[PRL] Fwd: [temp] Seminars Digest, Vol 86, Issue 15

Thu Feb 18 09:09:15 EST 2010

Several interesting talks in this list...  --Mitch

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Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM
Subject: [temp] Seminars Digest, Vol 86, Issue 15
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Today's Topics:

  1. TALK:Thursday 2-25-10 The Analytical Challenge of Natural
     Algorithms (Csail Event Calendar)
  2. TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 MODERN EXPLOITATION AND MEMORY
     PROTECTION (Csail Event Calendar)
  3. TALK:Thursday 2-25-10 Quantification of colocalization and
     cross-talk        based on spectral angles (Csail Event Calendar)
  4. TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 Snugglebug: A Powerful Approach to
     Weakest   Preconditions (Csail Event Calendar)
  5. TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 7pm Eirik Bakke (Csail Event Calendar)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csail Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:01 -0500
Subject: TALK:Thursday 2-25-10 The Analytical Challenge of Natural
Algorithms

The Analytical Challenge of Natural Algorithms
Speaker: Bernard Chazelle
Speaker Affiliation: Princeton University
Host: Silvio Micali
Host Affiliation: CSAIL

Date: 2-25-2010
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Refreshments: 3:45 PM
Location: 32-123

Abstract:

What do Boston drivers have in common with migrating geese, flocking cranes,
flashing fireflies, and swarming ants? All of them are acting out a "natural
algorithm." Unlike their software engineered cousins, these algorithms have
been optimized over millions of years through natural selection. They do not
come neatly encoded in readable form, yet scientists have become experts at
modeling them. To call these dynamical systems "algorithms" is to suggest a
new way of studying them, which goes beyond numerical simulations and relies
on analytical tools from theoretical computer science. Can "algorithms
science" do for complex systems what classical math has done for physics? I
cannot answer this question but I can try to convince you why asking it is
not
completely ridiculous.

-----------------------------------------------------

Biography:

Bernard Chazelle is Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at
Princeton
University, where he has been on the faculty since 1986. He has held
research
and faculty positions at Carnegie-Mellon University, Brown University, Ecole
Polytechnique, Ecole Normale Superieure, University of Paris, INRIA, Xerox
Parc, DEC SRC, and NEC Research, where he was a Fellow for many years. He
received his Ph.D in computer science from Yale University in 1980. He is
the
author of the book "The Discrepancy Method."

Honors: Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
Member, European Academy of Sciences;
Fellow, World Innovation Foundation;
ACM Fellow;  Guggenheim Fellow.

Relevant URL(S):
For more information please contact: Colleen Russell, 3-0145,
Crussell at csail.mit.edu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csail Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:01 -0500
Subject: TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 MODERN EXPLOITATION AND MEMORY PROTECTION

MODERN EXPLOITATION AND MEMORY PROTECTION
Speaker: Alexander Sotirov
Host: Vijay Ganesh
Host Affiliation: MIT-CSAIL

Date: 2-18-2010
Time: 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM
Refreshments: 3:00 PM
Location: 32-D463, Star

ABSTRACT
The difficulty of exploiting memory corruption vulnerabilities has increased
significantly with the introduction of the exploitation mitigation features
in
modern operating systems. Stack cookies, non-executable memory and address
space layout randomization successfully prevent most attempts at direct
control flow modification in vulnerable applications. As a result, software
exploitation is much more difficult than it has been at any point in the
past.

This talk will present the challenges facing exploit developers today and
the
latest techniques for defeating the memory protection features in modern
operating systems. It will describe the current state of the art in
exploitation and outline the most promising directions for future
exploitation
research.

BIO
Alexander Sotirov is an independent security researcher with more than ten
years of experience with vulnerability research, reverse engineering and
advanced exploitation. His most recent work includes using chosen prefix MD5
collisions to create a rogue Certificate Authority, bypassing the
exploitation
mitigations on Windows Vista and developing the Heap Feng Shui browser
exploitation technique. His professional experience includes positions as a
security researcher at VMware and Determina. Currently he is working as an
independent security consultant in New York.

He is a regular speaker at applied security conferences around the world,
including CanSecWest, BlackHat and Recon. Alexander served as a program
chair
of the USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies and is one of the founders
of
the Pwnie Awards.

Relevant URL(S):
For more information please contact: Mary McDavitt, 617-253-9620,
mmcdavit at csail.mit.edu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csail Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:01 -0500
Subject: TALK:Thursday 2-25-10 Quantification of colocalization and
cross-talk based on spectral angles

Quantification of colocalization and cross-talk based on spectral angles
Speaker: Carolina Wahlby
Speaker Affiliation: Broad Institute
Host: Polina Golland
Host Affiliation: CSAIL

Date: 2-25-2010
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Location: 32-D507

Highly specific staining methods and fluorescent biological markers
emitting light at different wavelengths together with fluorescence
microscopy allow for detailed studies of the spatial distribution,
localization, and interaction of biomolecules.

