COOPER: Testing The Binding Code Of Scripting Languages With Cooperative Mutation

Scripting languages like JavaScript are being integrated into commercial software to support easy file modification. For example, Adobe Acrobat accepts JavaScript to dynamically manipulate PDF files. To bridge the gap between the high-level scripts and the low-level languages (like C/C++) used to implement the software, a binding layer is necessary to transfer data and transform representations. However, due to the complexity of two sides, the binding code is prone to inconsistent semantics and security holes, which lead to severe vulnerabilities. Existing efforts for testing binding code merely focus on the script side, and thus miss bugs that require special program native inputs. In this paper, the researchers propose cooperative mutation, which modifies both the script code and the program native input to trigger bugs in binding code.