“We thought this is a very interesting parallel that makes our research understandable. Especially when you have a little interest and knowledge from biology,” says the computer scientist Martin Rinard, as the name code phage come about , The software project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, is funded by the DARPA, the research funding of the US military:
“We found the parallel to bacteriophages and therefore very good because of the horizontal gene transfer one of the keys for the development of life. This symbolizes therefore, can have what effect Code phage on the development of software. “
As a bacteriophage discharged Code phage program parts, so figuratively the DNA software, from one application to another. The computer scientist Stelios Sidiroglou-Douskos had the idea to cram through viral sharing of binary computer code, security holes.
“Code phage identified and automatically fixes dangerous software errors. These different software versions are investigated, although the same have function that is not prone to this error but “
After two typical software failures that make programmers happy and often is gefahndet here:. After the so-called integer overflow and after the buffer overflow. Errors that often tear security holes and can lead to program crashes. Immerse such an error, for example, in a graphics software at about the size recalculation of an image on, then code phage searches on the hard disk in other, comparable graphics programs after error-free code, to accept him.
“To see an example to enter: you have a PDF viewer and crashes at a specific input from always But there are a whole bunch of PDF viewers, because that does not happen, because precisely this vulnerable point has been programmed differently in the code and code phage isolated.. again, this code snippet from all the programs that were examined, in order to repair their program. “
Binary instead source code
The replacement of the new code piece in the erroneous program happens automatically , Code phage recognizes typical patterns in the code that delimit certain functions such as input queries or scaling functions. The whole thing happens at the binary level, so in the so-called machine code that is executed directly by the processor of the computer.
But why the system analyzes the cryptic binary code? Normally yes repairs of a program are made in the source code. So in the original text, the have written in a programming language, developers, and not in the translated for the computer binary form.
“The advantage of using the binary code is that they have access to the code of each have program that actually exists on your computer. So even on code of programs, of which you have no source code. For example, because there are programs where the source code is kept secret or simply because it has been lost. “
So far, so Rinard, have you tested the code phage software exclusively with popular Linux applications. That also has to do with unsettled legal issues. Because if one binary code of programs simply can copy so that is still open. Since Linux programs but most are open source, the researchers therefore felt on the safe side.
And on the question of whether code phage could run on a smartphone, so that users, for example, Apps, may crash frequently, repair itself, this question answers Rinard optimistic:
“We have not yet worked on a prototype for mobile devices, but there is no reason why this should not be possible, we.. assume the code phage can run on any system, even on mobile devices. “
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