Reverse Engineering Environment for Teaching Secure Coding in Java

Few toolsets for program analysis and Java learning system provide an integrated console, debugger, and reverse engineered visualizer. We present an interactive debugging environment for Java which helps students to understand the secure coding by detecting and visualizing the data flow anomaly. Previous research shows that the earlier students learn secure coding concepts, even at the same time as they first learn to write code, the better they will continue using secure coding practices. This paper proposes web-based Java programming environment for teaching secure coding practices which provides the essential and fundamental skills in secure coding. Also, this tool helps students to understand the data anomaly and security leak with detecting vulnerabilities in given code.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Application of Advanced Early Warning Systems with Adaptive Protection

This project developed and field-tested two methods of Adaptive Protection systems utilizing synchrophasor data. One method detects conditions of system stress that can lead to unintended relay operation, and initiates a supervisory signal to modify relay response in real time to avoid false trips. The second method detects the possibility of false trips of impedance relays as stable system swings “encroach” on the relays’ impedance zones, and produces an early warning so that relay engineers can re-evaluate relay settings. In addition, real-time synchrophasor data produced by this project was used to develop advanced visualization techniques for display of synchrophasor data to utility operators and engineers

An All-in-One Debugging Approach: Java Debugging, Execution Visualization and Verification

We devise a widely applicable debugging approach to deal with the prevailing issue that bugs cannot be precisely reproduced in nondeterministic complex concurrent programs. A distinct efficient record-and-playback mechanism is designed to record all the internal states of execution including intermediate results by injecting our own bytecode, which does not affect the source code, and, through a two-step data processing mechanism, these data will be aggregated, structured and parallel processed for the purpose of replay in high fidelity while keeping the overhead at a satisfactory level. Docker and Git are employed to create a clean environment such that the execution will be undertaken repeatedly with a maximum precision of reproducing bugs. In our development, several other forefront technologies, such as MongoDB, Spark and Node.js are utilized and smoothly integrated for easy implementation. Altogether, we develop a system for Java Debugging Execution Visualization and Verification (JDevv), a debugging tool for Java although our debugging approach can apply to other languages as well. JDevv also offers an aggregated and interactive visualization for the ease of users’ code verification

An Advanced, Three-Dimensional Plotting Library for Astronomy

We present a new, three-dimensional (3D) plotting library with advanced features, and support for standard and enhanced display devices. The library - S2PLOT - is written in C and can be used by C, C++ and FORTRAN programs on GNU/Linux and Apple/OSX systems. S2PLOT draws objects in a 3D (x,y,z) Cartesian space and the user interactively controls how this space is rendered at run time. With a PGPLOT inspired interface, S2PLOT provides astronomers with elegant techniques for displaying and exploring 3D data sets directly from their program code, and the potential to use stereoscopic and dome display devices. The S2PLOT architecture supports dynamic geometry and can be used to plot time-evolving data sets, such as might be produced by simulation codes. In this paper, we introduce S2PLOT to the astronomical community, describe its potential applications, and present some example uses of the library.Comment: 12 pages, 10 eps figures (higher resolution versions available from http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/s2plot/paperfigures). The S2PLOT library is available for download from http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/s2plo

Synthetic biology and microdevices : a powerful combination

Recent developments demonstrate that the combination of microbiology with micro-and nanoelectronics is a successful approach to develop new miniaturized sensing devices and other technologies. In the last decade, there has been a shift from the optimization of the abiotic components, for example, the chip, to the improvement of the processing capabilities of cells through genetic engineering. The synthetic biology approach will not only give rise to systems with new functionalities, but will also improve the robustness and speed of their response towards applied signals. To this end, the development of new genetic circuits has to be guided by computational design methods that enable to tune and optimize the circuit response. As the successful design of genetic circuits is highly dependent on the quality and reliability of its composing elements, intense characterization of standard biological parts will be crucial for an efficient rational design process in the development of new genetic circuits. Microengineered devices can thereby offer a new analytical approach for the study of complex biological parts and systems. By summarizing the recent techniques in creating new synthetic circuits and in integrating biology with microdevices, this review aims at emphasizing the power of combining synthetic biology with microfluidics and microelectronics

Localizing Defects in Multithreaded Programs by Mining Dynamic Call Graphs

Writing multithreaded software for multicore computers confronts many developers with the difficulty of finding parallel programming errors. In the past, most parallel debugging techniques have concentrated on finding race conditions due to wrong usage of synchronization constructs. A widely unexplored issue, however, is that a wrong usage of non-parallel programming constructs may also cause wrong parallel application behavior. This paper presents a novel defect-localization technique for multithreaded shared-memory programs that is based on analyzing execution anomalies. Compared to race detectors that report just on wrong synchronization, this method can detect a wider range of defects affecting parallel execution. It works on a condensed representation of the call graphs of multithreaded applications and employs data-mining techniques to locate a method containing a defect. Our results from controlled application experiments show that we found race conditions, but also other programming errors leading to incorrect parallel program behavior. On average, our approach reduced in our benchmark the amount of code to be inspected to just 7.1% of all methods