaping infinite loops using Bolt

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.