Wrapping Windows NT Binary Executables for Failure Simulation

In this short paper we describe a tool for testing the reliability and robustness of Windows NT soft ware applications under stressful environmental con ditions i e under system resource failure conditions Windows NT systems are increasingly being deployed in mission critical applications such as for command and control in US Navy ships However as re cently as July the Navy s Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown su ered a signi cant software problem in the Windows NT systems that control the smart ship that e ectively left the ship dead in the water The ship had to be towed to the Norfolk Naval ship yard because a database over ow error resulting from a divide by zero operation caused the ship s propul sion system to fail The research approach and prototype tool de scribed here are speci cally designed to analyze com mercial o the shelf COTS software for Win sys tems where source code is not released but binary executables are available for dynamic analysis The purpose of this research is to assess the robustness of software applications to failing system resources such as memory allocation functions and system I O func tions The tool gives an analyst the capability to ar ti cially simulate stressful conditions e g complete memory utilization that a program may experience during its lifetime using simple toggle functions