Executable based vulnerability detection

Since there are semantic differences between a source code and its executable code, analysis of only the source code may miss some vulnerabilities in the executable code. Typical vulnerability patterns were analyzed to design a security vulnerability detection tool to work directly on executables. The system combines static disassembly analysis, dynamic auto-debugging and function based argument injection. The tool successfully found buffer overflow vulnerabilities in both a CVE (common vulnerabilities & exposures) benchmark and two real executables. The results show that this detection method can be used to directly detect security vulnerabilities in executable codes.