An extensible framework for analysis of Java language-based security conformance. Java is a programming language and platform running on 3 billion devices. While Java provides a sandbox-based security architecture within the Java Class Library to protect systems from untrusted code downloaded from Internet, it cannot defend against implementation bugs that occur in the Java Class Library. The goal of this project is to provide a formal model of the Java security architecture, which can be used b ....An extensible framework for analysis of Java language-based security conformance. Java is a programming language and platform running on 3 billion devices. While Java provides a sandbox-based security architecture within the Java Class Library to protect systems from untrusted code downloaded from Internet, it cannot defend against implementation bugs that occur in the Java Class Library. The goal of this project is to provide a formal model of the Java security architecture, which can be used by program analysers to identify faulty or insufficient security checks in the Java Class Library that may lead to the sandbox being bypassed.Read moreRead less
Symbolic synthesis of knowledge-based program implementations. Systems with concurrent streams of activity are ubiquitous in computer hardware and software designs, but are conceptually complex, and fraught with faults and inefficiency. The project aims to address these difficulties by automating aspects of system design, to relieve the designer of the need to reason about complex patterns of information flow.
Towards automated and intelligent processing of web-based information. The successful outcome of this project will enhance Australia's research reputation in an important, practical area of ICT, will contribute to emerging Web standards, will produce frontier technology that will eventually be of benefit to Australian industry, and will train several postgraduate students.
Rule-based reasoning systems for complex and dynamic ontologies. The successful outcome of this project will enhance Australia's research reputation in an important, practical area of ICT, will contribute to emerging Web technologies that will eventually be of benefit to Australian industry, and will train several postgraduate students.
Relaxed correctness criteria for modern multi-core architectures. This project seeks to lay groundwork for fully exploiting the potential of multicore computers. Multicore computers have become ubiquitous over the last decade, now being standard in everything from laptops to mobile phones. Their benefits are clear – better performance leading to more sophisticated applications. Key to ensuring those benefits are complex, and often subtle, algorithms that exploit the parallelism that multicore co ....Relaxed correctness criteria for modern multi-core architectures. This project seeks to lay groundwork for fully exploiting the potential of multicore computers. Multicore computers have become ubiquitous over the last decade, now being standard in everything from laptops to mobile phones. Their benefits are clear – better performance leading to more sophisticated applications. Key to ensuring those benefits are complex, and often subtle, algorithms that exploit the parallelism that multicore computers offer. This project aims to lay foundations for extending those benefits to applications where high reliability is a concern. It plans to do so by developing theoretical results about the correctness of algorithms on standard multicore computers, and practical tools and techniques to help programmers of multicore computers to better understand the behaviour of their code.Read moreRead less
Investigation of a Dynamic Collaborative Framework for Multi-Modal Devices. Modern business and society increasingly call for agility through the rapid formation of groups and collaboration of individuals. Mobile computing devices have the potential to enable this collaboration. However this is currently unrealised; software is not keeping up with hardware. This project aims to investigate techniques and software tools to provide an adaptive framework for multimedia-rich applications, which seam ....Investigation of a Dynamic Collaborative Framework for Multi-Modal Devices. Modern business and society increasingly call for agility through the rapid formation of groups and collaboration of individuals. Mobile computing devices have the potential to enable this collaboration. However this is currently unrealised; software is not keeping up with hardware. This project aims to investigate techniques and software tools to provide an adaptive framework for multimedia-rich applications, which seamlessly support collaboration through multi-modal communications between heterogenous mobile devices. This combination of multimedia, smart devices and advanced communications has the potential to revolutionise many key industries by making information available and manipulable in new and better ways.Read moreRead less
Legacy2Service: A Novel, Model-Driven Technique for Re-engineering On-Demand, Software Services out of Legacy Applications. The proliferation of software-as-a-service applications from "dotcom" players is raising expectations that other industries will make their critical desktop and mainframe software available as web-enabled software-as-a-service and mobile "apps". However, manually re-engineering legacy software is notoriously costly and frequently unsuccessful. This project will make it easi ....Legacy2Service: A Novel, Model-Driven Technique for Re-engineering On-Demand, Software Services out of Legacy Applications. The proliferation of software-as-a-service applications from "dotcom" players is raising expectations that other industries will make their critical desktop and mainframe software available as web-enabled software-as-a-service and mobile "apps". However, manually re-engineering legacy software is notoriously costly and frequently unsuccessful. This project will make it easier and quicker to turn stand-alone programs into online services by automating much of the process. Specifically, it will develop tools: for analysing program code to identify points to implement service interfaces; for displaying existing and new code dependencies visually; and, to help design and implement new software layers that link legacy services to the web.Read moreRead less
Understanding concurrent programs using rely-guarantee thinking. Multi-core processors are standard in computers and devices (e.g. smart phones) but much of the software available for these machines is either unreliable or does not exploit the available hardware parallelism. This project will devise techniques for designing concurrent software that exploits these platforms while delivering dependable operation.
Software debuggers for next generation heterogeneous supercomputers. Supercomputing underpins a wide range of areas of importance to the Australian economy; mining, agriculture, engineering and medical research to name a few. It is of critical importance that software solutions in these areas behave correctly. This project will develop software tools and techniques to help locate errors in such applications.
Verified Emulation of Legacy Mission Computer Systems. Processor obsolescence is a serious maintenance problem for long-lived computer control systems in military aircraft and other critical applications. A promising solution is to interpose an emulator program between the original "legacy" software and a replacement processor. Unfortunately, no techniques exist for accurately verifying that this procedure preserves the original system's functional and timing behaviour. A particular challenge ....Verified Emulation of Legacy Mission Computer Systems. Processor obsolescence is a serious maintenance problem for long-lived computer control systems in military aircraft and other critical applications. A promising solution is to interpose an emulator program between the original "legacy" software and a replacement processor. Unfortunately, no techniques exist for accurately verifying that this procedure preserves the original system's functional and timing behaviour. A particular challenge is that processor emulations involve both legacy code and new subroutines, written in different programming languages. This project will enable verification of safety and mission-critical emulated systems by devising a multilingual modelling and reasoning formalism, based on program refinement theory.Read moreRead less