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Cinnamon: a domain-specific language for binary profiling and monitoring

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conference contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 23:27 authored by Mahwish Arif, Ruoyu Zhou, Hsi-Ming HoHsi-Ming Ho, Timothy M Jones
Binary instrumentation and rewriting frameworks provide a powerful way of implementing custom analysis and transformation techniques for applications ranging from performance profiling to security monitoring. However, using these frameworks to write even simple analyses and transformations is non-trivial. Developers often need to write framework-specific boilerplate code and work with low-level and complex programming details. This not only results in hundreds (or thousands) of lines of code, but also leaves significant room for error. To address this, we introduce Cinnamon, a domain-specific language designed to write programs for binary profiling and monitoring. Cinnamon's abstractions allow the programmer to focus on implementing their technique in a platform-independent way, without worrying about complex lower-level details. Programmers can use these abstractions to perform analysis and instrumentation at different locations and granularity levels in the binary. The flexibility of Cinnamon also enables its programs to be mapped to static, dynamic or hybrid analysis and instrumentation approaches. As a proof of concept, we target Cinnamon to three different binary frameworks by implementing a custom Cinnamon to C/C++ compiler and integrating the generated code within these frameworks. We further demonstrate the ability of Cinnamon to express a range of profiling and monitoring tools through different use-cases.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

2021 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO)

Publisher

IEEE

Page range

103-114

Event name

International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO)

Event location

Seoul, Korea (South)

Event type

conference

Event date

27 Feb.-3 March 2021

ISBN

9781728186146

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Notes

© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2021-03-26

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2021-03-26

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2021-03-26

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