Enriching the Semantics of Information Flow Tracking with Source-Level Memory Allocation Event Logging

Information flow tracking (IFT) reveals how a program accesses its data throughout its execution. It can effectively detect the leakage of sensitive data or the corruption of critical data. Much of its strength depends on the semantics of the variables involved. Here, we have devised SQUIRREL, a configurable static code instrumentation and runtime logging tool, which enriches the semantics of information flow representation with detailed source-code level variable mappings. System administrators or intrusion detection systems (IDS) will have precise insight into the information flow, making it possible to detect attacks on zero-day vulnerabilities or application-specific logic loopholes. We evaluate SQUIRREL with various real-world programs and generate information flow with source-level variable mappings and discuss the efficiency of SQUIRREL concerning performance overhead and memory usage with existing profiling tools.