https://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Nuno&feed=atom&limit=50&target=Nuno&year=&month=Navigators - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T05:26:23ZFrom NavigatorsMediaWiki 1.16.5https://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/ScholarshipsScholarships2019-11-08T11:29:02Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div><!-- ==Postdoc Fellowship of SEAL Project ==<br />
To be added<br />
--><br />
<br />
==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab and is aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for Applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are for the various steps of the applications are:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: 4 February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: 18 February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: 16 April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: 27 and 28 May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: 2 June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: from 2 to 30 June 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/incoming here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/ScholarshipsScholarships2019-11-08T11:27:22Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div><!-- ==Postdoc Fellowship of SEAL Project ==<br />
To be added<br />
--><br />
<br />
==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab and is aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for Applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are for the various steps of the applications are:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: 4 February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: 18 February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: 16 April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: 27 and 28 May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: 2 June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: from 2 to 30 June 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-04T11:39:59Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div><!-- ==Postdoc Fellowship of SEAL Project ==<br />
To be added<br />
--><br />
<br />
==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for Applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-04T11:37:45Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Postdoc Fellowship of SEAL Project ==<br />
To be added<br />
<br />
==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for Applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T10:36:12Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for Applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T10:35:49Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow; (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc. In addition, there is an award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T10:31:51Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
===Conditions for applying===<br />
<br />
<b>Who can apply:</b> For candidates applying to Portuguese centres, the candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline.<br />
<br />
<b>Fellowship amount:</b> The maximum total payment amount will be 122,592 euros, as broken down by: (i) Three annual payments of 34,800 euros. The amounts corresponding to the Social Security contributions payable by the employer (in this case, the host institution), as well as any other compulsory fee, whether current or that may be provided for in a future legal framework, will be deducted from the yearly gross amount of 34,800 euros to be received by the fellow. (ii) 3,564 euros per year, as an additional amount for conferences, courses, research stays, consumables, equipment, charges for the use of intellectual property, etc.; (iii) award a prize of 7,500 euros, which will be paid in the fourth year, should the fellow be able to deposit their thesis within 6 months after the third year of their fellowship has ended.<br />
<br />
<b>Dates:</b> The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T10:22:03Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
==Conditions for applying==<br />
<br />
For doing their research in Portuguese institutions, candidates must have resided in Portugal for less than 12 months in the last 3 years.<br />
<br />
The dates are based on the last year call, and we expect something similar for the 2020 call. As soon, we we get the detailed information, we will update the site:<br />
<br />
* Deadline for submitting applications: February 2020<br />
* Deadline for submitting the language certificate: February 2020<br />
* Notification of the shortlist results: April 2020<br />
* Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona: May 2020<br />
* Publication of the final list of selected candidates: June 2020<br />
* Matching research centre – fellow: June - Jule 2020<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Main_PageMain Page2019-11-02T10:05:21Z<p>Nuno: /* Announcements */</p>
<hr />
<div>We are the Navigators, a research team on distributed systems, their architectures, their algorithms, in their several skins: fault tolerance, real-time, security, and combinations thereof. <br />
<br />
We also pursue the quest for [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today|the right balance]] between science and technology. Some people say that Informatics (a.k.a. computer science and<br />
engineering) belongs to a new breed, of what are called techno-sciences.<br />
We believe that techno-scientists should accompany theoretical mastery with a deep knowledge of their environment — computer technology — as well as astro-physicists know the sky, or marine biologists know the sea.<br />
<br />
We study new theories to explain distributed systems, and new algorithms to take advantage from them. But we also like to do [[Software|proof-of-concept experiments]] about the theory we work on. We try that our [[Publications|papers and theses]] tell a good story as clearly as possible. We work hard for our demonstrations to be convincing and captivating. Because we believe [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|science is made for others]]. <br />
