[PRL] Fwd: Mozilla Research Talks: Cindy Rubio González, Error Propagation Analysis

[David Herman]

Hi all,

We're starting a research talk series at Mozilla, and even though it's on the west coast, we'll be streaming it on the web (http://air.mozilla.org). Our first talk will be tomorrow (details below). I encourage anyone interested to tune in!

Thanks,
Dave

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Andreas Gal <gal at mozilla.com>
> Date: August 4, 2010 4:28:40 PM PDT
> To: all at mozilla.com
> Subject: Mozilla Research Talks: Cindy Rubio González, Error Propagation Analysis
> 
> 
> Join us for Mozilla's inaugural Research Talk with Cindy Rubio Gonzalez, followed by a Cantina with snack and drinks!
> 
> Speaker: Cindy Rubio González (University of Wisconsin)
> 
> Topic: Error Propagation Analysis for File Systems
> 
> Date: August 5, 2010 (tomorrow)
> Time: 2:30pm Pacific
> 
> Location: Mozilla, 650 Castro St, Mountain View, 2nd floor large conference room.
> 
> There will be a live broadcast at http://air.mozilla.org
> 
> Mozilla is hosting a Cantina event with drinks and snacks after the talk (4pm).
> 
> 
> 
> About Mozilla Research Talks:
> 
> Mozilla Research Talks is a new monthly speaker series hosted by Mozilla. All talks are open to the public and will be broadcasted live via http://air.mozilla.org.
> 
> Abstract:
> 
> Unchecked errors are especially pernicious in operating system file management code. Transient or permanent hardware failures are inevitable, and error-management bugs at the file system layer can cause silent, unrecoverable data corruption.  Furthermore, even when developers have the best of intentions, inaccurate documentation can mislead programmers and cause software to fail in unexpected ways. We propose an interprocedural static analysis that tracks errors as they propagate through file system code. Our implementation detects overwritten, out-of-scope, and unsaved unchecked errors. Analysis of four widely-used Linux file system implementations (CIFS, ext3, IBM JFS and ReiserFS), a relatively new file system implementation (ext4), and shared virtual file system (VFS) code uncovers 312 confirmed error propagation bugs. Our flow- and context-sensitive approach produces more precise results than related techniques while providing better diagnostic information, including possible execution paths that demonstrate each bug found. Additionally, we use our error-propagation analysis framework to identify the error codes returned by system calls across 52 Linux file systems. We examine mismatches between documented and actual error codes returned by 42 Linux file-related system calls. Comparing analysis results with Linux manual pages reveals over 1,700 undocumented error-code instances affecting all file systems and system calls examined.
> Bio:
> 
> Cindy Rubio González is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she works under the supervision of Prof. Ben Liblit. Her research area of interest is programming languages, with a specific focus on using static program analysis to find error-handling related bugs in systems software. She is an AAUW International Doctoral Fellow and has worked twice as a research intern with the Software Reliability Research group at Microsoft Research. Cindy earned her M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Saltillo Institute of Technology (Mexico). She also received a B.M. in Piano Performance from the Autonomous University of Coahuila (Mexico).
> 

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