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Stuttgart, Universiẗat, Diplomarb., 2004.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 252-255).

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Coverage-guided fuzzing remains today's most successful approach for exposing software security vulnerabilities. Speed is paramount in fuzzing, as maintaining a high test case throughput enables more expeditious exploration of programs—leading to faster vulnerability discovery. High-performance fuzzers exploit the Linux kernel's customizability to implement process snapshotting: fuzzing-oriented execution primitives that dramatically increase fuzzing throughput. Unfortunately, such speeds remain elusive on Windows. The closed-source nature of its kernel prevents current kernel-based snapshotting techniques from being ported—severely limiting fuzzing's effectiveness on Windows programs. Thus, accelerating vetting of the Windows software ecosystem demands a fast, correct, and kernel-agnostic fuzzing execution mechanism. We propose making state snapshotting an application-level concern as opposed to a kernel-level concern via target-embedded snapshotting. Target-embedded-snapshotting combines binary- and library-level hooking to allow applications to snapshot themselves—while leaving both their source code and the Windows kernel untouched. Our evaluation on 10 real-world Windows binaries shows that target-embedded snapshotting overcomes the speed, correctness, and compatibility challenges of previous Windows fuzzing execution mechanisms (i.e., process creation, forkserver-based cloning, and in-memory looping). The result is 7–182x increased performance. / Master of Science / Fuzzing, a type of automated analysis, is one of the most effective techniques for finding security vulnerabilities in programs. It works by creating randomized inputs for the program being analyzed, and then observing the effect of processing those inputs on the program. If an input causes a crash or other behavior that could be exploitable by malicious actors, the input is saved so that a human analyst can reproduce this behavior later to find and fix the underlying bug. In short, fuzzing is a tool for automatically exposing weaknesses in programs, so they can be fixed before they are exploited or cause software malfunction. We propose an improved version of the current most effective fuzzer for Windows programs, which uses a new technique for managing program state that allows for better performance while maintaining correctness, and thus discovers more bugs.

The building sector is a one of modern society’s biggest users of energy. In turn, a building’s windows have a significant impact on its energy usage. Electrochromic windows have a thin film on one of the panes, designed to variably change the tint of the window. Thereby the solar heat gain, needed internal lighting and building energy utilization are varied. This thesis uses the simulation software IDA ICE 4.5 to simulate control scenarios for electrochromic windows. The goal is to examine how well this software can simulate the windows as well as to explore the potential of creating custom control algorithms for the windows. The impact of the control scenarios on the energy consumption of a building is then analyzed. The reference case for the simulations is a regular window with blinds, where the blinds are controlled with a built-in algorithm. The simulated control scenarios for the electrochromic windows were; the built-in algorithm, always off, always on, operative temperature, workplane illuminance, and light levels at the façade and window. In the simulation results the energy usage was slightly lowered with the electrochromic windows using the built-in control compared to the reference case. The custom algorithm that uses the light levels at the façade and window was designed to improve upon the built-in algorithm with additional adjustable settings. However, this custom algorithm produced similar results to the built-in algorithm and the majority of the additional settings had little impact on the energy usage. The other custom designed algorithms measured workplane illuminance and operative temperature to control the shading. These showed an overall decrease in the energy usage compared to the reference case. The IDA ICE software has potential for further simulations of a building’s energy usage while using electrochromic windows. Further investigation is needed to determine if the simulation resolution is high enough to accurately depict the effect these settings might have on the energy usage.

Back in May of 1990, Windows was brought into the arena of viable operating environment due to the significant improvements Windows 3.0 made over its predecessor, Windows 2.11. Windows 3.1, another significant upgrade, was released in May, 1992. As the popularity of Windows has soared, the number of applications developed specifically for Windows has also sky-rocketed. This has translated into a huge demand for Windows programmers.Writing Windows code, however, is never an easy task. In fact, Windows has the reputation of being easy for users but hard for programmers. The difficulties in learning to program in Windows plus the increasing number of beginning Windows programmers lead to an urgent need to provide a solution to the problem: How to ease the learning curve of Windows programming?This is thus the theme of the thesis: building a comprehensive on-line Windows programming tutorial that helps ease the daunting learning curve. Through the use of interesting illustrations, example programs with on-line explanations, this tutorial makes Windows programming easier and more fun to learn. / Department of Computer Science

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 27, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.