Quantification of colocalization of biomolecules includes not only
calculating a global measure of the degree of colocalization within an
image, but also a classification of each image pixel as showing
colocalized signals or not.

Common methods for automated quantification of colocalization require
images where cross-talk has been eliminated by pre-processing, as they are
based on intensity thresholding. Such pre-processing typically requires
manual input.

I will present a novel, automated method for quantification of
colocalization and classification of image pixels based on hue rather than
intensity. The hue distribution is presented as an angle histogram created
by a series of steps that compensate for the quantization noise always
present in digital image data. Classification rules are thereafter based on
the shape of the angle histogram, and detection of colocalized signals is
thus only dependent on hue, making it possible to classify also
low-intensity objects in noisy images, and decouple image segmentation from
detection of colocalization.

Cross-talk will show up as shifts of the peaks of the histogram, and thus a
shift of the classification rules, making the method essentially
insensitive to cross-talk. The method can also be used to quantify and
compensate for crosstalk, independent of the microscope hardware.

Relevant URL(S):
For more information please contact: Polina Golland, x38005,
polina at csail.mit.edu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csail Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:01 -0500
Subject: TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 Snugglebug: A Powerful Approach to Weakest
Preconditions

Snugglebug: A Powerful Approach to Weakest Preconditions
Speaker: Manu Sridharan
Speaker Affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Host: Daniel Jackson
Host Affiliation: MIT-CSAIL

Date: 2-18-2010
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Patil/Kiva 32-G449

Abstract: Bug-finding tools that are based on approximate analysis often
report false positives. Burned enough by false positives, a skeptical
programmer wants to see convincing evidence that a bug report is indeed
feasible. Symbolic analysis can often help produce such evidence in the form
of a concrete test case that can reproduce a feasible bug. In this talk, I
will describe recent work my colleagues and I have done on symbolic analysis
of Java programs. In much of the talk, I will focus on the technology needed
to make symbolic analysis work effectively on real-world Java applications,
without requiring hand-written specifications of procedures, and without
inlining procedure calls away. I will report on our experience with building
a
bug report validator based on symbolic analysis, and discuss some open
research questions.

Bio: Manu Sridharan has been a research staff member at IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center since 2008. He received his PhD from the University of
California, Berkeley in 2007, and his dissertation work focused on
refinement-based program analysis tools. He has done research on a variety
of
topics in static analysis, dynamic analysis, and software engineering. His
current projects include work on symbolic analysis, security, and
refactoring
for multicores.

Relevant URL(S):
For more information please contact: Maria Rebelo, 3-5895, mr at csail.mit.edu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Csail Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:01 -0500
Subject: TALK:Thursday 2-18-10 7pm Eirik Bakke

Boston IEEE/ACM Joint Seminar Series 2009/2010
A Common Class of Business-Oriented Database Applications or: How I Hope to
Achieve what Microsoft Access Didn
Speaker: Eirik Bakke
Speaker Affiliation: M.I.T. CSAIL and EECS
Host: Peter Mager
Host Affiliation: p.mager AT computer.org

Date: 2-18-2010
Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: E51-315

If you've ever used a piece of highly domain-specific business software,
chances are it was nothing but a graphical front-end to some database.
However, while such systems can be extremely useful to the organizations
they
are tailored for, they take a very long time to develop relative to their
number of potential target users. Even with tools like FileMaker, 4D, or
Microsoft Access, developers must spend time on low-level tasks such as form
design, data binding, and hard-coding of common design patterns. Whereas
off-the-shelf SQL databases have sufficed as application back-ends for
decades, no similar universal component exists to provide the front-end and
middle tier.

In this talk I'll present my ideas for eliminating most of the work involved
in developing customized database applications, and show you some of my
current progress, including: a query language that formalizes database GUIs,
a
simple automatic layout generator, and a spreadsheet that understands
relationships.

Before fleeing to the US, Eirik evaded military service by spending a year
as
an end-user of an amazingly obscure (and aquatically themed) database system
made specifically for the administration of public Norwegian schools of
music,
theatre, and visual arts. Now safe in the hands of his advisors Prof. David
Karger and Prof. Rob Miller, Eirik is at MIT CSAIL working towards his
Master's Degree and, eventually/hopefully, his PhD.

This joint meeting of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society and
GBC/ACM will be held in MIT Room E51-315.  E51 is the Tang Center on the
corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Sts and Memorial Dr.; it's mostly used by
the
Sloan School. You can see it on this map of the MIT campus. Room 315 is on
the
3rd floor.

Up-to-date information about this and other talks is available online at
http://ewh.ieee.org/r1/boston/computer/ (also accessible via the alias
http://TinyURL/BostonComputer/). You can sign up to receive updated status
information about this talk and informational emails about future talks at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ieee-cs, our self-administered
mailing
list.

Relevant URL(S): http://ewh.ieee.org/r1/boston/computer/eiriktalk.html
For more information please contact: Dorothy Curtis, 617-253-0541,
dcurtis at csail.mit.edu

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