Jack W. Davidson, Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia

For the past twenty years, our research has been driven by the need to analyze, understand, and transform software without access to source code. Through a series of research programs, including DARPA’s Self-Regenerative Systems (SRS), AFOSR’s Enterprise Health: Self-Regenerative Incorruptible Enterprise program, IARPA’s Securely Taking on New Executable Software of Uncertain Provenance (STONESOUP) program, DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC), and DARPA’s Cyber Fault-Tolerant Attack and Recovery program (CFAR), and others, we have developed novel techniques to analyze and transform binaries. This talk will retrospectively examine these efforts and our key contributions in binary analysis and rewriting, from early vulnerability discovery techniques to advanced automated program transformations. We will also discuss current binary analysis research areas, speculate on where binary analysis research is heading, and why it continues to be an important, well-funded and impactful research area.

Speaker's Biography: Jack W. Davidson is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Professor Davidson is a Fellow of the ACM and a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He served as an Associate Editor of ACM’s Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems for six years, and as an Associate Editor of ACM’s Transactions on Architecture and Compiler Optimizations for eight years. He served as Chair of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) from 2005 to 2007. He currently serves on the ACM Executive Council and is chair of ACM’s Digital Library Board that oversees the operation and development of ACM’s Digital Library.

View More Papers

podft: On Accelerating Dynamic Taint Analysis with Precise Path...

Zhiyou Tian (Xidian University), Cong Sun (Xidian University), Dongrui Zeng (Palo Alto Networks), Gang Tan (Pennsylvania State University)

Read More

SecuWear: Secure Data Sharing Between Wearable Devices

Sujin Han (KAIST) Diana A. Vasile (Nokia Bell Labs), Fahim Kawsar (Nokia Bell Labs, University of Glasgow), Chulhong Min (Nokia Bell Labs)

Read More

Rethinking Trust in Forge-Based Git Security

Aditya Sirish A Yelgundhalli (New York University), Patrick Zielinski (New York University), Reza Curtmola (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Justin Cappos (New York University)

Read More

Symbolic Path Tracing to Find Android Permission-Use Triggers

Kristopher Micinski (Haverford College), Thomas Gilray (University of Alabama, Birmingham), Daniel Votipka (University of Maryland), Michelle L. Mazurek (University of Maryland), Jeffrey S. Foster (Tufts University)

Read More