US 11,853,751 B2
Indirect function call target identification in software
Qiushi Wu, Minneapolis, MN (US); Zhongshu Gu, Ridgewood, NJ (US); and Hani Talal Jamjoom, Cos Cob, CT (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Dec. 13, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/644,021.
Prior Publication US 2023/0185568 A1, Jun. 15, 2023
Int. Cl. G06F 9/44 (2018.01); G06F 8/75 (2018.01); G06N 3/08 (2023.01)
CPC G06F 8/75 (2013.01) [G06N 3/08 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for indirect function call target identification in software, the method comprising:
determining a set of explicit data flows that pass a function address between software modules of a program using an explicit data dependency analysis;
generating a set of indirect function call targets from results of the explicit data dependency analysis and a dynamic execution analysis of the program; and
expanding the set of indirect function call targets by identifying similar target functions based on feature embeddings generated by a graph neural network.