<br />
Our greatest riches are our [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|culture]], and our [[People|researchers and students]]. If you believe in the former, you can become one of the latter. Welcome!<br />
<br />
<div class="homepagebigbox"><br />
==Announcements==<br />
<br />
* (Nov/2019) The Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT have opened with three themes for PhD proposals from the Navigators professors!<br />
* (Oct/2019) The final demonstration and review of the DISIEM EU project, which we have lead for the past three years, went extremely well with praise for the outstanding results that were achieved!<br />
* (Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud EU project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
<!--<br />
Exemplos de anuncio de novo projeto:<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks. <br />
--><br />
<br />
<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Latest publications==<br />
{{#ask:[[Category:Publication]]<br />
|?#=Pagename<br />
|mainlabel=Pagename<br />
|?author<br />
|?abstract<br />
|?address<br />
|?award<br />
|?booktitle<br />
|?chapter<br />
|?doi<br />
|?edition<br />
|?editor<br />
|?institution<br />
|?intype<br />
|?journal<br />
|?key<br />
|?month<br />
|?number<br />
|?pages<br />
|?publisher<br />
|?school<br />
|?series<br />
|?title<br />
|?type<br />
|?url<br />
|?volume<br />
|?year<br />
|limit=10<br />
|format=template<br />
|template=PublicationRef<br />
|sort=NumPubDate<br />
|order=descending<br />
|headers=show<br />
|named args=yes<br />
|link=none<br />
|searchlabel=<br />
}}<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Events==<br />
<br />
What: '''Invited talk by Howie Xu (Silicon Valley technologist, entrepreneur, and investor; founder and former lead of VMware Networking unit)''' <br/> <br />
When: '''Tue 2019-Oct-02, 2pm''' <br/><br />
Where: '''Room 6.2.56 @ FCUL'''<br/><br />
Sponsor: '''uPVN project, FCT ref. PTDC/CCI-INF/30340/2017'''<br/><br />
<br />
<!--<br />
[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks] <br />
What: [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks#slNT20171024 NavTalk], When: '''Thu 2018-Sep-20, 12:00am''', Where: '''room 6.3.38''' <br/><br />
{| style="border-spacing: 5px; text-align: left; "<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Alysson_Bessani | Alysson Bessani]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''SMaRtChain: A Principled Design for a New Generation of Blockchains'''<br />
|-<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Rui_Miguel | Rui Miguel]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''Named Data Networking with Programmable Switches '''<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
''('''Summer break -- No Navtalk''')''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Navtalk_Events Past Navtalk Events]<br />
--></div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Main_PageMain Page2019-11-02T10:03:58Z<p>Nuno: /* Announcements */</p>
<hr />
<div>We are the Navigators, a research team on distributed systems, their architectures, their algorithms, in their several skins: fault tolerance, real-time, security, and combinations thereof. <br />
<br />
We also pursue the quest for [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today|the right balance]] between science and technology. Some people say that Informatics (a.k.a. computer science and<br />
engineering) belongs to a new breed, of what are called techno-sciences.<br />
We believe that techno-scientists should accompany theoretical mastery with a deep knowledge of their environment — computer technology — as well as astro-physicists know the sky, or marine biologists know the sea.<br />
<br />
We study new theories to explain distributed systems, and new algorithms to take advantage from them. But we also like to do [[Software|proof-of-concept experiments]] about the theory we work on. We try that our [[Publications|papers and theses]] tell a good story as clearly as possible. We work hard for our demonstrations to be convincing and captivating. Because we believe [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|science is made for others]]. <br />
<br />
Our greatest riches are our [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|culture]], and our [[People|researchers and students]]. If you believe in the former, you can become one of the latter. Welcome!<br />
<br />
<div class="homepagebigbox"><br />
==Announcements==<br />
<br />
* (Nov/2019) The Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT have opened with three themes for PhD proposals from the Navigators team!<br />
* (Oct/2019) The final demonstration and review of the DISIEM EU project, which we have lead for the past three years, went extremely well with praise for the excellent results that were achieved!<br />
* (Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud EU project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
<!--<br />
Exemplos de anuncio de novo projeto:<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks. <br />
--><br />
<br />
<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Latest publications==<br />
{{#ask:[[Category:Publication]]<br />
|?#=Pagename<br />
|mainlabel=Pagename<br />
|?author<br />
|?abstract<br />
|?address<br />
|?award<br />
|?booktitle<br />
|?chapter<br />
|?doi<br />
|?edition<br />
|?editor<br />
|?institution<br />
|?intype<br />
|?journal<br />
|?key<br />
|?month<br />
|?number<br />
|?pages<br />
|?publisher<br />
|?school<br />
|?series<br />
|?title<br />
|?type<br />
|?url<br />
|?volume<br />
|?year<br />
|limit=10<br />
|format=template<br />
|template=PublicationRef<br />
|sort=NumPubDate<br />
|order=descending<br />
|headers=show<br />
|named args=yes<br />
|link=none<br />
|searchlabel=<br />
}}<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Events==<br />
<br />
What: '''Invited talk by Howie Xu (Silicon Valley technologist, entrepreneur, and investor; founder and former lead of VMware Networking unit)''' <br/> <br />
