<p>Today's consumer mobile platforms such as Android and iOS manage large ecosystems of untrusted third-party applications. It is common for an application to request one or more types of sensitive data. Unfortunately, users have no insight into how their data is used. Given the sensitivity of the data accessible by these applications, it is paramount that mobile operating systems prevent apps from leaking it.</p><p>This dissertation shows that it is possible to improve the soundness of dynamic information-flow tracking on a mobile device without sacrificing precision, performance, or transparency. We extend the state of the art in dynamic information-flow tracking on Android and address two major limitations: quantifying implicit flow leaks in Dalvik bytecode and tracking explicit flows in native code. Our goal is to deliver seamless end-to-end taint tracking across Dalvik bytecode and native code.</p><p>We propose SpanDex, a system that quantifies implicit flow leaks in Dalvik bytecode for apps handling password data. SpanDex computes a bound of revealed tainted data by recording the control-flow dependencies and for each password character, keeps track of the possible set of values that have been inferred. We also propose TaintTrap, a taint tracking system for native code in third party apps. We explore native taint tracking performance bottlenecks and hardware acceleration techniques to improve instrumentation performance.</p> / Dissertation

Communication by wireless technologies has seen a tremendous growth in the last decades. Mobile phone technology and wireless broadband solutions are rapidly replacing the last-hop wireline connectivity for telephones and Internet access.  Research has, however, shown that Internet traffic can experience a performance degradation over wireless compared to wired networks.  The inherent properties of radio communication lead to a higher degree of unreliability, compared to communication by wire or fiber.  This can result in an increased amount of transmission errors, packet loss, delay and delay variations, which in turn affect the performance of the main Internet transport protocols TCP and UDP.  This dissertation examines the cross-layer relationship between wireless transmission and the resulting performance on the transport layer. To this end, experimental evaluations of TCP and UDP over a wireless 4G downlink system proposal are performed.  The experiment results show, in a holistic scenario, that link-level adaptive modulation, channel prediction, fast persistent link retransmissions, and channel scheduling, enables the transport protocols TCP and UDP to perform well and utilize the wireless link efficiently.  Further, a novel approach is proposed where a modified TCP receiver can choose to accept packets that are corrupted by bit errors. Results from network emulation experiments indicate that by accepting and acknowledging even small amounts of corrupted data, a much higher throughput can be maintained compared to standard TCP.

The complexity among embedded systems has increased dramatically in recent years. During the same time has the capacity of the hardware grown to astonishing levels. These factors have contributed to that software has taken a leading role and time-consuming role in embedded system development.Compared with regular software development, embedded development is often more restrained by factors such as hardware performance and testing capability. A solution to some of these problem has been proposed and that is a concept called virtual platforms. By emulating the hardware in a software environment, it is possible to avoid some of the problems associated with embedded software development. For example is it possible to execute a system faster than in reality and to provide a more controllable testing environment. This thesis presents a case study of an application specific virtual platform. The platform is based on already existing embedded system that is located in an industrial control system.  The virtual platform is able to execute unmodified application code at a speed twice of the real system, without causing any software faults. The simulation can also be simulated at even higher speed if some accuracy losses are regarded as acceptable.The thesis presents some tools and methods that can be used to model hardware on a functional level in an software environment. The thesis also investigates the accuracy of the virtual platform by comparing it with measurements from the physical system. In this case are the measurements mainly focused of the data transactions in a controller area network bus (CAN).

This thesis presents a general simulation framework used for evaluating the performance of bilateral teleoperation systems under consistent and controllable network conditions. A teleoperation system is where an operator uses a master device to control a slave robot through a communication link. The communication link between the master and slave has an important impact on the system performance. Network emulation using ns-2 has been proposed as a way of simulating the communication link. It allows for the network conditions to be controlled and for repeatable results. The proposed setup was used to test the performance of a hydraulic actuator under various conditions of wired and wireless networks. Three control schemes were evaluated using various combinations of time delay and packet loss. The system was also tested simulating wireless communication between the master and slave to determine the effects of transmission power and distance on the performance of the system.

