Systems Architecture Commons^™

Fortifying The Seams Of Software Systems, Hong Jin Kang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

A seam in software is a place where two components within a software system meet. There are more seams in software now than ever before as modern software systems rely extensively on third-party software components, e.g., libraries. Due to the increasing complexity of software systems, understanding and improving the reliability of these components and their use is crucial. While the use of software components eases the development process, it also introduces challenges due to the interaction between the components.

This dissertation tackles problems associated with software reliability when using third-party software components. Developers write programs that interact with libraries through …

Online Spatio - Temporal Demand Supply Matching, Meghna Lowalekar

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The rapid growth of cities in developing world coupled with the increase in rural to urban migration have led to cities being identified as the key actor for any nation's economy. Shared mobility has become an integral part of life of people in cities as it improves efficiency and enhances transportation accessibility. As a result, the mismatch between the demand and supply of shared mobility resources has a direct impact on people's life. Thus, the goal of my dissertation is to develop solution strategies for these real-time (online) spatio-temporal demand supply matching problems for shared mobility resources which can enhance …

Scalable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning For Aggregation Systems, Tanvi Verma

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Efficient sequential matching of supply and demand is a problem of interest in many online to offline services. For instance, Uber, Lyft, Grab for matching taxis to customers; Ubereats, Deliveroo, FoodPanda etc. for matching restaurants to customers. In these systems, a centralized entity (e.g., Uber) aggregates supply and assigns them to demand so as to optimize a central metric such as profit, number of requests, delay etc. However, individuals (e.g., drivers, delivery boys) in the system are self interested and they try to maximize their own long term profit. The central entity has the full view of the system and …

Sensitive Behavior Analysis Of Android Applications On Unrooted Devices In The Wild, Xiaoxiao Tang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Dynamic analysis is widely used in malware detection, taint analysis, vulnerability detection, and other areas for enhancing the security of Android. Compared to static analysis, dynamic analysis is immune to common code obfuscation techniques and dynamic code loading. Existing dynamic analysis techniques rely on in-lab running environment (e.g., modified systems, rooted devices, or emulators) and require automatic input generators to execute the target app. However, these techniques could be bypassed by anti-analysis techniques that allow apps to hide sensitive behavior when an in-lab environment is detected through predefined heuristics (e.g., IMEI number of the device is invalid). Meanwhile, current input …

Empathetic Computing For Inclusive Application Design, Kenny Choo Tsu Wei

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The explosive growth of the ecosystem of personal and ambient computing de- vices coupled with the proliferation of high-speed connectivity has enabled ex- tremely powerful and varied mobile computing applications that are used every- where. While such applications have tremendous potential to improve the lives of impaired users, most mobile applications have impoverished designs to be inclusive– lacking support for users with specific disabilities. Mobile app designers today haveinadequate support to design existing classes of apps to support users with specific disabilities, and more so, lack the support to design apps that specifically target these users. One way to resolve …

Proactive And Reactive Resource/Task Allocation For Agent Teams In Uncertain Environments, Pritee Agrawal

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Synergistic interactions between task/resource allocation and multi-agent coordinated planning/assignment exist in many problem domains such as trans- portation and logistics, disaster rescue, security patrolling, sensor networks, power distribution networks, etc. These domains often feature dynamic environments where allocations of tasks/resources may have complex dependencies and agents may leave the team due to unforeseen conditions (e.g., emergency, accident or violation, damage to agent, reconfiguration of environment).

Virtualization-Based System Hardening Against Untrusted Kernels, Yueqiang Cheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Applications are integral to our daily lives to help us processing sensitive I/O data, such as individual passwords and camera streams, and private application data, such as financial information and medical reports. However, applications and sensitive data all surfer from the attacks from kernel rootkits in the traditional architecture, where the commodity OS that is supposed to be the secure foothold of the system is routinely compromised due to the large code base and the broad attack surface. Fortunately, the virtualization technology has significantly reshaped the landscape of the modern computer system, and provides a variety of new opportunities for …