• What is Static code analysis?
• Static verification vs. dynamic verification
• Types of static analysis
  • Data and Control Flow Analysis
  • Security Analysis
• Static Code Analysis Benefits
• Challenges / Considerations in Using Static Code Analysis
  • False Positives
  • False Negatives
• Static Code Analysis Tools
• Conclusion
• Reference

Today, developers can get feedback on a line of code’s correctness the second they type it into their code editor, thanks to innovations in the field of static code analysis. Static code analysis can identify and prevent issues early in the software development process, but not without risk of burning through resources. The static code analysis can be a valuable tool for improving the quality and reliability of software.

What is Static code analysis?

Static code analysis or Static analysis is a method of computer program debugging that is done by examining the code without executing the program. This means to analyze the source code for issues without executing it. This is in contrast to dynamic code testing, which launches the executable and verifies the correct behavior.

The process provides an understanding of the code structure and can help ensure that the code adheres to industry standards. Static analysis is used in software engineering by software development and quality assurance teams. Automated tools can assist programmers and developers in carrying out static analysis. The software will scan all code in a project to check for vulnerabilities while validating the code.

Static verification vs. dynamic verification

The principal advantage of static analysis is the fact that it can reveal errors that do not manifest themselves until a disaster occurs weeks, months or years after release. Nevertheless, static analysis is only a first step in a comprehensive software quality-control regime.

After static analysis has been done, dynamic analysis is often performed in an effort to uncover subtle defects or vulnerabilities. In computer terminology, static means fixed, while dynamic means capable of action and/or change. Dynamic analysis involves the testing and evaluation of a program based on execution. Static and dynamic analysis, considered together, are sometimes referred to as glass-box testing.

Types of static analysis

There are several static analysis methods an organization could use, which include:

Data and Control Flow Analysis

This technique involves tracking the flow of data through the code, in order to identify potential issues such as uninitialized variables, null pointers, and data race conditions. Control flow analysis is similar and helps identify bugs like infinite loops and unreachable code. Data analysis ensured that defined data is properly used while also making sure data objects are properly operating.

Security Analysis

Security static analysis involves checking the code for potential security vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows, cross-site scripting, and injection attacks. They can also scan your 3rd party dependencies for packages with known vulnerabilities and detect credentials checked into your source code.

Static application security testing (SAST) tools include:

• Microfocus
• Github Advanced Security

Static Code Analysis Benefits

• Improved code quality and reliability. Static analysis augments developers by helping catch issues early. The result is better, more reliable code.

• Early identification and prevention of issues. Rather than finding a bug when it already is causing customer issues, static analysis can help find them before even running the code the first time.

• Increased efficiency and cost savings. No need to keep rerunning tests in your CI/CD suite if developers can catch issues early with static analysis. This saves on cloud computing costs and speeds up development cadence.

Challenges / Considerations in Using Static Code Analysis

While Static Code Analysis helps teams catch issues earlier, it is not a perfect approach and can run into false positive, false negatives, and is limited by toolsets.

False Positives

If you ask any developer what they dislike about static analysis tools, you’ll hear one answer over and over again: False positives.

Static analyzers uses rulesets to determine findings in a line of code. However, they’re not perfect and frequently turn up results that aren’t actually issues in the context.

False Negatives

Software code can be complex and static analyzers might miss some king of scenario or flow. Therefore, you can’t rely on static analyzers to find 100% of the bugs you write.

Static Code Analysis Tools

Here are some of the widely used tools for static code analysis:

• SonarQube: A popular open-source static code analysis tool that supports a wide range of programming languages and integrates with various build and deployment tools.

• ESLint: An open source project to help find and fix problems in JavaScript code. If you’re using TypeScript, check out the typescript-eslint variant.

• FindBugs: An open-source static code analysis tool that identifies potential issues in Java code, including performance problems, security vulnerabilities, and coding standards violations.

Conclusion

Static analysis is an important tool in an organization’s arsenal to keep code quality up. It can reduce code defects and improve maintainability, but can also be rife with false positives and might require multiple tools to get the coverage your organization needs. Even with those issues, static analysis is an important aspect for any organization to deliver quality code.

Reference

• OWASP
• perforce

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