Software Engineering Commons^™

Using Software-Based Decision Procedures To Control Instruction-Level Execution, William B. Kimball

AFIT Patents

An apparatus, method and program product are provided for securing a computer system. A digital signature of an application is checked, which is loaded into a memory of the computer system configured to contain memory pages. In response to finding a valid digital signature, memory pages containing instructions of the application are set as executable and memory pages other than those containing instructions of the application are set as non-executable. Instructions in executable memory pages are executed. Instructions in non-executable memory pages are prevented from being executed. A page fault is generated in response to an attempt to execute an …

Forensic Investigation Of Mysql Database Management System, Andrew C. Lawrence

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

For various reasons, circumstances might arise in which an investigator, enlisting the help of a system administrator, needs access to an instance of MySQL that is password protected by an individual system user. If this password is unknown and the user is uncooperative or unavailable, alternative means must be utilized to gain access to the data stored within the program. Two main approaches will be explored, each with its pros and cons. In one case, the password can be bypassed entirely, granting the investigator unfettered access to the program data. The second method allows a narrower look at only some …

Uos : A Resource Rerouting Middleware For Ubiquitous Games, Fabricio N. Buzeto, Miriam A M Capretz, Carla D. Castanho, Ricardo P. Jacobi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) relies on the computation distributed over the environment to simplify the tasks performed by its users. A smart space is an instance of a ubiquitous environment, composed of a dynamic and heterogeneous set of devices that interact to support the execution of distributed smart applications. In this context, mobile devices provide new resources when they join the environment, which disappear when they leave it. This introduces the challenge of self-adaptation, in which smart applications may either include new resources as they become available or replace them when they become unavailable. Ubiquitous games combine ubicomp and computer game …

Reconstructing Point Clouds Of Mid-Size Objects, Spencer Woodworth

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This project explores the use of an inexpensive 3D camera for the acquisition and reconstruction of mid-size objects. The disparity of objects between stereo image pairs are used to calculate depth and generate a depth map. The depth map is used to generate a point cloud representation of the object from a single view. Finally, point clouds are generated from several views of an object and then aligned and merged into a seamless 360-degree point cloud.

Object Detection Using Contrast Enhancement And Dynamic Noise Reduction, Justin Lee Baker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Edge detection is one of the most important steps a computer must perform to gain understanding of an object in a digital image either from disk or from video feed. Edge detection allows for the computer to describe the shape of the objects in an image and create a pixel boundary defining what is considered part of an object, and what is not. Cannys edge detection algorithm is one of the most robust and accurate of these edge detection algorithms. However, as with many algorithms in image processing, there are many cases where the algorithm does not perform as well …

Can Clustering Improve Requirements Traceability? A Tracelab-Enabled Study, Brett Taylor Armstrong

Master's Theses

Software permeates every aspect of our modern lives. In many applications, such in the software for airplane flight controls, or nuclear power control systems software failures can have catastrophic consequences. As we place so much trust in software, how can we know if it is trustworthy? Through software assurance, we can attempt to quantify just that.

Building complex, high assurance software is no simple task. The difficult information landscape of a software engineering project can make verification and validation, the process by which the assurance of a software is assessed, very difficult. In order to manage the inevitable information overload …

Dense Image Correspondence Under Large Appearance Variations, Linlin Liu, Kok-Lim Low, Wen-Yan Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper addresses the difficult problem of finding dense correspondence across images with large appearance variations. Our method uses multiple feature samples at each pixel to deal with the appearance variations based on our observation that pre-defined single feature sample provides poor results in nearest neighbor matching. We apply the idea in a flow-based matching framework and utilize the best feature sample for each pixel to determine the flow field. We propose a novel energy function and use dual-layer loopy belief propagation to minimize it where the correspondence, the feature scale and rotation parameters are solved simultaneously. Our method is …

Towards A Hybrid Framework For Detecting Input Manipulation Vulnerabilities, Sun Ding, Hee Beng Kuan Tan, Lwin Khin Shar, Bindu Madhavi Padmanabhuni

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Input manipulation vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection, Cross-site scripting, Buffer Overflow vulnerabilities are highly prevalent and pose critical security risks. As a result, many methods have been proposed to apply static analysis, dynamic analysis or a combination of them, to detect such security vulnerabilities. Most of the existing methods classify vulnerabilities into safe and unsafe. They have both false-positive and false-negative cases. In general, security vulnerability can be classified into three cases: (1) provable safe, (2) provable unsafe, (3) unsure. In this paper, we propose a hybrid framework-Detecting Input Manipulation Vulnerabilities (DIMV), to verify the adequacy of security vulnerability defenses …

Exposing And Mitigating Privacy Loss In Crowdsourced Survey Platforms, Thivya Kandappu, Vijay Sivaraman, Arik Friedman, Roksana Borell

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and Google Consumer Surveys can profile users based on their inputs to online surveys. In this work we first demonstrate how easily user privacy can be compromised by collating information from multiple surveys. We then propose, develop, and evaluate a crowdsourcing survey platform called Loki that allows users to control their privacy loss via atsource obfuscation.

