Modern RESTful services expose RESTful APIs to integrate with diversified applications. Most RESTful API parameters are weakly typed, which greatly increases the possible input value space. This poses difficulties for automated testing tools to generate effective test cases to reveal web service defects related to parameter validation. We call this phenomenon the type collapse problem. To remedy this problem, we introduce FET (Format-encoded Type) techniques, including the FET, the FET lattice, and the FET inference to model fine-grained information for API parameters. Enhanced by FET techniques, automated testing tools can generate targeted test cases. We demonstrate Leif, a trace-driven fuzzing tool, as a proof-of-concept implementation of FET techniques. Experiment results on 27 commercial services show that FET inference precisely captures documented parameter definitions, which helps Leif to discover 11 new bugs and reduce   72%∼86%  fuzzing time as compared to state-of-the-art fuzzers.

Bootstrapping Automated Testing for RESTful Web Services

ETAPS is a confederation of several conferences, each with its own Programme Committee and Steering Committee. ETAPS is the most important and visible annual European event related to software sciences. Altogether, more than 500 researchers participate in this event every year. The confederated conferences cover various aspects of software systems, ranging from theoretical foundations to programming language developments, compiler advancements, analysis tools, formal approaches to software engineering, and security.

A gather.town room will be open during the whole conference, which can be found here:

https://gather.town/app/nSgVv0DDYoCkmdkP/ETAPS2021

Password: Luxembourg2021

This can be used to meet in the coffee breaks.

 PDF's of the papers are available on https://etaps.org/2021/programme