Over the last decade the internet has evolved at a tremendous rate, creating new technological and business opportunities. One such opportunity is real-time web-based collaborative music. Even though the internet has many advantages, one big disadvantage is the delay that is inherently present and that its behaviour cannot be predicted. The quality of a musician’s experience is negatively affected by network delay. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to quantify through opinion scores of musicians’ tolerances to an online jamming experience with various network delays. A low cost network emulator was developed using Linux and freeware utilities to enable inserting various delays. Subjective feedback through a questionnaire was obtained from the musicians, and also quantitative data was captured and analyzed. Our findings reveal that it is easier to play music than to just have a clapping rhythm between two musicians. Network delays of up to 50 ms could be tolerated for music sessions versus only 30 ms for clapping sessions.

Criminals use the anonymity and pervasiveness of the Internet to commit fraud, extortion, and theft. Botnets are used as the primary tool for this criminal activity. Botnets allow criminals to accumulate and covertly control multiple Internet-connected computers. They use this network of controlled computers to flood networks with traffic from multiple sources, send spam, spread infection, spy on users, commit click fraud, run adware, and host phishing sites. This presents serious privacy risks and financial burdens to businesses and individuals. Furthermore, all indicators show that the problem is worsening because the research and development cycle of the criminal industry is faster than that of security research. To enable researchers to measure botnet connection models and counter-measures, a flexible, rapidly augmentable framework for creating test botnets is provided. This botnet framework, written in the Ruby language, enables researchers to run a botnet on a closed network and to rapidly implement new communication, spreading, control, and attack mechanisms for study. This is a significant improvement over augmenting C++ code-bases for the most popular botnets, Agobot and SDBot. Rubot allows researchers to implement new threats and their corresponding defenses before the criminal industry can. The Rubot experiment framework includes models for some of the latest trends in botnet operation such as peer-to-peer based control, fast-flux DNS, and periodic updates. Our approach implements the key network features from existing botnets and provides the required infrastructure to run the botnet in a closed environment.

Machine emulation allows for the simulation of a real or virtual machine, the source machine, on various host computers. A machine emulator interprets programs that are compiled for the emulated machine, but normally at a much reduced speed. Therefore, in order to increase the executions peed of such interpreted programs, a machine emulator may apply different dynamic optimization techniques. In our research we focus on emulators for real machines, i.e. existing computer architectures, and in particular on dynamic binary translation as the optimization technique. With dynamic binary translation, the machine instructions of the interpreted source program are translated in to machine instructions for the host machine during the interpretation of the program. Both, the machine emulator and its dynamic binary translator a resource and host machine specific, respectively, and are therefore traditionally hand-written. In this thesis we introduce the Walkabout/Yirr-Ma framework. Walkabout, initially developed by Sun Micro systems, allows among other things for the generation of instrumented machine emulators from a certain type of machine specification files. We extended Walkabout with our generic dynamic optimization framework ‘Yirr-Ma’ which defines an interface for the implementation of various dynamic optimizers: by instrumenting a Walkabout emulator’s instruction interpretation functions, Yirr-Ma observes and intercepts the interpretation of a source machine program, and applies dynamic optimizations to selected traces of interpreted instructions on demand. One instance of Yirr-Ma’s interface for dynamic optimizers implements our specification-driven dynamic binary translator, the major contribution of this thesis. At first we establish two things: a formal framework that describes the process of machine emulation by abstracting from real machines, and different classes of applicable dynamic optimizations. We define dynamic optimizations by a set of functions over the abstracted machine, and dynamic binary translation as one particular optimization function. Using this formalism, we then derive the upper bound for quality of dynamically translated machine instructions. Yirr-Ma’s dynamic binary translator implements the optimization functions of our formal framework by modules which are either generated from, or parameterized by, machine specification files. They thus allow for the adaptation of the dynamic binary translator to different source and host machines without hand-writing machine dependent code.

