SHF: Medium: RacePro: Automatically Detecting API Races in Deployed Systems

虽然多线程程序中的争用已经引起了研究社区的极大关注，但对于API争用却鲜有研究，API争用是一类和传统线程一样危险且难以调试的错误。当多个活动（无论是线程还是进程）在没有适当同步的情况下通过应用程序编程接口（API）访问共享资源时，就会发生API竞争。检测API竞争是一个重要而困难的问题，因为现有的竞争检测器不太可能很好地处理API竞争。软件的可靠性越来越影响到每一个人，不管他们是否亲自使用电脑。这项研究首次研究并自动检测了一类对软件可靠性有重大影响的重要竞赛。该研究定量地展示了API竞争是如何众多的，难以调试的，以及对软件可靠性的真正威胁。为了解决这个问题，该研究正在开发RacePro，这是一种自动检测部署系统中API竞争的新系统。RacePro通过记录实时执行来检查部署的系统，然后确定地重播并稍后检查它们。这种方法增加了检查的覆盖范围，超出了软件供应商或beta测试站点所覆盖的配置或执行。RacePro记录多个进程和线程，检测可能并发访问共享对象的API方法记录中的竞争，然后探索这些API方法的不同执行顺序，以确定哪些竞争是有害的并导致失败。开发的技术将帮助应用程序开发人员检测潜在的软件缺陷，支持更健壮、可靠和安全的软件基础结构。

While races in multithreaded programs have drawn huge attention from theresearch community, little has been done for API races, a classof errors as dangerous and as difficult to debug as traditional threadraces. An API race occurs when multiple activities, whether they bethreads or processes, access a shared resource via an applicationprogramming interface (API) without proper synchronization. DetectingAPI races is an important and difficult problem as existing racedetectors are unlikely to work well with API races. Software reliability increasingly affects everyone, whether or notthey personally use computers. This research studies andautomatically detects for the first time an important class of racesthat has a significant impact on software reliability. The studyquantitatively demonstrates how API races are numerous, difficult todebug, and a real threat to software reliability. To address thisproblem, this research is developing RacePro, a new system toautomatically detect API races in deployed systems. RacePro checksdeployed systems in-vivo by recording live executions thendeterministically replay and check them later. This approachincreases checking coverage beyond the configurations or executionscovered by software vendors or beta testing sites. RacePro recordsmultiple processes and threads, detects races in the recording among API methods that may concurrently access shared objects, then exploresdifferent execution orderings of such API methods to determine which racesare harmful and result in failures. Technologies developed will helpapplication developers detect insidious software defects, enabling more robust, reliable, and secure software infrastructure.