Lava : Large-scale Automated Vulnerability Addition

Evaluating and improving bug-finding tools is currently difficult due to a shortage of ground truth corpora (i.e., software that has known bugs with triggering inputs). LAVA attempts to solve this problem by automatically injecting bugs into software.

Every LAVA bug is accompanied by an input that triggers it whereas normal inputs are extremely unlikely to do so. These vulnerabilities are synthetic but, we argue, still realistic, in the sense that they are embedded deep within programs and are triggered by real inputs.

Our work forms the basis of an approach for generating large ground-truth vulnerability corpora on demand, enabling rigorous tool evaluation and providing a high-quality target for tool developers.

It is the product of a collaboration between MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NYU, and Northeastern University.

Also Read – LNAV : Log File Navigator 2020

Quick Start

On a system running Ubuntu 16.04, you should be able to just run python2 setup.py. Note that this install script will install packages and make changes to your system. Once it finishes, you should have PANDA installed into panda/build/ (PANDA is used to perform dynamic taint analysis).

Next, run init-host.py to generate a host.json. This file is used by LAVA to store settings specific to your machine. You can edit these settings as necessary, but the default values should work.

Project configurations are located in the target_configs directory, where every configuration is located at target_configs/projectname/projectname.json. Paths specified within these configuration files are relative to values set in your host.json file.

Finally, you can run ./scripts/lava.sh to actually inject bugs into a program. Just provide the name of a project that is in the target_configs directory, for example:

./scripts/lava.sh toy

You should now have a buggy copy of toy!

If you want to inject bugs into a new target, you will likely need to make some modifications. Check out How-to-Lava for guidance.

Authors

LAVA is the result of several years of development by many people; a partial (alphabetical) list of contributors is below:

  • Andy Davis
  • Brendan Dolan-Gavitt
  • Andrew Fasano
  • Zhenghao Hu
  • Patrick Hulin
  • Amy Jiang
  • Engin Kirda
  • Tim Leek
  • Andrea Mambretti
  • Wil Robertson
  • Aaron Sedlacek
  • Rahul Sridhar
  • Frederick Ulrich
  • Ryan Whelan
R K

Recent Posts

Understanding the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and How It Works

Introduction to the Model Context Protocol (MCP) The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open…

5 days ago

The file Command – Quickly Identify File Contents in Linux

While file extensions in Linux are optional and often misleading, the file command helps decode what a…

5 days ago

How to Use the touch Command in Linux

The touch command is one of the quickest ways to create new empty files or update timestamps…

5 days ago

How to Search Files and Folders in Linux Using the find Command

Handling large numbers of files is routine for Linux users, and that’s where the find command shines.…

5 days ago

How to Move and Rename Files in Linux with the mv Command

Managing files and directories is foundational for Linux workflows, and the mv (“move”) command makes it easy…

5 days ago

How to Create Directories in Linux with the mkdir Command

Creating directories is one of the earliest skills you'll use on a Linux system. The mkdir (make…

5 days ago