When: '''Tue 2019-Oct-02, 2pm''' <br/><br />
Where: '''Room 6.2.56 @ FCUL'''<br/><br />
Sponsor: '''uPVN project, FCT ref. PTDC/CCI-INF/30340/2017'''<br/><br />
<br />
<!--<br />
[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks] <br />
What: [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks#slNT20171024 NavTalk], When: '''Thu 2018-Sep-20, 12:00am''', Where: '''room 6.3.38''' <br/><br />
{| style="border-spacing: 5px; text-align: left; "<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Alysson_Bessani | Alysson Bessani]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''SMaRtChain: A Principled Design for a New Generation of Blockchains'''<br />
|-<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Rui_Miguel | Rui Miguel]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''Named Data Networking with Programmable Switches '''<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
''('''Summer break -- No Navtalk''')''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Navtalk_Events Past Navtalk Events]<br />
--></div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T09:30:12Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
====Machine learning tools for improving data quality and dependability in IoT applications====<br />
Current scalable systems and processes produce increasing amounts of data generated by an ever-growing number of sensors and activities. To handle these large amounts of data, Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms can be used to efficiently take care of automating several processes, from collecting to storing and providing access to these data.<br />
<br />
However, these platforms neglect quality assurance mechanisms to avoid data quality degradation, e.g., due to sensor faults causing drift or outliers, time-variability of processes, communication failures, to mention a few. Additionally, they do not leverage from statistical and machine learning tools to go beyond the provision of raw data to provide meaningful insights on the system or process features, e.g., forecasts, pattern matching, or event classification, thus benefitting decision-making procedures and services that depend on the data.<br />
<br />
This proposal aims to develop a scalable generic framework and configurable platform for data dependability and knowledge extraction on IoT contexts, clearly separating generalizable methodologies from mechanisms to ease configuration and adaptation to specific application fields. Case studies on energy efficiency and flexibility management in buildings and environmental monitoring will demonstrate the generic nature and the adaptability of the proposed framework and platform. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the generic framework, including the design of the underlying machine-learning-based solutions for failure detection and data processing, the definition of an architectural solution enabling the deployment of these solutions in multiple application scenarios, the definition of methods to ease configuration tasks, and the implementation and validation of these solutions and methods in the scope of multiple use cases. <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities aimed at achieving increased dependability, adaptability and performance, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past. In particular, the project is aligned with the goals of the AQUAMON project (PTDC/CCI-COM/30142/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), aimed at developing a platform for dependable monitoring with WSNs in water environments, and the CSESI Hub, a collaborative laboratory on Smart Energy Services Innovation Hub, also financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Pedro Ferreira (pmf@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
====Secure cloud-based services to support cooperative autonomous driving functions====<br />
Autonomous and intelligent driving systems are emerging technologies whose development still presents many challenges to meet the needed safety requirements, especially without compromising utility. <br />
<br />
In LASIGE and in the context of its research line in Cyber-Physical Systems, we have been exploiting Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications as an approach to enrich the perception of autonomous vehicles and to perform safe maneuvering in a cooperative way. Vehicular cooperation does not replace autonomous functions but creates opportunities to perform these functions in a more efficient way. V2V communication is used to execute fault tolerant agreement protocols, while V2I communication provides the basis for exploiting cloud-based resources and services to improve perception and support cooperation. For instance, a membership service is essential in the execution of an agreement protocol, as it provides knowledge on the relevant vehicles that must be involved in the protocol execution. These services, besides being fault-tolerant and scalable, must also be secure and trustworthy. <br />
<br />
In this work proposal, the objective is to address security requirements on the exchange of V2V and V2I information and on the design and development of cloud-based services to support vehicular cooperation. The solutions to be designed and developed must prevent or mitigate the effects of malicious attacks aimed at compromising these services, information exchange and, ultimately, vehicular safety. The work will require the design, development and evaluation of system solutions, architectures, mechanisms and protocols aimed to support effective, safe and secure cooperation between autonomous vehicles. <br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for developing the needed solutions, from design to implementation and validation. The first step in the work will be to model the target system with respect to the actors to be considered (e.g., vehicles, road-side units, infrastructure servers, etc.), the relevant interactions between them, the considered attacks vectors and their translation into possible faults, and other aspects of the system like synchrony or resource availability. Relevant abstractions must also