Content area

Abstract

Due to the increasing complexity of modern software and hardware systems, fully automated software engineering methods, particularly those that focus on a single abstraction level, are insufficient to prevent, identify, and handle performance problems, bugs, and security vulnerabilities. Addressing these issues often requires gathering information from and attuning to multiple abstraction levels, usually incorporating manual analysis or deep domain knowledge. Analysis that crosses abstraction boundaries is challenging, but software engineering techniques can benefit when analysis at one abstraction level is informed by analyses on others. I use code representations as the medium for this work. First, I investigate long-held assumptions about how lower-level code representations affect human comprehension in a human study. I then cross the boundary between binary and source, showing how decompiled code can be leveraged to facilitate the repair of bugs and vulnerabilities when source code is not available. The insights gained from this success with decompiled code allow us to improve automated program repair by using static code transformations to manipulate the input code representation. Finally, I develop methods for aligning source code elements with binary code, in the absence of compiler-embedded information or recompilation. Together, this thesis shows that analyses and tools designed for or informed by a software abstraction level can benefit understanding, tools, and analyses designed for others, and extend their utility beyond or improve their accuracy on their intended code representation.

Details

1010268
Title
Crossing Software Abstraction Boundaries to Facilitate Software Engineering
Number of pages
168
Publication year
2025
Degree date
2025
School code
0010
Source
DAI-B 86/11(E), Dissertation Abstracts International
ISBN
9798314876978
Committee member
Weimer, Westley; Doupé, Adam; Wang, Ruoyu
University/institution
Arizona State University
Department
Computer Science
University location
United States -- Arizona
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
32000769
ProQuest document ID
3202648263
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/crossing-software-abstraction-boundaries/docview/3202648263/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic