A (hopefully comprehensive and systematic) collection of research papers on static analyzers, including analyzing, testing, and verifying static analyzers. Feel free to make a contribution to this repository.
| 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2019 | Related Work |
Jiayi Wang, Yu Wang, Linzhang Wang, and Ke Wang. 2026. Bridging Coverage and Confidence: Reliable Static False Alarm Elimination via Input-Agnosticity. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. PLDI. https://doi.org/10.1145/3808301.
Zhuohang Liu, Zhi Wang, Haotong Liu, and Wanpeng Li. 2026. An Empirical Study on Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Python. In Proceedings of the 48th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026).
Maria Christakis, Anastasia Isychev, Samuel Pilz, Florian Tesarek, and Valentin Wüstholz. 2026. Testing Static Taint Analyzers with Equivalence Modulo Taint. In Proceedings of the 35th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2026). Artifact: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21266657.
- Testing Static Analyzers via Semantic-Preserving Mutators Learned from Real-World Refactoring Practice
Meilin Li, Kaixuan Li, Zifan Xie, Shiyu Qiu, Ming Wen, Maolin Sun, and Hongyu Zhang. 2026. Testing Static Analyzers via Semantic-Preserving Mutators Learned from Real-World Refactoring Practice. In Proceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2026). To appear.
Fangtian Zhong, Ollie Wold, and Joseph Windmann. 2026. Detecting Call Graph Unsoundness without Ground Truth. arXiv:2604.00885. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00885.
Miao Miao, Austin Mordahl, Dakota Soles, Alice Beideck, and Shiyi Wei. 2025. An Extensive Empirical Study of Nondeterministic Behavior in Static Analysis Tools. In Proceedings of the 47th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2025). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE55347.2025.00125.
Stefanos Chaliasos, Thodoris Sotiropoulos, Georgios-Petros Drosos, Charalambos Mitropoulos, Dimitris Mitropoulos, and Diomidis Spinellis. 2025. Validating Soundness and Completeness in Pattern-Match Coverage Analyzers. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 9, OOPSLA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3763171.
Yuan Li, Peisen Yao, Kan Yu, Chengpeng Wang, Yaoyang Ye, Song Li, Meng Luo, Yepang Liu, and Kui Ren. 2025. Understanding Industry Perspectives of Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Evaluation. Proc. ACM Softw. Eng. 2, FSE. https://doi.org/10.1145/3729404.
Chenyuan Yang, Zijie Zhao, Zichen Xie, Haoyu Li, and Lingming Zhang. 2025. KNighter: Transforming Static Analysis with LLMSynthesized Checkers. In ACM SIGOPS 31st Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP ’25), October 13–16, 2025, Seoul, Republic of Korea. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3731569.3764827
Zongze Jiang, Ming Wen, Ge Wen, Hai Jin. 2025. Fact-Aligned and Template-Constrained Static Analyzer Rule Enhancement with LLMs.
Elijah Nnorom, Md Basim Uddin Ahmed, Jiho Shin, Hung Viet Pham, and Song Wang. 2025. StaAgent: An Agentic Framework for Testing Static Analyzers. arXiv:2507.15892. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15892.
Huaien Zhang, Yu Pei, Shuyun Liang, Zezhong Xing, and Shin Hwei Tan. 2024. Characterizing and Detecting Program Representation Faults of Static Analysis Frameworks. In Proceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International
Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA ’24), September 16–20,
2024, Vienna, Austria. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/
10.1145/3650212.3680398
Kaixuan Li, Yue Xue, Sen Chen, Han Liu, Kairan Sun, Ming Hu, Haijun Wang, Yang Liu, and Yixiang Chen. 2024. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Smart Contracts: How Far Are We? Proc. ACM Softw. Eng. 1, FSE, Article 65 (July 2024), 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3660772.
Weigang He, Peng Di, Mengli Ming, Chengyu Zhang, Ting Su, Shijie Li, and Yulei Sui. 2024. Finding and Understanding Defects in Static Analyzers by Constructing Automated Oracles. Proc. ACM Softw. Eng. 1, FSE, Article 74 (July 2024), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3660781.
Huaien Zhang, Yu Pei, Shuyun Liang, and Shin Hwei Tan. 2024. Understanding and Detecting Annotation-Induced Faults of Static Analyzers. Proc. ACM Softw. Eng. 1, FSE, Article 33 (July 2024), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643759.
Wachiraphan Charoenwet, Patanamon Thongtanunam, Van-Thuan Pham, and Christoph Treude. 2024. An Empirical Study of Static Analysis Tools for Secure Code Review. In Proceedings of ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2024). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3650212.3680313.
David Kaindlstorfer, Anastasia Isychev, Valentin Wüstholz, and Maria Christakis. 2024. Interrogation Testing of Program Analyzers for Soundness and Precision Issues. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2024). ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3691620.3695034.
Markus Fleischmann, David Kaindlstorfer, Anastasia Isychev, Valentin Wüstholz, and Maria Christakis. 2024. Constraint-Based Test Oracles for Program Analyzers. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2024). ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3691620.3695035.
Han Cui, Menglei Xie, Ting Su, Chengyu Zhang, and Shin Hwei Tan. 2024. An Empirical Study of False Negatives and Positives of Static Code Analyzers From the Perspective of Historical Issues. arXiv:2408.13855. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13855.
Austin Mordahl, Zenong Zhang, Dakota Soles, and Shiyi Wei. 2023. ECSTATIC: An Extensible Framework for Testing and Debugging Configurable Static Analysis. In Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023). IEEE, 550–562. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00056.
Kaixuan Li, Sen Chen, Lingling Fan, Ruitao Feng, Han Liu, Chengwei Liu, Yang Liu, and Yixiang Chen. 2023. Comparison and Evaluation on Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools for Java. In Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 921–933. https://doi.org/10.1145/3611643.3616262.
Huaien Zhang, Yu Pei, Junjie Chen, and Shin Hwei Tan. 2023. Statfier: Automated Testing of Static Analyzers via Semantic-Preserving Program Transformations. In Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 237–249. https://doi.org/10.1145/3611643.3616272.
Han Liu, Sen Chen, Ruitao Feng, Chengwei Liu, Kaixuan Li, Zhengzi Xu, Liming Nie, Yang Liu, and Yixiang Chen. 2023. A Comprehensive Study on Quality Assurance Tools for Java. In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 285–297. https://doi.org/10.1145/3597926.3598056.
Junjie Wang, Yuchao Huang, Song Wang, Qing Wang. 2021. Find Bugs in Static Bug Finders. In Proceedings of The 30th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2022). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3524610.3527899.
Christian Klinger, Maria Christakis, and Valentin Wüstholz. 2019. Differentially Testing Soundness and Precision of Program Analyzers. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2019). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 239–250. https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.05033.
Papers whose subject is not a static analysis tool (and certainly not a SAST tool), but whose methodology transfers directly to testing static analyzers: the backends and libraries that analyzers are built on, and empirical studies of analyzer unsoundness and developer practice.
- Interrogation Testing of CHC Solvers
David Kaindlstorfer, Anastasia Isychev, Valentin Wüstholz, and Maria Christakis. 2026. Interrogation Testing of CHC Solvers. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2026). To appear.
Muhammad Numair Mansur, Valentin Wüstholz, and Maria Christakis. 2023. Dependency-Aware Metamorphic Testing of Datalog Engines. In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 236–247. https://doi.org/10.1145/3597926.3598052.
Muhammad Numair Mansur, Maria Christakis, and Valentin Wüstholz. 2021. Metamorphic Testing of Datalog Engines. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2021). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 639–650. https://doi.org/10.1145/3468264.3468573.
Muhammad Numair Mansur, Maria Christakis, Valentin Wüstholz, and Fuyuan Zhang. 2020. Detecting Critical Bugs in SMT Solvers Using Blackbox Mutational Fuzzing. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2020). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 701–712. https://doi.org/10.1145/3368089.3409763.
Alexandra Bugariu, Valentin Wüstholz, Maria Christakis, and Peter Müller. 2018. Automatically Testing Implementations of Numerical Abstract Domains. In Proceedings of the 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2018). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 768–778. https://doi.org/10.1145/3238147.3240464.
Maria Christakis, Peter Müller, and Valentin Wüstholz. 2015. An Experimental Evaluation of Deliberate Unsoundness in a Static Program Analyzer. In Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI 2015). Springer, 336–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46081-8_19.
Maria Christakis and Christian Bird. 2016. What Developers Want and Need from Program Analysis: An Empirical Study. In Proceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2016). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 332–343. https://doi.org/10.1145/2970276.2970347.
Contributions are welcome:
- Adding new papers
- Suggesting improvements
Maintained by Kaixuan Li.
This documentation is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal. Individual papers retain their original copyrights.