Ownership-based Alias Analysis for Securing Unsafe Rust Programs. This project aims to develop an ownership-based alias analysis as a complement to Rust's ownership type system for improving Rust's memory safety. This project, therefore, expects to deliver an alias analysis foundation that can provide stronger memory safety guarantees than the state-of-the-art in detecting memory-safety violations and security vulnerabilities in real-world Rust programs that use unsafe language features. The exp ....Ownership-based Alias Analysis for Securing Unsafe Rust Programs. This project aims to develop an ownership-based alias analysis as a complement to Rust's ownership type system for improving Rust's memory safety. This project, therefore, expects to deliver an alias analysis foundation that can provide stronger memory safety guarantees than the state-of-the-art in detecting memory-safety violations and security vulnerabilities in real-world Rust programs that use unsafe language features. The expected outcomes are a deployable ownership-based alias analysis in the Rust compiler and an industrial-strength open-source framework. These outcomes are expected to provide significant benefits in improving software quality and security in Rust, an emerging language that offers both performance and safety.Read moreRead less
Verified concurrent memory management on modern processors. This project aims to formally verify automatic memory managers in the presence of concurrency and the weakly ordered memory of modern processors. A new framework for verifying memory managers, reusable for a wide range of managed programming languages, target hardware, policies, and algorithms will be developed. Expected technical outcomes include improved techniques to ensure trustworthiness of the foundations on which critical softwar ....Verified concurrent memory management on modern processors. This project aims to formally verify automatic memory managers in the presence of concurrency and the weakly ordered memory of modern processors. A new framework for verifying memory managers, reusable for a wide range of managed programming languages, target hardware, policies, and algorithms will be developed. Expected technical outcomes include improved techniques to ensure trustworthiness of the foundations on which critical software infrastructures are built. This will significantly enhance the security of public and private cyber assets, and deliver applications that are more robust and trustworthy, across a range of critical infrastructure such as transportation, communication, energy and defence.Read moreRead less
Tuning parallel applications on software-defined supercomputers. Supercomputers are used by many Australian industries and laboratories to make better products and perform critical predictions, and it is essential that codes operate efficiently. This project aims to assist programmers in identifying performance bottlenecks in their code quickly and easily. The project expects to supersede the current methods, which are often complex and time-consuming, by developing innovative software tools and ....Tuning parallel applications on software-defined supercomputers. Supercomputers are used by many Australian industries and laboratories to make better products and perform critical predictions, and it is essential that codes operate efficiently. This project aims to assist programmers in identifying performance bottlenecks in their code quickly and easily. The project expects to supersede the current methods, which are often complex and time-consuming, by developing innovative software tools and techniques. The expected outcomes include novel software, verified by industry partners in real world case studies, ranging from life sciences to hypersonic transport. This should provide significant benefits, including the capacity for Australian industries to access world-class supercomputing technology.Read moreRead less
Detecting Asynchronous Event-Driven Order Violations in Android Apps. This project aims to develop an event-interleaving analysis for detecting asynchronous event-driven order violations in Android apps. This project therefore expects to deliver a program analysis foundation that can provide stronger security guarantees than the state of the art against advanced exploits that abuse such asynchronous vulnerabilities. The intended outcomes of this project are a new program analysis technology and ....Detecting Asynchronous Event-Driven Order Violations in Android Apps. This project aims to develop an event-interleaving analysis for detecting asynchronous event-driven order violations in Android apps. This project therefore expects to deliver a program analysis foundation that can provide stronger security guarantees than the state of the art against advanced exploits that abuse such asynchronous vulnerabilities. The intended outcomes of this project are a new program analysis technology and an industrial-strength open-source framework that can significantly raise the bar on mobile software quality and security for Android, the dominant smartphone platform accounting a current market share at 87.0% with 2.9 million apps at Google Play in December 2019.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220101057
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,140.00
Summary
Practical Automated Software Bug Fixing via Syntactic and Semantic Analyses. This proposal aims to advance the practical adoption of automated software bug repair, which has recently been adopted by industry, e.g., Facebook. It will produce novel methods that use mining software repositories, program analysis, and human-guided search to help automated repair to scale and be accurate. Expected outcomes include a publicly available automated bug repair framework. This project will help the softwar ....Practical Automated Software Bug Fixing via Syntactic and Semantic Analyses. This proposal aims to advance the practical adoption of automated software bug repair, which has recently been adopted by industry, e.g., Facebook. It will produce novel methods that use mining software repositories, program analysis, and human-guided search to help automated repair to scale and be accurate. Expected outcomes include a publicly available automated bug repair framework. This project will help the software industry deliver to users high quality software with improved reliability and safety, and increase education quality for students learning to code via automated feedback generation.Read moreRead less
Design and verification of correct, efficient and secure concurrent systems. This project aims to provide methods for the design and verification of correct, secure and efficient concurrent software that are scalable and mechanised. Computers with multiple processors are now the norm and are used in a wide range of safety, security and mission critical software applications such as transport, health and infrastructure. These multi-core architectures have the potential to lead to important effici ....Design and verification of correct, efficient and secure concurrent systems. This project aims to provide methods for the design and verification of correct, secure and efficient concurrent software that are scalable and mechanised. Computers with multiple processors are now the norm and are used in a wide range of safety, security and mission critical software applications such as transport, health and infrastructure. These multi-core architectures have the potential to lead to important efficiency gains, but can introduce complex and error-prone behaviours that cannot be managed using traditional software development approaches. This project will produce better, scalable and mechanised methods for the design and verification of such software which is expected to reduce the prevalence of failures in efficient, modern software.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230100197
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$438,000.00
Summary
In one zeptosecond: quantifying energy dissipation in heavy element fusion. This project aims to understand the process of energy dissipation in superheavy element fusion reactions. Using state-of-the art facilities unique to Australia, the first detailed measurements of the crucial early stages of these reactions will be made. This is expected to generate significant fundamental knowledge on why some superheavy element fusion reactions succeed, and why others fail. The outcomes are expected to ....In one zeptosecond: quantifying energy dissipation in heavy element fusion. This project aims to understand the process of energy dissipation in superheavy element fusion reactions. Using state-of-the art facilities unique to Australia, the first detailed measurements of the crucial early stages of these reactions will be made. This is expected to generate significant fundamental knowledge on why some superheavy element fusion reactions succeed, and why others fail. The outcomes are expected to significantly advance the fundamental understanding of nuclear reactions, and provide key guidance to international opportunities to create new superheavy elements and isotopes. Expected benefits include improving cancer treatments, understanding element abundance in the universe and improved safety in nuclear technologies.Read moreRead less