published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Univ., Diss.--Koblenz-Landau, 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-164).

Chemnitz, University, Diss., 2003. / Text engl.

A reverse engineering toolbox containing measurement and disassembly tools needed to reverse engineer products in a high school engineering classroom would be helpful to many high school teachers. This study investigates and delineates the possibilities for such a toolbox in order to reverse engineer products in specific product domains. The study finds that certain tools are very useful for a wide variety of products; however, certain products require more specialized equipment not included in the toolbox. Recommendations are provided for generic and specialized equipment across product domains. This information will be helpful to high school teachers setting up reverse engineering projects and are deciding which tools and equipment are needed for the project. / text

Reverse engineering, the technique of using different tools and methodology to recreate an object or machine, is increasingly used in academia to solidify theoretical concepts as part of the Kolb learning cycle. This thesis aims to aid the use of reverse engineering as a pedagogical tool by developing a toolbox that can be used by students, and professionals alike, to properly reverse engineer a mechanical or electro-mechanical product. The development begins with an analysis of House of Quality matrices, a design methodology tool used by the industry to relate customer needs to engineering metrics and specifications. After a consolidated list of metrics was developed, the appropriate tools to properly quantify said metrics were researched and documented. Finally, a toolbox was created, with set goals in mind, and applied in two case studies to analyze its performance. Simultaneously, a portable dynamometer was developed, documented, and tested, with the goal of creating an inexpensive and accessible tool to measure the power output of fractional horsepower DC and AC motors. / text

This thesis introduces a new reverse engineering tool development practice by presenting the development of PowerExcelRigi, a reverse engineering tool built by leveraging Rigi and two selected host tools, PowerPoint and Excel. PowerPoint and Excel, both components of the Microsoft Office Suite, were selected as the host tools for this project because of their large user base, excellent enduser programmability and strong visualization capabilities. The original Rigi reverse engineering tool is used as the backend data engine to make use of its graph computing capabilities. Using PowerExcelRigi, users appreciate the familiar user interface of Excel and PowerPoint and at the same time benefit from the efficiency of Rigi. A custom toolbar in Excel provides a means to perform several reverse engineering tasks. This toolbar follows the standard Office user interface design and seamlessly integrates reverse engineering tasks into the Office environment. Reverse engineering tasks implemented include reusing given program artifacts from Rigi format program fact files, analyzing the artifacts and visualization the analysis results by using Excel, and then reproducing Rigi graphs in PowerPoint. Some Rigi scripts demonstrating typical Rigi functionality have been executed entirely through the Office interface without noticeably using Rigi. Excel and Rigi use a loose, file-based data interchange method to interoperate with each other. In comparison to a new tool with a dedicated user interface, PowerExcelRigi offers users the benefit of the cognitive support derived from their familiarity with the host tool, which decreases the learning barrier to using the new tool. This approach will ... 111 help solve the low adoption problem suffered by many reverse engineering tools. At the same time, development cost is significantly reduced by reusing Rigi, Excel and Powerpoint as existing components. We believe this to be a promising direction for the development of lower-cost, more adoptable low reverse engineering tools.

Reverse engineering (RE) tools can help people extract and understand high level abstractions of subject systems to facilitate software maintenance. However, many of these tools suffer adoption problems in industrial practice. Based on the assumption that industrial users are more likely to accept tools built on top of their current working platforms, the ACRE project (Adoption Centric Reverse Engineering) aims to attack the adoption problem by extending some commonly used tool platforms to implement RE features, rather than writing RE applications from scratch. As part of the ACRE project, my research aims to find a solution for building RE tools on top of a particular Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) host product-Lotus NotesIDomino and validating feasibility of this approach. My hypothesis is that it is practical to build tools on top of Lotus NotesIDomino to provide RE functionality and to exploit selected features of the host product, such as CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work) features, to facilitate RE tasks. In this thesis, I discuss the benefits and drawbacks of building tools with Lotus NotesIDomino. I propose a solution-the ACRENotes Framework consisting of three layers: Data, Control and Presentation. This framework provides a methodology for using Lotus NotesIDomino to store, manipulate and render RE data. It also offers a Notes template and reusable libraries as a starter kit. Based on this framework, I implemented the prototype application CREST (Collaborative Reverse Engineering Support Tool), which provides selected collaborative RE features. By comparing CREST with Rigi, a traditional stand-alone RE research tool, I discuss CREST'S advantages and disadvantages. Given this prototype tool and the lessons learned, I believe that building RE tools on top of the COTS product Lotus Notes/Domino is feasible and practical.

Engineering curricula for high schools has and will become increasingly important as STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) education matures and grows across the country. Active learning and hands-on pedagogies are critical to the development of these curricula, connecting students to the integrated topics using all senses and a commitment to self-learning. One approach to curriculum development for the Engineering, applied Science, and applied Mathematics in STEM is design-based learning (DBL). For this report, a particular methodology, known as Reverse Engineering and Redesign, is explored for DBL. The Reverse Engineering and Redesign process is used to redesign the current University of Texas’ UTeachEngineering reverse engineering curriculum. The UTeachEngineering curriculum is compared to the Engineering the Future, Ford PAS, The Infinity Project, and Project Lead the Way to determine the TEKS covered by each curriculum. The redesign focused on adding various writing and reflection exercises throughout the curriculum, and adding specification sheets and rubrics to all the student deliverables. The writing exercises are essential to allow the students to fully explore, comprehend, and appreciate the material. Specification sheets and rubrics are essential for the students to understand what is expected of them to attain mastery of the reverse engineering and redesign curriculum. / text

In this dissertation, we focus on dynamic analyses that examine the data handled by programs and operating systems in order to divine the undocumented constraints and implementation details that determine their behavior in the field. First, we introduce a novel technique for uncovering the constraints actually used in OS kernels to decide whether a given instance of a kernel data structure is valid. Next, we tackle the semantic gap problem in virtual machine security: we present a pair of systems that allow, on the one hand, automatic extraction of whole-system algorithms for collecting information about a running system, and, on the other, the rapid identification of “hook points” within a system or program where security tools can interpose to be notified of security-relevant events. Finally, we present and evaluate a new dynamic measure of code similarity that examines the content of the data handled by the code, rather than the syntactic structure of the code itself. This problem has implications both for understanding the capabilities of novel malware as well as understanding large binary code bases such as operating system kernels.