For a long time, Roman ideal sculptures have primarily been studied within the tradition of Kopienkritik. Owing to some of the theoretical assumptions tied to this practice, several important aspects of Roman visual culture have been neglected as the overall aim of such research has been to gain new knowledge regarding assumed Classical and Hellenistic models. This thesis is a collection of three studies on Roman ideal sculpture. The articles share three general aims: 1. To show that the practice of Kopienkritik has, so far, not produced convincing interpretations of the sculpture types and motifs discussed. 2. To show that aspects of the methodology tied to the practice of Kopienkritik (thorough examination and comparison of physical forms in sculptures) can, and should, be used to gain insights other than those concerning hypothetical Classical and Hellenistic model images. 3. To present new interpretations of the sculpture types and motifs studied, interpretations which emphasize their role and importance within Roman visual culture. The first article shows that reputed, post-Antique restorations may have an unexpected—and unwanted—impact on the study of ancient sculptures. This is examined by tracing the impact that a restored motif ("Satyrs with cymbals") has had on the study of an ancient sculpture type: the satyr ascribed to the two-figure group "The invitation to the dance". The second article presents and interprets a sculpture type which had previously gone unnoticed—The satyrs of "The Palazzo Massimo-type". The type is interpreted as a variant of "The Marsyas in the forum", a motif that was well known within the Roman cultural context. The third article examines how, and why, two motifs known from Classical models were changed in an eclectic fashion once they had been incorporated into Roman visual culture. The motifs concerned are kalathiskos dancers, which were transformed into Victoriae, and pyrrhic dancers, which were also reinterpreted as mythological figures—the curetes. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Accepted. Paper 3: Accepted.</p>

Les réseaux tolérants aux délais sont aujourd’hui une alternative prometteuse aux réseaux traditionnels basés sur une infrastructure, encore peu déployée. Il existe plusieurs manières d’évaluer les performances d’un tel réseau : expériences de déploiement grandeur nature, modèles théoriques, simulation, émulation, jeu de traces. Chacune a ses avantages et inconvénients, tant en termes de coûts matériels, de réalisme, de temps nécessaire ou de capacité à gérer des noeuds réels. Cependant, aucune ne répond réellement aux besoins des développeurs d’applications. Dans cette thèse, nous nous focaliserons sur l’émulation. Dans une première partie, nous nous intéresserons aux entrées possibles pour un tel système. Nous proposons tout d’abord un modèle analytique pour prévoir le taux de pertes dans un réseau où les noeuds possèdent une mémoire limitée à un seul paquet. Ensuite, inspirés par les approches de mise à l’échelle de traces de la littérature, nous étudions les hypothèses prises pour l’analyse statistique de traces réelles, et montrons leur influence sur les lois de probabilité obtenues ainsi que les performances réseau observées. Nous étendons ensuite cette étude à la totalité du cycle de vie des traces réelles, en considérant la collecte de données, le filtrage et la mise à l’échelle de celles-ci. Dans une seconde partie, nous proposons une architecture possible d’un émulateur DTN hybride, c’est-à-dire comportant à la fois des noeuds réels sous forme d’intelliphones, et des noeuds virtuels. Le principal avantage ici est de pouvoir évaluer des applications réelles, éventuellement déjà existantes, dans un contexte DTN, et ce de manière aussi transparente que possible. Nous identifions les limites des approches existantes, ce qui nous permet d’établir une liste de spécifications pour notre système. Nous proposons ensuite un système, nommé HINT, permettant de remplir ces spécifications. L’ensemble est ensuite validé, puis appliqué à l’étude de quelques exemples. / Delay Tolerant Networks are currently a promising alternative to infrastructure-based networks, but they have not seen a wide deployment so far. There are several ways to evaluate the performance of such networks: field trials, theoretical models, simulation, emulation or replaying contact datasets. Each one has its advantages and drawbacks in terms of material cost, realism, required time or ability to manage real nodes. However, none of them effectively addresses the needs of application developers. In this thesis, we will focus on emulation. In a first part, we will deal with possible inputs for such a system. We first propose an analytical model to predict the drop ratio in a network where nodes have a one-packet buffer. Then, taking inspiration from trace scaling approaches from the literature, we study the hypotheses and assumptions taken for real traces statistical analyses, showing their impact on the obtained probability distributions and observed network performance metrics. We then extend this study to the whole life cycle of real traces, by considering data collection, filtering and scaling. In a second part, we propose a possible architecture for a hybrid DTN emulator, using both real nodes as smartphones and virtual nodes. The main advantage here is to be able to evaluate real applications, including preexisting ones, in a DTN context, doing so as transparently as possible. We identify the limitations of existing approaches, which helps us build a list of specifications for our system. Then, we propose a system called HINT which matches these specifications. HINT is validated, and applied to the study of some examples.

