Flawfinder vs Ultimate Automizer
Flawfinder
dwheeler.comUltimate Automizer
ultimate-pa.orgSide by side
| Figure | Flawfinder | Ultimate Automizer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · C and C++ Static Analysis Tools | 8.1 (#9) | 6.7 (#20) |
| License | Flawfinder is released under GNU General Public License version 2 or later, with SPDX expression GPL-2.0+. | The core of Ultimate and many plugins are licensed under LGPLv3 with a linking exception to Eclipse RCP and Eclipse CDT. |
| Maintainer | David A. Wheeler says he created and maintains Flawfinder, a C/C++ security static analysis tool, since 2001. | Ultimate Automizer is maintained by Matthias Heizmann. |
| Purpose | Flawfinder examines C/C++ source code and reports possible security weaknesses sorted by risk level. | Ultimate Automizer is a software model checker that implements an approach based on automata. |
| Support | The project directs general questions to its mailing list and specific bugs or feature requests to git or the issue tracker on SourceForge. | The Automizer page invites University of Freiburg students interested in contributing to contact Matthias Heizmann or another Ultimate developer. |
Plans
In their own words
Flawfinder
Flawfinder is a free tool for finding possible security weaknesses in C and C++ source code. It compares source text with a built-in database of functions associated with security problems, generally disregarding comments and strings except for Flawfinder directives. Findings are ordered by risk, which depends on the function and its parameter values; the tool may reduce some false positives when it identifies a construct as not risky. Reports can be generated as text, HTML, CSV, or SARIF. The --patch option narrows findings to changed lines in a unified diff, with a one-line margin. Installation is documented through pip, source downloads, and distribution packages, and the tool requires Python 2.7 or Python 3. The project says it works on Unix-like systems, including GNU/Linux, and on Windows with Cygwin; direct Windows use has also been reported to work. Flawfinder is released under GPL-2.0+. It does not perform control-flow or data-flow analysis, so its output is an aid to review rather than a substitute for security knowledge or human judgment.
Ultimate Automizer
Ultimate Automizer has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.