Transparently integrating debugging and dynamic binary instrumentation

Abstract

With dynamic binary instrumentation becoming increasingly popular we have seen the rise of many applications in analysis, debugging, and control. Dr. Memory, for example, aids in the debugging of memory errors by tracking memory and reporting any detected memory errors. Another tool, Godware, automates the process of unpacking malware. While tools like these are great, there hasn't been much development into tools that facilitate interactivity and user integration into an environment with familiar debugging primitives. We provide a platform, built on top of the dynamic binary instrumentation system DynamoRIO, that allows a user to interactively debug an application, hides DynamoRIO's internals from the user, hides debugging semantics from instrumentation clients, enables integration of debugging primitives with instrumentation clients, and enables improved performance of some debugging primitives.