6,527 research outputs found
Lockdown: Dynamic Control-Flow Integrity
Applications written in low-level languages without type or memory safety are
especially prone to memory corruption. Attackers gain code execution
capabilities through such applications despite all currently deployed defenses
by exploiting memory corruption vulnerabilities. Control-Flow Integrity (CFI)
is a promising defense mechanism that restricts open control-flow transfers to
a static set of well-known locations. We present Lockdown, an approach to
dynamic CFI that protects legacy, binary-only executables and libraries.
Lockdown adaptively learns the control-flow graph of a running process using
information from a trusted dynamic loader. The sandbox component of Lockdown
restricts interactions between different shared objects to imported and
exported functions by enforcing fine-grained CFI checks. Our prototype
implementation shows that dynamic CFI results in low performance overhead.Comment: ETH Technical Repor
Performance regression testing of concurrent classes
Developers of thread-safe classes struggle with two oppos-ing goals. The class must be correct, which requires syn-chronizing concurrent accesses, and the class should pro-vide reasonable performance, which is difficult to realize in the presence of unnecessary synchronization. Validating the performance of a thread-safe class is challenging because it requires diverse workloads that use the class, because ex-isting performance analysis techniques focus on individual bottleneck methods, and because reliably measuring the per-formance of concurrent executions is difficult. This paper presents SpeedGun, an automatic performance regression testing technique for thread-safe classes. The key idea is to generate multi-threaded performance tests and to com-pare two versions of a class with each other. The analysis notifies developers when changing a thread-safe class signif-icantly influences the performance of clients of this class. An evaluation with 113 pairs of classes from popular Java projects shows that the analysis effectively identifies 13 per-formance differences, including performance regressions that the respective developers were not aware of
Gauging the three-nucleon spectator equation
We derive relativistic three-dimensional integral equations describing the
interaction of the three-nucleon system with an external electromagnetic field.
Our equations are unitary, gauge invariant, and they conserve charge. This has
been achieved by applying the recently introduced gauging of equations method
to the three-nucleon spectator equations where spectator nucleons are always on
mass shell. As a result, the external photon is attached to all possible places
in the strong interaction model, so that current and charge conservation are
implemented in the theoretically correct fashion. Explicit expressions are
given for the three-nucleon bound state electromagnetic current, as well as the
transition currents for the scattering processes
\gamma He3 -> NNN, Nd -> \gamma Nd, and \gamma He3 -> Nd. As a result, a
unified covariant three-dimensional description of the NNN-\gamma NNN system is
achieved.Comment: 23 pages, REVTeX, epsf, 4 Postscript figure
Donaldson-Thomas invariants and wall-crossing formulas
Notes from the report at the Fields institute in Toronto. We introduce the
Donaldson-Thomas invariants and describe the wall-crossing formulas for
numerical Donaldson-Thomas invariants.Comment: 18 pages. To appear in the Fields Institute Monograph Serie
Multi-phonon scattering and Ti-induced hydrogen dynamics in sodium alanate
We use ab initio methods and neutron inelastic scattering (NIS) to study the
structure, energetics, and dynamics of pure and Ti-doped sodium alanate
(NaAlH_4), focusing on the possibility of substitutional Ti doping. The NIS
spectrum is found to exhibit surprisingly strong and sharp two-phonon features.
The calculations reveal that substitutional Ti doping is energetically
possible. Ti prefers to substitute for Na and is a powerful hydrogen attractor
that facilitates multiple Al--H bond breaking. Our results hint at new ways of
improving the hydrogen dynamics and storage capacity of the alanates.Comment: 5 pages, with 4 postscript figures embedded. Uses REVTEX4 and
graphicx macro
Gauging the spectator equations
We show how to derive relativistic, unitary, gauge invariant, and charge
conserving three-dimensional scattering equations for a system of hadrons
interacting with an electromagnetic field. In the method proposed, the
spectator equations describing the strong interactions of the hadrons are
gauged using our recently introduced gauging of equations method. A key
ingredient in our model is the on-mass-shell particle propagator. We discuss
how to gauge this on-mass-shell propagator so that both the Ward-Takahashi and
Ward identities are satisfied. We then demonstrate our gauging procedure by
deriving the gauge-invariant three-dimensional expression for the deuteron
photodisintegration amplitude within the spectator approach.Comment: 17 pages, REVTeX, epsf, 1 Postscript figur
The cap-snatching SFTSV endonuclease domain is an antiviral target
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) is a tick-borne virus with 12%-30% case mortality rates and is related to the Heartland virus (HRTV) identified in the United States. Together, SFTSV and HRTV are emerging segmented, negative-sense RNA viral (sNSV) pathogens with potential global health impact. Here, we characterize the amino-terminal cap-snatching endonuclease domain of SFTSV polymerase (L) and solve a 2.4-Ă… X-ray crystal structure. While the overall structure is similar to those of other cap-snatching sNSV endonucleases, differences near the C terminus of the SFTSV endonuclease suggest divergence in regulation. Influenza virus endonuclease inhibitors, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Baloxavir (BXA), inhibit the endonuclease activity in in vitro enzymatic assays and in cell-based studies. BXA displays potent activity with a half maximal inhibitory concentration (I
Local charge and spin currents in magnetothermal landscapes
A scannable laser beam is used to generate local thermal gradients in
metallic (Co2FeAl) or insulating (Y3Fe5O12) ferromagnetic thin films. We study
the resulting local charge and spin currents that arise due to the anomalous
Nernst effect (ANE) and the spin Seebeck effect (SSE), respectively. In the
local ANE experiments, we detect the voltage in the Co2FeAl thin film plane as
a function of the laser spot position and external magnetic field magnitude and
orientation. The local SSE effect is detected in a similar fashion by
exploiting the inverse spin Hall effect in a Pt layer deposited on top of the
Y3Fe5O12. Our findings establish local thermal spin and charge current
generation as well as spin caloritronic domain imaging
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