CRETE: Versatile Binary-Level Concolic Testing

CRETE is a versatile binary-level concolic testing framework developed by the System Validation Lab at Portland State University. It can be applied to various kinds of software systems for test case generation and bug detection, including proprietary user-level programs, closed-source libraries, kernel modules, etc.

Highlights

• Open and extensible architecture: totally decoupled concrete and symbolic execution from virtual machine
• Standardized execution trace: llvm-based, self-contained, and composable
• Binary-level analysis: no source code or debug information required
• In-vivo analysis: use real full software stack and require no environment modeling
• Compact execution trace: selective binary-level tracing based on Dynamic Taint Analysis
• Trace/test selection and scheduling algorithms to improve effectiveness
• Simple usage model: no expertise required and accessible for general users

Publications

• [1] Bo Chen, Christopher Havlicek, Zhenkun Yang, Kai Cong, Raghudeep Kannavara and Fei Xie. "CRETE: A Versatile Binary-Level Concolic Testing Framework". In: The 21st International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE 2018), Thessaloniki, Greece, April 2018. [LINK] [PDF] [BIB]

Support

If you need help with CRETE, or want to discuss the project, you can open new GitHub issues, or contact the maintainer.

We also have a very brief user manual, which contains building instruction, running example, etc.