Fundamental Limits On End-To-End Throughput Of Network Coding In Multi-Rate And Multicast Wireless Networks, Luiz Felipe Viera, Mario Gerla, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates the interaction between network coding and link-layer transmission rate diversity in multi-hop wireless networks. By appropriately mixing data packets at intermediate nodes, network coding allows a single multicast flow to achieve higher throughput to a set of receivers. Broadcast applications can also exploit link-layer rate diversity, whereby individual nodes can transmit at faster rates at the expense of corresponding smaller coverage area. We first demonstrate how combining rate-diversity with network coding can provide a larger capacity for data dissemination of a single multicast flow, and how consideration of rate diversity is critical for maximizing system throughput. Next …

Factors Influencing Research Contributions And Researcher Interactions In Software Engineering: An Empirical Study, Subhajit Datta, A. S. M. Sajeev, Santonu Sarkar, Nishant Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Research into software engineering (SE) education is largely concentrated on teaching and learning issues in coursework programs. This paper, in contrast, provides a meta analysis of research publications in software engineering to help with research education in SE. Studying publication patterns in a discipline will assist research students and supervisors gain a deeper understanding of how successful research has occurred in the discipline. We present results from a large scale empirical study covering over three and a half decades of software engineering research publications. We identify how different factors of publishing relate to the number of papers published as well …

Mapping The Invisible: A Framework For Tracking Covid-19 Spread Among College Students With Google Location Data, Prajindra Sankar Krishnan, Chai Phing Chen, Gamal Alkawsi, Sieh Kiong Tiong, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of social distancing policies have rapidly changed people's visiting patterns, as reflected in mobility data that tracks mobility traffic using location trackers on cell phones. However, the frequency and duration of concurrent occupancy at specific locations govern the transmission rather than the number of customers visiting. Therefore, understanding how people interact in different locations is crucial to target policies, inform contact tracing, and prevention strategies. This study proposes an efficient way to reduce the spread of the virus among on-campus university students by developing a self-developed Google History Location Extractor and Indicator software based …

Automatically Partition Software Into Least Privilege Components Using Dynamic Data Dependency Analysis, Yongzheng Wu, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The principle of least privilege requires that software components should be granted only necessary privileges, so that compromising one component does not lead to compromising others. However, writing privilege separated software is difficult and as a result, a large number of software is monolithic, i.e., it runs as a whole without separation. Manually rewriting monolithic software into privilege separated software requires significant effort and can be error prone. We propose ProgramCutter, a novel approach to automatically partitioning monolithic software using dynamic data dependency analysis. ProgramCutter works by constructing a data dependency graph whose nodes are functions and edges are data …

Tzuyu: Learning Stateful Typestates, Hao Xiao, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Shang-Wei Lin, Chengnian Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Behavioral models are useful for various software engineering tasks. They are, however, often missing in practice. Thus, specification mining was proposed to tackle this problem. Existing work either focuses on learning simple behavioral models such as finite-state automata, or relies on techniques (e.g., symbolic execution) to infer finite-state machines equipped with data states, referred to as stateful typestates. The former is often inadequate as finite-state automata lack expressiveness in capturing behaviors of data-rich programs, whereas the latter is often not scalable. In this work, we propose a fully automated approach to learn stateful typestates by extending the classic active learning …

Social-Loc: Improving Indoor Localization With Social Sensing, Jung-Hyun Jun, Yu Gu, Long Cheng, Banghui Lu, Jun Sun, Ting Zhu, Jianwei Niu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Location-based services, such as targeted advertisement, geo-social networking and emergency services, are becoming increasingly popular for mobile applications. While GPS provides accurate outdoor locations, accurate indoor localization schemes still require either additional infrastructure support (e.g., ranging devices) or extensive training before system deployment (e.g., WiFi signal fingerprinting). In order to help existing localization systems to overcome their limitations or to further improve their accuracy, we propose Social-Loc, a middleware that takes the potential locations for individual users, which is estimated by any underlying indoor localization system as input and exploits both social encounter and non-encounter events to cooperatively calibrate the …

From Rssi To Csi: Indoor Localization Via Channel Response, Zheng Yang, Zimu Zhou, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The spatial features of emitted wireless signals are the basis of location distinction and determination for wireless indoor localization. Available in mainstream wireless signal measurements, the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) has been adopted in vast indoor localization systems. However, it suffers from dramatic performance degradation in complex situations due to multipath fading and temporal dynamics.

