An active approach to detect and defend against peer-to-peer botnets. The aim of this project is to develop an effective defence system to help organisations detect and defend against the peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets. If this research is accomplished successfully, it will be a big step forward in defeating this new but devastating malicious software widely utilised by Internet criminals and terrorists. The capability of a nation to defend against the P2P botnet attacks on its information infrastru ....An active approach to detect and defend against peer-to-peer botnets. The aim of this project is to develop an effective defence system to help organisations detect and defend against the peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets. If this research is accomplished successfully, it will be a big step forward in defeating this new but devastating malicious software widely utilised by Internet criminals and terrorists. The capability of a nation to defend against the P2P botnet attacks on its information infrastructure is central to the control of such attacks and hence to a nation's long-term survival and prosperity. The outcomes of this project can be directly used in Australian research communities and adopted by industry and government agencies.Read moreRead less
Developing an active defence system to identify malicious domains and websites. This project aims to develop an innovative active defence system to effectively identify malicious Internet domains and websites. It can secure the cyberspace that is essential to the daily work of Australian people, thus addresses a fundamental problem in safeguarding Australia from cyber crime and terrorism.
Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for Space. The processing speed, cost and flexibility requirements of future satellite-based applications cannot be satisfied with conventional radiation-hardened processors or custom integrated circuits. This project aims to develop key technology to enable off-the-shelf hardware to be customised for this use without compromising reliability. The project aims to develop the design methods needed to implement a given set of satellite applicatio ....Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for Space. The processing speed, cost and flexibility requirements of future satellite-based applications cannot be satisfied with conventional radiation-hardened processors or custom integrated circuits. This project aims to develop key technology to enable off-the-shelf hardware to be customised for this use without compromising reliability. The project aims to develop the design methods needed to implement a given set of satellite applications on a processing platform composed of application-specific soft processors and accelerator circuits hosted on conventional reconfigurable logic devices. Crucially, the solution architecture is expected to be sufficiently hardened against radiation-induced errors while meeting performance and circuit area constraints.Read moreRead less
Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security ....Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security analysis tool will allow software industries and enterprises (from national security, finance, banking to healthcare, retail, telecommunications) to test their mobile software effectively for code defects or security threats early at software development time at significantly reduced cost.Read moreRead less
Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to ....Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to specialised languages and other special-purpose compiler requirements. Customisable compilers are especially important to a country like Australia that has only limited resources for special purpose developments. Moreover, we will train students at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the area of programming languages and compilers.Read moreRead less
A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical ....A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical mass of expertise that bridges the physical sciences and computer science. The support provided to this proposal will allow multi-disciplinary teams to address scientific problems of significant scale.Read moreRead less
Improving the Performance, Scalability and Reliability of the Linux Operating System. This project aims to improve the scalability of the Linux operating system to large systems without loss of performance on small, embedded, systems. It will improve Linux robustness and security by de-privileging particularly error-prone code, such as device drivers, without undue impact on performance. It will improve configurability and ease tuning by making critical components, such as processor, disk and me ....Improving the Performance, Scalability and Reliability of the Linux Operating System. This project aims to improve the scalability of the Linux operating system to large systems without loss of performance on small, embedded, systems. It will improve Linux robustness and security by de-privileging particularly error-prone code, such as device drivers, without undue impact on performance. It will improve configurability and ease tuning by making critical components, such as processor, disk and memory schedulers, pluggable and their policies controllable at user level. It will investigate the feasibility and benefits of user-level file systems and processor and memory scheduling and will demonstrate that these can improve system reliability without undermining performance.Read moreRead less
Portable High-Performance Computing Based on Flattening and Fusion. We aim at simplifying the development and improving the portability of computing intensive applications, such as those from computational science and engineering, which are of growing scientific and economic relevance (e.g., drug synthesis, virtual wind tunnel, and geologic surveys). Our focus is on achieving portable high-performance for a particularly expressive high-level notation supporting irregular algorithms (like sparse ....Portable High-Performance Computing Based on Flattening and Fusion. We aim at simplifying the development and improving the portability of computing intensive applications, such as those from computational science and engineering, which are of growing scientific and economic relevance (e.g., drug synthesis, virtual wind tunnel, and geologic surveys). Our focus is on achieving portable high-performance for a particularly expressive high-level notation supporting irregular algorithms (like sparse matrices and hierarchical N-body codes). We will develop a set of program transformations and integrate them into a compiler implementing an aggressive fusion strategy optimising for the memory hierarchy. We do not propose a new programming language, but work within an existing one.Read moreRead less
Securing systems against code-reuse attacks with modular pointer analysis. This project aims to build secure defences against code-reuse attacks in large-scale C++ applications with millions of lines of code, by enforcing control flow integrity with modular pointer analysis. The state-of-the-art mitigation techniques that are deployed in mainstream computer operating systems can all be bypassed by advanced code-reuse attacks, resulting in security exploits in all major web browsers. The outcomes ....Securing systems against code-reuse attacks with modular pointer analysis. This project aims to build secure defences against code-reuse attacks in large-scale C++ applications with millions of lines of code, by enforcing control flow integrity with modular pointer analysis. The state-of-the-art mitigation techniques that are deployed in mainstream computer operating systems can all be bypassed by advanced code-reuse attacks, resulting in security exploits in all major web browsers. The outcomes of this project will be an exploit mitigation technology and an open-source tool that can significantly raise the bar against advanced code-reuse attacks, thereby providing a foundation for eliminating such security threats.Read moreRead less
Large-Scale Emulation for Enterprise Software Systems. This project will deliver a key future software technology for scalable quality assurance of highly interconnected enterprise IT systems, significantly contributing to more reliable and effective business operations in all industry sectors. It will fill a market gap and give Australian businesses a world competitive advantage. The project will generate world-leading research outcomes and further cement Australia’s leading research position i ....Large-Scale Emulation for Enterprise Software Systems. This project will deliver a key future software technology for scalable quality assurance of highly interconnected enterprise IT systems, significantly contributing to more reliable and effective business operations in all industry sectors. It will fill a market gap and give Australian businesses a world competitive advantage. The project will generate world-leading research outcomes and further cement Australia’s leading research position in enterprise software systems engineering. In particular, it will make major contributions to research into complex large-scale system interaction, system performance and scalability, and system behaviour modelling. The project also provides an excellent training environment for young researchers. Read moreRead less