research-article

TAJ: effective taint analysis of web applications

Authors:

Stephen J. Fink,

Manu Sridharan,

Omri WeismanAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '09: Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 87 - 97

https://doi.org/10.1145/1542476.1542486

Published: 15 June 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Taint analysis, a form of information-flow analysis, establishes whether values from untrusted methods and parameters may flow into security-sensitive operations. Taint analysis can detect many common vulnerabilities in Web applications, and so has attracted much attention from both the research community and industry. However, most static taint-analysis tools do not address critical requirements for an industrial-strength tool. Specifically, an industrial-strength tool must scale to large industrial Web applications, model essential Web-application code artifacts, and generate consumable reports for a wide range of attack vectors.

We have designed and implemented a static Taint Analysis for Java (TAJ) that meets the requirements of industry-level applications. TAJ can analyze applications of virtually any size, as it employs a set of techniques designed to produce useful answers given limited time and space. TAJ addresses a wide variety of attack vectors, with techniques to handle reflective calls, flow through containers, nested taint, and issues in generating useful reports. This paper provides a description of the algorithms comprising TAJ, evaluates TAJ against production-level benchmarks, and compares it with alternative solutions.

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Cited By

Dharmaadi IAthanasopoulos ETurkmen F(2025)Fuzzing frameworks for server-side web applications: a surveyInternational Journal of Information Security10.1007/s10207-024-00979-w24:2Online publication date: 5-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-024-00979-w
Gumarac M(2024)Extent of spending behavior, problems encountered, and financial knowledge across generational cohorts among state universities and colleges employeesInternational Journal of ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES10.21833/ijaas.2024.02.02411:2(230-237)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2024.02.024
Cela SCiancone AGustafsson PHajdu ÁJia YKapus TKoshtenko MLewis WMao KMartac Dd'Amorim M(2024)Automated End-to-End Dynamic Taint Analysis for WhatsAppCompanion Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3663529.3663824(21-26)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
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Index Terms

TAJ: effective taint analysis of web applications
1. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Assertions
      2. Program analysis
    2. Program semantics

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '09: Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2009

492 pages

ISBN:9781605583921

DOI:10.1145/1542476

General Chair:
Michael Hind
IBM Research, USA
,
Program Chair:
Amer Diwan
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 44, Issue 6
PLDI '09
June 2009
478 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1543135
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

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Published: 15 June 2009

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PLDI '09

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PLDI '09: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 15 - 21, 2009

Dublin, Ireland

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Overall Acceptance Rate 406 of 2,067 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Dharmaadi IAthanasopoulos ETurkmen F(2025)Fuzzing frameworks for server-side web applications: a surveyInternational Journal of Information Security10.1007/s10207-024-00979-w24:2Online publication date: 5-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-024-00979-w
Gumarac M(2024)Extent of spending behavior, problems encountered, and financial knowledge across generational cohorts among state universities and colleges employeesInternational Journal of ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES10.21833/ijaas.2024.02.02411:2(230-237)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2024.02.024
Cela SCiancone AGustafsson PHajdu ÁJia YKapus TKoshtenko MLewis WMao KMartac Dd'Amorim M(2024)Automated End-to-End Dynamic Taint Analysis for WhatsAppCompanion Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3663529.3663824(21-26)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663529.3663824
Nahian ADemsky BRodríguez GSadayappan PSukumaran-Rajam A(2024)FlowProf: Profiling Multi-threaded Programs using Information-FlowProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Compiler Construction10.1145/3640537.3641577(137-149)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640537.3641577
Sofaer RDavid YKang MYu JCao YYang JNieh JRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)RogueOne: Detecting Rogue Updates via Differential Data-flow Analysis Using Trust DomainsProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639199(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639199
Wang PLiu S(2024)Toward Pointer-Analysis-Based Vulnerability Discovery in Human–Machine Pair ProgrammingInternational Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering10.1142/S021819402450001334:05(751-774)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2024
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Lambers LSakizloglou LAl-Wardi OKhakharova T(2024)Taint Analysis for Graph APIs Focusing on Broken Access ControlGraph Transformation10.1007/978-3-031-64285-2_10(180-200)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
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Ahmed KWang YLis MRubin JChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)ViaLin: Path-Aware Dynamic Taint Analysis for AndroidProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616330(1598-1610)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
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Yuhala PFelber PGuiroux HLozi JTchana ASchiavoni VThomas G(2023)SecVProceedings of the 24th International Middleware Conference10.1145/3590140.3629116(207-219)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
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Wang CWang WYao PShi QZhou JXiao XZhang C(2023) Anchor: Fast and Precise Value-flow Analysis for Containers via Memory OrientationACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/356580032:3(1-39)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2023
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