ShadowVM: robust and comprehensive dynamic program analysis for the java platform

  • Authors:

  • Lukáš Marek;Stephen Kell;Yudi Zheng;Lubomír Bulej;Walter Binder;Petr Tůma;Danilo Ansaloni;Aibek Sarimbekov;Andreas Sewe

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland;Software Technology Group, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Generative programming: concepts & experiences
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Dynamic analysis tools are often implemented using instrumentation, particularly on managed runtimes including the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Performing instrumentation robustly is especially complex on such runtimes: existing frameworks offer limited coverage and poor isolation, while previous work has shown that apparently innocuous instrumentation can cause deadlocks or crashes in the observed application. This paper describes ShadowVM, a system for instrumentation-based dynamic analyses on the JVM which combines a number of techniques to greatly improve both isolation and coverage. These centre on the offload of analysis to a separate process; we believe our design is the first system to enable genuinely full bytecode coverage on the JVM. We describe a working implementation, and use a case study to demonstrate its improved coverage and to evaluate its runtime overhead.