ASSURE: automatic software self-healing using rescue points

Software failures in server applications are a significant problem for preserving system availability. We present ASSURE, a system that introduces rescue points that recover software from unknown faults while maintaining both system integrity and availability, by mimicking system behavior under known error conditions. Rescue points are locations in existing application code for handling a given set of programmer-anticipated failures, which are automatically repurposed and tested for safely enabling fault recovery from a larger class of (unanticipated) faults. When a fault occurs at an arbitrary location in the program, ASSURE restores execution to an appropriate rescue point and induces the program to recover execution by virtualizing the program's existing error-handling facilities. Rescue points are identified using fuzzing, implemented using a fast coordinated checkpoint-restart mechanism that handles multiprocess and multi-threaded applications, and, after testing, are inject...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ASPLOS
• Authors: Stelios Sidiroglou, Oren Laadan, Carlos Perez, Nicolas Viennot, Jason Nieh, Angelos D. Keromytis
• Keywords: ASPLOS 2009, ASSURE Enabled Recovery, ASSURE Linux Prototype, ASSURE Restores Execution, Programming Languages