Understanding The Genetic Makeup Of Linux Device Drivers, Peter Senna Tschudin, Laurent Reveillere, Lingxiao Jiang, David Lo, Julia Lawall

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Attempts have been made to understand driver development in terms of code clones. In this paper, we propose an alternate view, based on the metaphor of a gene. Guided by this metaphor, we study the structure of Linux 3.10 ethernet platform driver probe functions.

Mining Branching-Time Scenarios, Dirk Fahland, David Lo, Shahar Maoz

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specification mining extracts candidate specification from existing systems, to be used for downstream tasks such as testing and verification. Specifically, we are interested in the extraction of behavior models from execution traces. In this paper we introduce mining of branching-time scenarios in the form of existential, conditional Live Sequence Charts, using a statistical data-mining algorithm. We show the power of branching scenarios to reveal alternative scenario-based behaviors, which could not be mined by previous approaches. The work contrasts and complements previous works on mining linear-time scenarios. An implementation and evaluation over execution trace sets recorded from several real-world applications shows …

Got Issues? Who Cares About It? A Large Scale Investigation Of Issue Trackers From Github, Tegawende F. Bissyande, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang, Laurent Reveillere, Jacques Klein, Yves Le Traon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Feedback from software users constitutes a vital part in the evolution of software projects. By filing issue reports, users help identify and fix bugs, document software code, and enhance the software via feature requests. Many studies have explored issue reports, proposed approaches to enable the submission of higher-quality reports, and presented techniques to sort, categorize and leverage issues for software engineering needs. Who, however, cares about filing issues? What kind of issues are reported in issue trackers? What kind of correlation exist between issue reporting and the success of software projects? In this study, we address the need for answering …

Challenges And Opportunities In Taxi Fleet Anomaly Detection, Rijurekha Sen, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To enhance fleet operation and management, logistics companies instrument their vehicles with GPS receivers and network connectivity to servers. Mobility traces from such large fleets provide significant information on commuter travel patterns, traffic congestion and road anomalies, and hence several researchers have mined such datasets to gain useful urban insights. These logistics companies, however, incur significant cost in deploying and maintaining their vast network of instrumented vehicles. Thus research problems, that are not only of interest to urban planners, but to the logistics companies themselves are important to attract and engage these companies for collaborative data analysis. In this paper, …

Automatic Recommendation Of Api Methods From Feature Requests, Ferdian Thung, Shaowei Wang, David Lo, Julia Lawall

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Developers often receive many feature requests. To implement these features, developers can leverage various methods from third party libraries. In this work, we propose an automated approach that takes as input a textual description of a feature request. It then recommends methods in library APIs that developers can use to implement the feature. Our recommendation approach learns from records of other changes made to software systems, and compares the textual description of the requested feature with the textual descriptions of various API methods. We have evaluated our approach on more than 500 feature requests of Axis2/Java, CXF, Hadoop Common, HBase, …

A Scalable Approach For Malware Detection Through Bounded Feature Space Behavior Modeling, Mahinthan Chandramohan, Hee Beng Kuan Tan, Lionel C Briand, Lwin Khin Shar, Bindu Madhavi Padmanabhuni

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, malware (malicious software) has greatly evolved and has become very sophisticated. The evolution of malware makes it difficult to detect using traditional signature-based malware detectors. Thus, researchers have proposed various behavior-based malware detection techniques to mitigate this problem. However, there are still serious shortcomings, related to scalability and computational complexity, in existing malware behavior modeling techniques. This raises questions about the practical applicability of these techniques. This paper proposes and evaluates a bounded feature space behavior modeling (BOFM) framework for scalable malware detection. BOFM models the interactions between software (which can be malware or benign) and security-critical …

