Runtime Controller Synthesis for Self-Adaptation: Be Discrete!
(Keynote 16 May)
by Sebastian Uchitel
Self-adaptation is often defined as the ability of systems to alter at runtime their behaviour in response to changes in their environment, capabilities and goals. In this talk I will argue that this definition is too broad and that it dilutes a very real need for a particular quality of today’s software systems. I will postulate that a more refined definition of adaptation should emphasise the need for systems to have the ability to react to changes that were originally unforseen at design time, and to provide assurances on the correctness of these adaptations. How can systems be designed to account for what is unforseen? I will argue that a key design decision for achieving self-adaptation is to endow systems with the capability of synthesising at runtime discrete event controllers. Indeed, reactive systems that are requirements and assumptions aware, if extended with run time controller synthesis capabilities are equipped with a powerful infrastructure towards achieving assured self-adaptation.
Short Bio: Sebastian Uchitel is a Professor at University of Buenos Aires, researcher at the Argentine national research agency, CONICET, and holds a Readership at Imperial College London. He received his undergraduate Computer Science degree from University of Buenos Aires and his Phd in Computing from Imperial College London. His research interests are in behaviour modelling, analysis and synthesis applied to requirements engineering, software architecture and design, validation and verification, and adaptive systems. Dr. Uchitel was associate editor of the Transactions on Software Engineering and is currently associate editor of the Requirements Engineering Journal and the Science of Computer Programming Journal. He was program co-chair of ASE’06 and ICSE’10, and will be General Chair of ICSE’17 to be held in Buenos Aires. Dr Uchitel has been distinguished with the Philip Leverhulme Prize, ERC StG, the Konex Foundation Prize and the Houssay Prize.
Self-managing Hacking Systems
(Keynote 17 May)
by Giovanni Vigna
Vulnerability analysis of binary programs has largely been a process that requires substantial human expertise, even when performed using sophisticated analysis tools. However, very recently there has been a push for completely autonomous hacking systems, which can find flaws, exploit them, and even provide patches, all without any human intervention. This talk presents recent advances in autonomous vulnerability analysis of binary programs, and provides an insider view of the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge, which puts completely self-managing systems against one another, in a “capture the flag” security competition with a first prize of 2 million dollars.
Short Bio: Giovanni Vigna is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the CTO of Lastline, Inc. His current research interests include malware analysis, web security, vulnerability assessment, and mobile phone security. He has been the Program Chair of the International Symposium on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID 2003), of the ISOC Symposium on Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS 2009), and of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in 2011. He is known for organizing and running an inter-university Capture The Flag hacking contest, called iCTF, that every year involves dozens of institutions around the world. In his free time, he leads Shellphish, the longest-running hacking team playing the DefCon CTF competition.