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

虽然多线程程序中的竞争引起了研究界的极大关注，但对于API竞争却几乎没有做什么，这是一类与传统线程竞争一样危险和难以调试的错误。 当多个Activity（无论是线程还是进程）在没有正确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与API竞争一起工作。软件可靠性越来越影响到每个人，无论他们是否亲自使用计算机。 这项研究首次研究并自动检测对软件可靠性有重大影响的一类重要的种族。 该研究定量地说明了API竞争是如何众多、难以调试和对软件可靠性构成真实的威胁的。 为了解决这个问题，本研究正在开发RacePro，一个新的系统来自动检测部署系统中的API竞争。 RacePro通过记录实时执行来检查体内部署的系统，然后确定性地重放并在以后检查它们。 这种方法增加了检查范围，超出了软件供应商或beta测试站点所涵盖的配置或执行范围。 RacePro记录多个进程和线程，检测记录中可能并发访问共享对象的API方法之间的竞争，然后探索此类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，从而实现更健壮、可靠和安全的软件基础设施。

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.