Selective Tracing for Dynamic Analyses

Reverse engineering based on dynamic analyses often uses method traces of the program under analysis. Recording all method traces during a program’s execution produces too much data, though for most analyses, a “slice” of all method traces is sufficient. In this paper, we present an approach to collect runtime information by selectively recording method calls during a program’s execution. Only relevant classes and methods are monitored to reduce the amount of information. We developed the JavaTracer which we use for the recording of method calls in Java programs.