What IF Is Not Enough? Fixing Null Pointer Dereference with Contextual Check

Watch a technical conference presentation from USENIX Security '24 that introduces CONCH, an innovative approach to fixing null pointer dereference (NPD) errors through contextual checks. Learn how researchers from George Mason University and Tsinghua University developed a method that goes beyond function-level fixes by incorporating intraprocedural and interprocedural contextual information. Explore the four-step process involving NPD context graph construction, fixing position selection policies, intraprocedural state retrogression, and interprocedural state propagation. Discover how this approach achieves over 85% accuracy in patch generation, outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods in addressing system stability and program termination issues caused by NPD errors.