Welcome to ClueHunter’s documentation!

ClueHunter is an auxiliary tool for crash point reverse data flow analysis. It generate data flow graph according to the gdb debug log(C program source code level). It receives manually specified sink variables that cause the last line crash and perform interprocedural analysis on the log trace. For obtaining the auto-debug trace, the tool robot_dbg.exp in ClueHunter requires the program under debug to be compiled with profiled code information (gcc -g -save-temps operation). During the current develop stage, only command line program is supported.

Target Problem: Where does the bad data come from? And how?

A common question for program debugging is “Where is the bad data come from? And how?” In this case we need to analyse reversely from the crash or wrongly executed statement, trace the relative calculation, then infer and locate the wrong code logic. Slicing is an effective technique to prune away irrelative calculations. It help analyst to focus on the error relative code snipet. Visulizing the complex code logic as a colorful property graph is also preferable. In fact, we always use IDE or gdb to view the code snipets and call stacks to keep in mind the whole picture of the data flow, but few of them provide the trace visualization service. ClueHunter is then designed to relax our mind and help us to infer the executed data transform logic.

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