Program analysis using WALA (tutorial)

Abstract

Static analysis is widely used in research and practice for multiple purposes such as fault localization, vulnerability detection, code clone identification, code refactoring, optimization, etc. Since implementing static analyzers is a non-trivial task, engineers often rely on existing frameworks to implement their techniques. The IBM T.J. Watson Libraries for Analysis (WALA) is one of such frameworks that allows the analysis of multiple environments, such as Java bytecode (and related languages), JavaScript, Android, Python, etc. In this tutorial, we walk through the process of using WALA for program analysis. First, the tutorial will cover all the required background knowledge that is necessary to understand the technical implementation details of the explained algorithms and techniques. Subsequently, we provide a technical overview of the WALA framework and its support for analysis of multiple programming languages and frameworks code. Then, we will do several live demonstration of using WALA to implement client analyses. We will focus on two common uses of analysis: a form of security analysis, taint analysis, and on using analysis graphs for machine learning of code.