Detection of Potential Memory Access Errors based on Assembly Codes

Memory errors can cause not only program malfunctions but also even unexpected system halt. Though a programmer checks memory errors, some memory errors with low occurrence frequency are missed to detect. In this paper, we propose a method for effectively detecting such memory errors using instruction transition diagrams through analyzing assembly codes obtained by disassembling an executable file. Out of various memory errors, local memory return errors, null pointer access errors and uninitialized pointer access errors are targeted for detection. When applying the proposed method to various programs including well-known open source programs such as Apache web server and PHP script interpreter, some potential memory errors are detected.