Finding and Preventing Run-Time Error Handling Mistakes.ppt

Finding and Preventing Run-Time Error Handling Mistakes Wes Weimer George Necula UC Berkeley Finding and Preventing Run-Time Error Handling Mistakes Wes Weimer George Necula UC Berkeley The Context Reliability in programs Think Java or C++ But not protocols or specifications Run-time errors OS resource exhaustion Network connectivity problems Database access errors Disk problems Error-handling mistakes Forgetting to release a lock when a disk error occurs Glossy Summary It is difficult to write error-handling code We have an analysis for finding mistakes Dataflow analysis and fault model We found over 800 mistakes in 4 MLOC We characterize these mistakes What goes wrong in off-the-shelf code? Existing PL features are insufficient We propose a new feature “compensation stacks” track your obligations And back it up with case studies Error-Handling is Significant IBM Study: up to two-thirds of a program can be devoted to error handling [Cri87] Our Survey: for Java, between 3% and 46% Transitively reachable from catch, finally Older, bigger programs have more handling Mistakes in which “applications dont properly handle error conditions that occur during normal operation” are reported as one of the top ten causes of Java web app security risks Unfortunately, it often does not work Most common exception handlers: Do Nothing Print stack trace, abort program Higher level invariants should be restored, interface requirements should be respected Aside from “handling” the error, the code should clean up after itself Why does this not happen? It is difficult for programmers to consider all execution paths Error Paths #1 – Original Code ptII3.0.2/ptolemy/actor/gui/JNLPUtilities.java Special Thanks: Christopher Hylands Brooks (verified) Error Paths #1 – Original Code ptII3.0.2/ptolemy/actor/gui/JNLPUtilities.java Special Thanks: Christopher Hylands Brooks (verified) Error Paths #2 – Try-Finally Error Paths #3 – Try-Finally Error Paths #3 – Try-Finally Error Paths #4 – Nes