RoBin: Facilitating the Reproduction of Configuration-Related Vulnerability

TL;DR

RoBin is a tool that uses binary similarity analysis to infer specific build configurations from crash reports, aiding in reproducing configuration-related vulnerabilities for debugging and patching.

Contribution

This paper introduces RoBin, a novel binary similarity-based method for inferring build configurations from binaries to reproduce configuration-dependent vulnerabilities.

Findings

Successfully identified configurations in 21 vulnerability cases

Demonstrated effectiveness across 4 open-source programs

Facilitated vulnerability reproduction and debugging

Abstract

Vulnerability reproduction paves a way in debugging software failures, which need intensive manual efforts. However, some key factors (e.g., software configuration, trigger method) are often missing, so we can not directly reproduce the failure without extra attempts. Even worse, highly customized configuration options of programs create a barrier for reproducing the vulnerabilities that only appear under some specific combinations of configurations. In this paper, we address the problem mentioned above -- reproducing the configuration-related vulnerability. We try to solve it by proposing a binary similarity-based method to infer the specific building configurations via the binary from crash report. The main challenges are as follows: precise compilation option inference, program configuration inference, and source-code-to-binary matching. To achieve the goal, we implement RoBin, a binary similarity-based building configuration inference tool. To demonstrate the effectiveness, we test RoBin on 21 vulnerable cases upon 4 well-known open-source programs. It shows a strong ability in pinpointing the building configurations causing the vulnerability. The result can help developers reproduce and diagnose the vulnerability, and finally, patch the programs.