Taint analysis for automotive safety using the LLVM compiler infrastructure

Abstract: Software safety is getting more and more important in the automotive industry as mechanical functions are replaced by complex embedded computer systems. Errors  during development can lead to accidents and threaten users’ lives. The safety level of the software must therefore be monitored through Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASILs), according to the standard ISO 26262. This thesis presents the development of a static taint analysis tool using the LLVM compiler infrastructure in order to identify safety-critical components and analyze their dependencies in automotive software. The aim was to provide a useful visualization tool to help safety engineers in their work and save time during development. It was concluded that this static taint analysis tool can facilitate and improve the precision of the ASIL decomposition of automotive software.