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Static Analysis

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security

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Synonyms

Static program analysis

Related Concepts

Dynamic Analysis; Static Analysis

Definition

Static analysis is the process of analyzing a program text in order to extract semantic information.

Background

Static analysis algorithms historically have come from compiler research and implementations. Static analysis algorithms extracted facts about a program that were used by the compiler to ensure correct and efficient translation from a source language to a destination language. One of the earliest examples is the 1957 IBM FORTRAN compiler, which included a number of static analyses for efficiently mapping user variables to registers, transforming loops to make execution more efficient, and ensuring a program is well typed [1].

Initial static analysis were intra-procedural analysis, meaning only a single procedure is analyzed at a time, and all procedures are analyzed independent of other procedures. Inter-proceduralanalysis — static analysis that considers the relationships between...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, 15213, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    David Brumley (Dr.)

Authors
  1. David Brumley
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Henk C. A. van Tilborg

  2. Center for Secure Information Systems, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030-4422, USA

    Sushil Jajodia

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Brumley, D. (2011). Static Analysis. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A., Jajodia, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5906-5_839

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