Dead code elimination based pointer analysis for multithreaded programs

This paper presents a new approach for optimizing multitheaded programs with pointer constructs. The approach has applications in the area of certified code (proof-carrying code) where a justification or a proof for the correctness of each optimization is required. The optimization meant here is that of dead code elimination. Towards optimizing multithreaded programs the paper presents a new operational semantics for parallel constructs like join-fork constructs, parallel loops, and conditionally spawned threads. The paper also presents a novel type system for flow-sensitive pointer analysis of multithreaded programs. This type system is extended to obtain a new type system for live-variables analysis of multithreaded programs. The live-variables type system is extended to build the third novel type system, proposed in this paper, which carries the optimization of dead code elimination. The justification mentioned above takes the form of type derivation in our approach.Comment: 19 page

Parallelization of a software based intrusion detection system - Snort

Computer networks are already ubiquitous in people’s lives and work and network security is becoming a critical part. A simple firewall, which can only scan the bottom four OSI layers, cannot satisfy all security requirements. An intrusion detection system (IDS) with deep packet inspection, which can filter all seven OSI layers, is becoming necessary for more and more networks. However, the processing throughputs of the IDSs are far behind the current network speed. People have begun to improve the performance of the IDSs by implementing them on different hardware platforms, such as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or some special network processors. Nevertheless, all of these options are either less flexible or more expensive to deploy. This research focuses on some possibilities of implementing a parallelized IDS on a general computer environment based on Snort, which is the most popular open-source IDS at the moment. In this thesis, some possible methods have been analyzed for the parallelization of the pattern-matching engine based on a multicore computer. However, owing to the small granularity of the network packets, the pattern-matching engine of Snort is unsuitable for parallelization. In addition, a pipelined structure of Snort has been implemented and analyzed. The universal packet capture API - LibPCAP has been modified for a new feature, which can capture a packet directly to an external buffer. Then, the performance of the pipelined Snort can have an improvement up to 60% on an Intel i7 multicore computer for jumbo frames. A primary limitation is on the memory bandwidth. With a higher bandwidth, the performance of the parallelization can be further improved

Parallelization of a software based intrusion detection system - Snort

Computer networks are already ubiquitous in people’s lives and work and network security is becoming a critical part. A simple firewall, which can only scan the bottom four OSI layers, cannot satisfy all security requirements. An intrusion detection system (IDS) with deep packet inspection, which can filter all seven OSI layers, is becoming necessary for more and more networks. However, the processing throughputs of the IDSs are far behind the current network speed. People have begun to improve the performance of the IDSs by implementing them on different hardware platforms, such as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or some special network processors. Nevertheless, all of these options are either less flexible or more expensive to deploy. This research focuses on some possibilities of implementing a parallelized IDS on a general computer environment based on Snort, which is the most popular open-source IDS at the moment. In this thesis, some possible methods have been analyzed for the parallelization of the pattern-matching engine based on a multicore computer. However, owing to the small granularity of the network packets, the pattern-matching engine of Snort is unsuitable for parallelization. In addition, a pipelined structure of Snort has been implemented and analyzed. The universal packet capture API - LibPCAP has been modified for a new feature, which can capture a packet directly to an external buffer. Then, the performance of the pipelined Snort can have an improvement up to 60% on an Intel i7 multicore computer for jumbo frames. A primary limitation is on the memory bandwidth. With a higher bandwidth, the performance of the parallelization can be further improved