be defined, as needed to simplify the problem without loosing generality. Then, the set of services supported by V2I communication that will have to be secured must be defined. Besides membership, which is necessary for cooperation, other services may also be relevant in the context of automated driving, like road and traffic information services, software update services, etc. Depending on the considered services, a set of relevant interaction models and associated functional requirements will have to be identified. Then, the challenge will be to design the solutions (including architecture and protocols) to not only address these functional requirements, but to ensure that security requirements are satisfied in the presence of the considered attacks. Besides typical solutions for authentication and enforcement of secure communication, intrusion tolerance techniques will have to be explored on the server side, investigating and finding appropriate tradeoffs between protocol complexity, scalability and achievable security. The work will also involve the implementation and validation of the developed solutions, for instance deploying them in public clouds and using available V2I technologies (if possible, the goal is to use 5G for network access). <br />
<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities related to autonomous cooperative vehicles and to security in distributed systems. In particular, the goals of this work proposal are aligned with the objectives of the EU H2020 project Admorph - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems, which starts in January 2020.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors António Casimiro (casim@ciencias.ulisboa.pt) and Bernardo Ferreira (blferreira@fc.ul.pt)</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T09:21:43Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
<b>Job position description:</b><br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
<b>Advisors:</b> Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL<br />
<br />
[[File:Rack01.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Quinta's rack.]]<br />
<br />
Quinta is the Navigators' processor farm.<br />
<br />
It is a computational cluster dedicated to large-scale experiments of distributed systems.<br />
<br />
It is currently comprised of 42 physical machines, which compose a test bed with more than 300 processing cores, 1.3 TB of RAM and 33 TB of storage.<br />
<br />
===Tutorials===<br />
* [[Quinta_Usage|Using Quinta]]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/c/cb/Basic_quinta.pdf Basic Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on September 28, 2010)]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/0/01/Quinta_advanced.pdf Advanced Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on November 1st, 2013)]<br />
<br />
===Hardware===<br />
* [[Quinta_Hardware|Hardware description]]<br />
<br />
===Environments===<br />
====Up-to-Date====<br />
* debian-8-jessie<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-xen|debian-xen]]<br />
* ubuntu-14.04<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-java|ubuntu-java]]<br />
* ubuntu-kvm<br />
<br />
====Discontinued====<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-12.04|ubuntu-12.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-base|ubuntu-10.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-base|debian-5-lenny]]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T09:16:47Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="homepagebox"><br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
Job position description:<br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
Advisors: Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
<br />
==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL<br />
<br />
[[File:Rack01.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Quinta's rack.]]<br />
<br />
Quinta is the Navigators' processor farm.<br />
<br />
It is a computational cluster dedicated to large-scale experiments of distributed systems.<br />
<br />
It is currently comprised of 42 physical machines, which compose a test bed with more than 300 processing cores, 1.3 TB of RAM and 33 TB of storage.<br />
<br />
===Tutorials===<br />
* [[Quinta_Usage|Using Quinta]]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/c/cb/Basic_quinta.pdf Basic Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on September 28, 2010)]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/0/01/Quinta_advanced.pdf Advanced Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on November 1st, 2013)]<br />
<br />
===Hardware===<br />
* [[Quinta_Hardware|Hardware description]]<br />
<br />
===Environments===<br />
====Up-to-Date====<br />
* debian-8-jessie<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-xen|debian-xen]]<br />
* ubuntu-14.04<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-java|ubuntu-java]]<br />
* ubuntu-kvm<br />
<br />
====Discontinued====<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-12.04|ubuntu-12.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-base|ubuntu-10.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-base|debian-5-lenny]]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T09:13:54Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Doctoral Fellowships “la Caixa” INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Portuguese and Spanish territory. They are sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Portugal and Spain by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in Portuguese research units like [https://www.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt/ LASIGE], accredited as “excellent” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia, and research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines, which includes Computer Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
You can get more detailed information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
===Open Projects===<br />
The Navigators Group of LASIGE has three open projects that you can apply to, while submitting your proposal to the INPhINIT “la Caixa” programme.<br />