Constraint-Based Automatic Symmetry Detection, Shao Jie Zhang, Jun Sun, Chengnian Sun, Yang Liu, Junwei Ma, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present an automatic approach to detecting symmetry relations for general concurrent models. Despite the success of symmetry reduction in mitigating state explosion problem, one essential step towards its soundness and effectiveness, i.e., how to discover sufficient symmetries with least human efforts, is often either overlooked or oversimplified. In this work, we show how a concurrent model can be viewed as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), and present an algorithm capable of detecting symmetries arising from the CSP which induce automorphisms of the model. To the best of our knowledge, our method is the first approach that can automatically detect …

Next Generation Crystal Viewing Tool, Zach Schaffter, Gerhard Klimeck

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The science and engineering community is limited when it comes to crystal viewing software tools. Each tool lacks in a different area such as customization of structures or visual output. Crystal Viewer 2.0 was created to have all of these features in one program. This one tool simulates virtually any crystal structure with any possible material. The vtkvis widget offers users advanced visual options not seen in any other crystal viewing software. In addition, the powerful engine behind Crystal Viewer 2.0, nanoelectronic modeling 5 or (NEMO5), performs intensive atomic calculations depending on user input. A graphical user interface, or GUI, …

Automatic Recovery Of Root Causes From Bug-Fixing Changes, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Cell: A Compositional Verification Framework, Kun Ji, Yang Liu, Jun Sun, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong, Truong Khanh Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents CELL, a comprehensive and extensible framework for compositional verification of concurrent and real-time systems based on commonly used semantic models. For each semantic model, CELL offers three libraries, i.e., compositional verification paradigms, learning algorithms and model checking methods to support various state-of-the-art compositional verification approaches. With well-defined APIs, the framework could be applied to build customized model checkers. In addition, each library could be used independently for verification and program analysis purposes. We have built three model checkers with CELL. The experimental results show that the performance of these model checkers can offer similar or often better …

Control System Of An Atomic Layer Deposition (Ald) Machine, Nitin Vishnu Hegde

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Atomic Layer Deposition is one of the most efficient deposition processes for obtaining ultrathin films. The deposition by this process happens one atomic layer at a time. ALD is known for its precision and ability to develop quality films with great thickness control. ALD machines simultaneously control DC and AC currents, low pressure operations, temperature control and heating (up to 500'C), precision flow control, precision timing intervals for deposition (milli-second intervals) and constantly monitor temperature. Such a high control comes at a high price. Furthermore, at the university level, the capacity to modify or enhance a machine is critical but …

Clustering Algorithms For Maximizing The Lifetime Of Wireless Sensor Networks With Energy-Harvesting Sensors, Pengfei Zhang, Gaoxi Xiao, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Motivated by recent developments in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), we present several efficient clustering algorithms for maximizing the lifetime of WSNs, i.e., the duration till a certain percentage of the nodes die. Specifically, an optimization algorithm is proposed for maximizing the lifetime of a single-cluster network, followed by an extension to handle multi-cluster networks. Then we study the joint problem of prolonging network lifetime by introducing energy-harvesting (EH) nodes. An algorithm is proposed for maximizing the network lifetime where EH nodes serve as dedicated relay nodes for cluster heads (CHs). Theoretical analysis and extensive simulation results show that the proposed …

An Experimental Study For Inter-User Interference Mitigation In Wireless Body Sensor Networks, Bin Cao, Yu Ge, Chee Wee Kim, Gang Feng, Hwee-Pink Tan, Yun Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Inter-user interference degrades the reliability of data delivery in wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) in dense deployments when multiple users wearing WBSNs are in close proximity to one another. The impact of such interference in realistic WBSN systems is significant but is not well explored. To this end, we investigate and analyze the impact of inter-user interference on packet delivery ratio (PDR) and throughput. We conduct extensive experiments based on the TelosB WBSN platform, considering unslotted carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) with collision avoidance (CA) and slotted CSMA/CA modes in IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, respectively. In order to mitigate interuser interference, …

Todmis: Mining Communities From Trajectories, Siyuan Liu, Shuhui Wang, Kasthuri Jayarajah, Archan Misra, Rammaya Krishnan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing algorithms for trajectory-based clustering usually rely on simplex representation and a single proximity-related distance (or similarity) measure. Consequently, additional information markers (e.g., social interactions or the semantics of the spatial layout) are usually ignored, leading to the inability to fully discover the communities in the trajectory database. This is especially true for human-generated trajectories, where additional fine-grained markers (e.g., movement velocity at certain locations, or the sequence of semantic spaces visited) can help capture latent relationships between cluster members. To address this limitation, we propose TODMIS: a general framework for Trajectory cOmmunity Discovery using Multiple Information Sources. TODMIS combines …