Invited Speakers
Cormac Flanagan: Dynamic Analyses for Reliable Concurrency
Multithreaded software systems effectively exploit multi-core and multi-processor machines. However developing reliable multithreaded software is extremely difficult, due to problems caused by unexpected interference between concurrent threads. Given their non-deterministic, scheduler-dependent nature, bugs caused by unintended thread interference are notoriously difficult to detect, reproduce, and eliminate. At the same time, their presence can have severe consequences. This talk explores dynamic analysis techniques to find concurrency errors in large-scale software systems, covering the theoretical underpinnings, implementation techniques, and reusable infrastructure used to build state-of-the-art analysis tools for verifying a variety of important concurrency properties, such as data race freedom, atomicity or serializability, and determinism.
Bio: Cormac Flanagan is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he leads the Software and Languages Research Group. Prior to joining UCSC in 2003, he was a Principal Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Corporation, at Compaq Computer Corporation, and at Digital Equipment Corporation. He received the B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from University College Dublin, Ireland in 1990; and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Rice University, in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Dr. Flanagan holds 6 U.S. patents and has published 85 journal and conference papers. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Most Influential PLDI Paper Award, as well as Distinguished Paper awards at ECOOP and ISSTA. His research has been supported by the NSF, DoD, Microsoft, IBM, UC and others.
Andreas Kuehlmann: Practical Aspects of Testing Your Code as You Develop It
There has been a significant research focus on new software verification technologies ranging from model checking to test automation. However, these efforts often ignore practical aspect such as usability and adoption. For development tools to be successful in practice they must provide sufficient value to developers for the amount of effort required to use them. In this talk we will discuss a number of technological and socialogical challenges to make testing tools work in development. The presentation will be based on our practical experience in developing and deploying static analysis technology to a large set of development organizations in various industries.
Bio: Andreas Kuehlmann is the Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Coverity. Prior to joining Coverity, Andreas served as Fellow and Director of Cadence Research Laboratories. Before that, Andreas was part of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He received the Dipl-Ing. degree and the Dr.-Ing. habil degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology at Ilmenau, Germany and is an IEEE Fellow.
Mike Walker: DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge (ISSTA slides)
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) intends to hold the Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC)-the first-ever tournament for fully automatic network defense systems. Top computer security experts test their skill head-to-head in competitive "Capture the Flag" contests. These contests provide a competition rating for the ability of experts to locate and comprehend security weaknesses. Cyber Grand Challenge will bring Capture-the-Flag to the realm of automation technologies, challenging unmanned systems that combine techniques such as Dynamic Analysis, Static Analysis, Symbolic Execution, Constraint Solving, Data Flow Tracking, Fuzz Testing, and a multitude of related technologies. Competitor systems will be challenged to autonomously reason about novel program flaws, prove the existence of flaws in networked applications, and formulate effective defenses. The performance of these automated systems will be evaluated through head-to-head tournament style competition.
Bio: Mike Walker joined DARPA as a Program Manager in January 2013. His research interests relate to machine reasoning about software in situ and the automation of application security lifecycles. Mr. Walker has extensive industry experience. Prior to joining DARPA he worked as a security software developer, enterprise security architect, and research lab leader.