Um desafio fundamental em ICN (do inglês Information-Centric Networking) é desenvolver Content Stores (ou seja, unidades de cache) que satisfaçam três requisitos: espaço de armazenamento grande, velocidade de operação rápida e custo acessível. A chamada Hierarchical Content Store (HCS) é uma abordagem promissora para atender a esses requisitos. Ela explora a correlação temporal entre requisições para prever futuras solicitações. Por exemplo, assume-se que um usuário que solicita o primeiro minuto de um filme também solicitará o segundo minuto. Teoricamente, essa premissa permitiria transferir proativamente conteúdos de uma área de cache relativamente grande, mas lenta (Layer 2 - L2), para uma área de cache mais rápida, porém menor (Layer 1 - L1). A estrutura hierárquica tem potencial para incrementar o desempenho da CS em uma ordem de grandeza tanto em termos de vazão como de tamanho, mantendo o custo. Contudo, o desenvolvimento de HCS apresenta diversos desafios práticos. É necessário acoplar as hierarquias de memória L2 e L1 considerando as suas taxas de transferência e tamanhos, que dependem tanto de aspectos de hardware (por exemplo, taxa de leitura da L2, uso de múltiplos SSD físicos em paralelo, velocidade de barramento, etc.), como de software (por exemplo, controlador do SSD, gerenciamento de memória, etc.). Nesse contexto, esta tese apresenta duas contribuições principais. Primeiramente, é proposta uma arquitetura para superar os gargalos inerentes ao sistema através da paralelização de múltiplas HCS. Em resumo, o esquema proposto supera desafios inerentes à concorrência (especificamente, sincronismo) através do particionamento determinístico das requisições de conteúdos entre múltiplas threads. Em segundo lugar, é proposta uma metodologia para investigar o desenvolvimento de HCS explorando técnicas de emulação e modelagem analítica conjuntamente. A metodologia proposta apresenta vantagens em relação a metodologias baseadas em prototipação e simulação. A L2 é emulada para viabilizar a investigação de uma variedade de cenários de contorno (tanto em termos de hardware como de software) maior do que seria possível através de prototipação (considerando as tecnologias atuais). Além disso, a emulação emprega código real de um protótipo para os outros componentes do HCS (por exemplo L1, gerência das camadas e API) para fornecer resultados mais realistas do que seriam obtidos através de simulação. / A key challenge in Information Centric Networking (ICN) is to develop cache units (also called Content Store - CS) that meet three requirements: large storage space, fast operation, and affordable cost. The so-called HCS (Hierarchical Content Store) is a promising approach to satisfy these requirements jointly. It explores the correlation between content requests to predict future demands. Theoretically, this idea would enable proactively content transfers from a relatively large but slow cache area (Layer 2 - L2) to a faster but smaller cache area (Layer 1 - L1). Thereby, it would be possible to increase the throughput and size of CS in one order of magnitude, while keeping the cost. However, the development of HCS introduces several practical challenges. HCS requires a careful coupling of L2 and L1 memory levels considering their transfer rates and sizes. This requirement depends on both hardware specifications (e.g., read rate L2, use of multiple physical SSD in parallel, bus speed, etc.), and software aspects (e.g., the SSD controller, memory management, etc.). In this context, this thesis presents two main contributions. First, we propose an architecture for overcoming the HCS bottlenecks by parallelizing multiple HCS. In summary, the proposed scheme overcomes racing condition related challenges through deterministic partitioning of content requests among multiple threads. Second, we propose a methodology to investigate the development of HCS exploiting emulation techniques and analytical modeling jointly. The proposed methodology offers advantages over prototyping and simulation-based methods. We emulate the L2 to enable the investigation of a variety of boundary scenarios that are richer (regarding both hardware and software aspects) than would be possible through prototyping (considering current technologies). Moreover, the emulation employs real code from a prototype for the other components of the HCS (e.g., L1, layers management and API) to provide more realistic results than would be obtained through simulation.