Kernel Code Bounds Checking Compiler

It is vital to ensure that kernel and OS code is bug free because, today, malicious hackers are specifically looking for bugs and other OS vulnerabilities to exploit in order to gain unauthorized access to computer systems. In this project we explore techniques to add bounds-checking and other memory pointer checking for kernel code. Using a modified gcc, we build kernel modules with additional checking in them. When run, this kernel modules also check for array bounds, illegal pointer arithmetic, and other invalid pointer uses that normally will not cause the kernel to panic (but may still corrupt kernel memory).

Conference and Workshop Papers:

# Title (click for html version) Formats Published In Date Comments
1 Extending GCC with Modular GIMPLE Optimizations PS PDF BibTeX Proceedings of the 2007 GCC Developers' Summit Jul 2007  
2 Efficient and Safe Execution of User-Level Code in the Kernel PS PDF BibTeX NSF Next Generation Software Workshop, in conjunction with IPDPS 2005 Apr 2005  
3 Cosy: Develop in User-Land, Run in Kernel-Mode PS PDF BibTeX 9th Workshop in Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS IX) May 2003  
4 High-Confidence Operating Systems PS PDF BibTeX Tenth ACM SIGOPS European Workshop Sep 2002  

Technical Reports:
# Title (click for html version) Formats Published In Date Comments
1 On the Role of Static Analysis in Operating System Checking and Runtime Verification PS PDF BibTeX Stony Brook U. CS TechReport FSL-05-01 May 2005 Ph.D. Research Proficiency Exam (RPE)
2 A System for Improving Application Performance Through System Call Composition PS PDF BibTeX Stony Brook U. CS TechReport FSL-03-03 Jun 2003 M.S. Thesis

Past Students:

# Name (click for home page) Program Period Current Location
1 Sean Callanan PhD Sep 2003 - Aug 2009 System Software Engineer, Pixel Hardware Group, Google (Mountain View, CA)
2 Nikolai Joukov PhD Jan 2004 - Dec 2006 Research Staff Member, Storage and Data Services Research group, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center (Hawthorne, NY)
3 Gopalan Sivathanu PhD Sep 2003 - May 2008 Software Engineer, Systems Infrastructure group, Google (Mountain View, CA)
4 Alexander Butler MS May 2003 - Dec 2003 Senior Member of Technical Staff, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) (Cherry Hill, New Jersey)
5 Mohan-Krishna Channa-Reddy MS May 2003 - Dec 2003 Software Developer, Bloomberg (New York, NY)
6 Salil Gokhale MS May 2003 - Dec 2003 Associate Research Staff Member, NEC Labs (Princeton, New Jersey)
7 Aditya Kashyap MS Sep 2003 - Dec 2004 Director, Fixed Income Financing, Barclays (New York, NY)
8 Abhishek Rai temp-PhD Sep 2003 - Aug 2005 Principal Engineer, ThoughtSpot Inc. (Palo Alto, CA)

Sponsors:

# Sponsor Amount Period Type Title (click for award abstract)
1 NSF CSR--AES $830,000 2005-2009 Lead-PI CSR--AES: Runtime Monitoring and Model Checking for High-Confidence System Software
2 NSF CAREER (NGS) $400,000 2002-2007 Sole PI CAREER: An In-Kernel Runtime Execution Environment for User-Level Programs
3 HP/Intel $131,529 2002-2003 Sole PI Linux Application Performance and File System Security
4 HP/Intel $22,490 2001-2002 Sole PI Linux Network Scalability and File System Reliability