macaw/refinement

Macaw Refinement Libary

The refinement library provides supplemental functionality for discovery of elements that macaw-symbolic is not able to discover via pattern matching. This library will use crucible symbolic analysis to attempt to determine elements that could not be identified by macaw-symbolic. The identification provided by macaw-symbolic is incomplete, and so is the identification by this macaw-refinement, but macaw-refinement attempts to additionally "refine" the analysis to achieve even more information which can then be provided back to the macaw analysis.

• Terminator effects for incomplete blocks. For example, the target IP address by symbolic evaluation (e.g. of jump tables). If the current block does not provide sufficient information to symbolically identify the target, previous blocks can be added to the analysis (back to the entry block or a loop point).

• Argument liveness (determining which registers and memory locations are used/live by a block allows determination of ABI compliance (for transformations) and specific block requirements (which currently start with a full register state and blank memory).

• Call graphs. Determination of targets of call instructions that cannot be identified by pattern matching via symbolic evaluation, using techniques similar to those for identifying incomplete blocks.