ojroques/staticdep

A tool to compute the dependencies among object files of a static library

staticdep

staticdep is a python tool to compute the dependencies among object files of a static library (.a). It has been created for the Forensics course at EURECOM during May 2018.

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • Analysis
  • Parsing
• JSON result
• Examples and results

Installation

Clone this repository wherever you want:

git clone https://github.com/ojroques/staticdep.git

Usage

There are two python scripts:

• staticdep.py: analyze a static library and save the result into a JSON file
• parsejson.py: parse the JSON analysis result and print useful information

To get help, you can use the option -h:

• python3 staticdep.py -h
• python3 parsejson.py -h

Note that those two tools have been implemented using python 3.6 on a Linux machine. Tests show that they run fine with python 2.7 but you should favor python 3+ anyway.

Analysis

To run the analysis on a static library libfoo.a (by default, the result is saved as libfoo.json where libfoo.a is located):

python3 staticdep.py libfoo.a

You can specify the output file with option -o:

python3 staticdep.py libfoo.a -o foo.json

A summary of the dependencies is printed when option -s is set:

python3 staticdep.py libfoo.a -s

Parsing

By default, parsejson.py prints object files listed in the static library that do not depend on any others. If analysis result is stored as libfoo.json:

python3 parsejson.py libfoo.json

You can also verify that a list of object files (in a separate txt file, one filename per line) is complete i.e. that there are no missing dependencies:

python3 parsejson.py libfoo.json -v object_list

If the static library contains any empty object files, you can print them with:

python3 parsejson.py libfoo.json -e

JSON result

Here is a sample of a JSON analysis result:

{
    "slib_analysis": true,
    "Static library": "libtest.a",
    "Content": {
        "file111.o": {
            "Dependencies": [
                "file11.o"
            ],
            "Defined symbols": [
                "printGreetings"
            ],
            "Unresolved local symbols": [
                {
                    "printName": "file11.o"
                }
            ],
            "Unresolved global symbols": [
                "GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE",
                "puts"
            ]
        },
        "file11.o": "EMPTY"
    }
}

It contains 3 main fields:

• slib_analysis is there to indicate that this file is the result of an analysis from staticdep.py
• Static library holds the name of the static library that has been analyzed
• Content lists each object file present in the static library

Then in Content, for each object file foo.o:

• If no symbol has been found, the object file is labelled EMPTY
• Dependencies is the list of object files from which foo.o depends on
• Defined symbols is the list of symbols defined in foo.o
• Unresolved local symbols lists symbols that are not defined in foo.o but are present in other object files from the static library
• Unresolved global symbols lists symbols that are not defined in foo.o nor in other object files from the static library

Examples and results

Test library and screenshots

A static library libtest.a to test the tools is provided in test/. It contains 5 object files:

• file1.o has no dependency
• file11.o and file12.o both depend on file1.o
• file111.o depends on file11.o
• file1X2.o depends on file11.o and file12.o

You can use the bash script test/runtest.sh to test all options at once. Below are some screenshots of the results.

Summary of analysis

List of independent object files

Verify that a list of object files is complete

Analysis results of some popular libraries

The tools have been tested on several popular static libraries. JSON results can be found in test/results. Here is a recap chart:

	Object files	Local symbols	Independent objects	Empty objects
libc.a	1690	3684	247 (15%)	84 (5%)
libcrypt.a	9	40	4 (44%)	0
libpthread.a	200	448	102 (51%)	20 (10%)
libutil.a	6	6	5 (83%)	0
libresolv.a	9	9	9 (100%)	0
librt.a	30	64	13 (43%)	4 (12%)
libnsl.a	39	146	6 (15%)	0
libdl.a	9	9	9 (100%)	0