Abstract: When, during debugging, a program failure occurs, the location of the failure is determined. First the address in the stack related to the program failure is found. Then static analysis is performed in order to determine a possible culprit for the failure. For example, when a security cookie has been overwritten, indicating a probable overflow, the location of the security cookie on the stack is determined, and proximate storage structures (such as arrays) which may have overflowed onto the location of the security cookie are determined. Then static analysis is used to determine probable sources (e.g. functions or instructions in a function) for this error. In this way, the root cause of a buffer overflow or similar problem can be identified easily, rather than requiring extensive time and knowledge regarding the working of the compiler, the security cookie, the stack, static analysis, and the source code.

Abstract: A large portion of software bugs are related to hangs. Analyzing and diagnosing hang-related bugs involves capturing data from a hung program and extracting attributes from the captured data. Extracting attributes from the capture data provides a scheme to determine relevant characteristics of the hang. Moreover, the extracted attributes may be compared to known issues and, based on that comparison, a bug may be classified as known or unknown. Alternatively, triage may be performed on the client computing device in order to determine the potential cause of the hang event. Once the potential cause of the hang event has been determined, troubleshooting steps may be performed on the client computing device to quarantine it. Ultimately, if the hang-inducing bug is known, a user may be provided with a solution to the bug. Alternatively, if the bug is unknown, implementations of the invention send the captured data to be analyzed and fixed by the software's provider.