Leveraging abstract interpretation for efficient dynamic symbolic execution

Abstract

Dynamic Symbolic Execution (DSE) is a technique to automatically generate test inputs by executing a program with concrete and symbolic values simultaneously. A key challenge in DSE is scalability; executing all feasible program paths is not possible, owing to the potentially exponential or infinite number of paths. Loops are a main source of path explosion, in particular where the number of iterations depends on a program's input. Problems arise because DSE maintains symbolic values that capture only the dependencies on symbolic inputs. This ignores control dependencies, including loop dependencies that depend indirectly on the inputs. We propose a method to increase the coverage achie..