Strict control dependence and its effect on dynamic information flow analyses

Abstract

Program control dependence has substantial impact on applications such as dynamic information flow tracking and data lineage tracing (a technique tracking the set of inputs that affects individual outputs). Without considering control dependence, information can leak via implicit channels without being tracked; important inputs may be absent from output lineage. However, considering control dependence may lead to a large volume of false alarms in information flow tracking or undesirably large lineage sets. We identify a special type of control dependence called strict control dependence (SCD). The nature of SCDs highly resembles that of data dependences, reflecting strong correlations between statements and hence should be considered the same way as data dependences in various applications. We formally define the semantics. We also describe a cost-effective design that allows tracing only strict control dependence. Our empirical evaluation shows that the proposed technique has very low overhead and it greatly improves the effectiveness of lineage tracing and taint analysis.