In this talk I will describe an alternative approach to analysis that meets the scalability challenge of modern systems. I will show how to leverage these new ideas in order to create a straightforward derivation process, thereby lowering verification costs, accommodating sophisticated language features and program properties, and reasoning about program components.
This work traces an arc of research that began with a very theoretical investigation of existing program analyses and developed into a new practical approach to the design of analysis and verification tools for higher-order program languages. To conclude, I will show how I am applying this approach to vet the security of Android applications.
David Van Horn is a Research Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, where he works in the Programming Research Lab. After receiving his PhD from Brandeis University in 2009, he was named a CRA Computing Innovation Fellow from 2009-2011. His research concerns all aspects of program analysis and its applications to programming languages, software engineering, verification, and security.
Currently his work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).