zz VS angr

There is this: https://github.com/zetzit/zz

You're right that you can't define a safe subset of C without making it practical. MISRA C defines a C subset intended to help avoid C's footguns, but it still isn't actually a safe language. There are alternative approaches though:

1. Compile a safe language to C (whether a new language or an existing one)

2. Formal analysis of C, or of some practical subset of C, to prove the absence of undefined behaviour

Work has been done on both approaches.

ZZ compiles to C. [0] Dafny can compile to C++, but it seems that's not its primary target. [1][2]

There are several projects on formal analysis of C. [3][4][5][6]

[0] https://github.com/zetzit/zz

[1] https://github.com/dafny-lang/dafny

[2] https://dafny-lang.github.io/dafny/

[3] https://frama-c.com/

[4] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vcc-a-verif...

[5] https://www.eschertech.com/products/ecv.php

[6] https://trust-in-soft.com/

Formal methods have been used successfully for decades; it's not just a pipe dream. Perfect software should ideally be something like ultra-low-defect software, though (that's the term the AdaCore folks use).

There are also other projects that aim to make formal software development much easier [0][1] and of course there's SPARK Ada.

[0] https://github.com/zetzit/zz

[1] https://github.com/dafny-lang/dafny

This post reminds me that I've been wanting to try out ZetZ[0]. It incorporates Z3 into a high-level programming language, and seems to do a lot of what the post talks about automatically.

[0] https://github.com/zetzit/zz

I still want to try the ZZ language (https://github.com/zetzit/zz) someday. It compiles to C, and uses a SMT solver to prove that you don't index out-of-bounds at compile time. But I don't like how it lacks generics, uses C idioms, and compiles to C.

The zz language uses a SMT solver to check for program soundness... I haven't tried it, but that's got to be more flexible and resource-hungry.

Especially the fact that it outputs C code. So interop is seamless.

https://github.com/zetzit/zz

For any systems language, interop with C is the litmus test.

With that in mind, this new language should not require 15,000 lines of standard library. A type-safe wrapper for libc should be enough...

You might find ZetZ interesting!

That's awesome! That's exactly how modern decompilers deal with a special type of goto occurrence. They reduce gotos (or completely eliminate them) by introducing a `while(true)` loop, followed by corresponding `continue` and `breaks`... we all, of course, know that `while(true)` did not exist in the source, but it's a nice hack!

We even do this in the angr decompiler, found here: https://github.com/angr/angr/blob/8e48d001e18a913ecd4ed2e995...

One would hope browser and OS vendors would use AI to remediate vulnerabilities but vast majority of software vendors won't ever use it.

Also, automated vulnerability finding is very much real and already used today. This isn't something that has just become viable via LLMs, but I guess LLMs can enhance it:

https://github.com/angr/angr

Check out angr [1], a symbolic execution engine, and claripy [2], its frontend to SMT solvers like z3.

[1] https://angr.io

[2] https://api.angr.io/claripy.html

BAP (https://github.com/binaryanalysisplatform/bap), angr (https://angr.io/) and others already do what you're asking for as more purpose-built solutions for dynamic analysis. Angr specifically in python.

As /u/hkei noted, it's actually quite difficult to do in general, and usually requires some kind of heuristic. For example, see https://github.com/dyninst/dyninst/blob/v12.1.0/dyninstAPI/src/image.C#L476. Full disclosure, I am a Dyninst developer. There is also the python-based angr that might be more amenable to a one-off solution.

I think there's a lot of promise in automation that's been spun off from the CTF community. Angr and Binary Ninja are both very much spinoffs from contest hacking, and are pretty great for helping a skilled hacker find flaws in software.

angr - Platform-agnostic binary analysis framework.

angr uses z3.

https://github.com/angr/angr

Supposedly, the DoD has used angr for some use cases.

Try using angr to automate bug finding