<br />
====Deep learning for vulnerability discovery in web applications represented in intermediate languages====<br />
Web applications are the most common vehicle for accessing services and resources in enterprises. However, they often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, causing serious damage to organizations and allowing private user information retrieval. Essential services, such as banking and healthcare, demand trustworthy applications, and so it is crucial that they are programmed with security in mind, preventing successful attacks that can disturb and/or interrupt their operation.<br />
<br />
Despite the advances made in web application security, companies have not been able to decrease substantially the number of vulnerabilities reported annually. A key factor that explains this observation is the growth in complexity leveraged by semantic aspects of different languages that can integrate an application, which complicate the analysis of tools that inspect the programs while searching for flaws. A way to circumvent such complexity is to perform the analysis in an intermediate language representation of the web application.<br />
<br />
In the project, we investigate techniques for analyzing the source code of web applications represented in an intermediate language with the goal of discovering vulnerabilities and then remove automatically the errors found by applying patches to the source code, i.e., performing code correction. This way, we plan to use techniques from the code analysis area, such as static and dynamic analysis, and from the artificial intelligence area, focusing on deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). Recently, we have applied a few of these techniques to specific scenarios with promising results, but in the project, we intend to extend them to build tools that are highly accurate and scalable to large code-bases, with the final aim of improving the security of the web. These tools will englobe both identification and correction of vulnerabilities, being the correction a promising and challenging research area.<br />
<br />
Job position description:<br />
<br />
The student will be involved in the various tasks required for building a successful tool for the discovery and correction of vulnerabilities, from the design of the solution until its evaluation with real web applications. In more detail:<br />
* Investigate different classes of flaws that might affect web applications<br />
* Build a dataset of applications that contain representative vulnerabilities, either on a programming language and an intermediate language representation<br />
* Research alternative techniques that could be employed to locate the flaws<br />
* Study machine learning methods that could be used to find the vulnerabilities<br />
* Research methods that could be applied to correct the code for removing flaws<br />
* Build a tool based on the investigated techniques<br />
* Test and evaluate the tool with relevant web applications and report discovered vulnerabilities to developers, giving to them a possible correction of their code<br />
The project is developed with members of the Navigators group of the LASIGE research lab. Several members of the group (and lab) are involved in research activities that aim to enhance the correctness of applications in general, with fruitful and outstanding results in the past.<br />
The work is defined in the context of several European consortia and collaborations with other teams are envisioned.<br />
<br />
Advisors: Professors Nuno Ferreira Neves (nuno@di.fc.ul.pt) and Ibéria Medeiros (ivmedeiros@fc.ul.pt)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL<br />
<br />
[[File:Rack01.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Quinta's rack.]]<br />
<br />
Quinta is the Navigators' processor farm.<br />
<br />
It is a computational cluster dedicated to large-scale experiments of distributed systems.<br />
<br />
It is currently comprised of 42 physical machines, which compose a test bed with more than 300 processing cores, 1.3 TB of RAM and 33 TB of storage.<br />
<br />
===Tutorials===<br />
* [[Quinta_Usage|Using Quinta]]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/c/cb/Basic_quinta.pdf Basic Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on September 28, 2010)]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/0/01/Quinta_advanced.pdf Advanced Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on November 1st, 2013)]<br />
<br />
===Hardware===<br />
* [[Quinta_Hardware|Hardware description]]<br />
<br />
===Environments===<br />
====Up-to-Date====<br />
* debian-8-jessie<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-xen|debian-xen]]<br />
* ubuntu-14.04<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-java|ubuntu-java]]<br />
* ubuntu-kvm<br />
<br />
====Discontinued====<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-12.04|ubuntu-12.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-base|ubuntu-10.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-base|debian-5-lenny]]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T08:55:58Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==“la Caixa” Doctoral Fellowships INPhINIT==<br />
<br />
===Overview===<br />
The doctoral fellowship programme INPhINIT “la Caixa” is devoted to attracting talented Early-Stage Researchers—of any nationality—who wish to pursue doctoral studies in Spanish or Portuguese territory. Sponsored by ”la Caixa” Foundation, it is aimed at supporting the best scientific talent and fostering innovative and high-quality research in Spain and Portugal by recruiting outstanding international students and offering them an attractive and competitive environment for conducting research of excellence.<br />
<br />
35 PhD fellowships for early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in research centres accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III and Portuguese units accredited as “excellent” or “exceptional” according to the evaluation of the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia. This frame is addressed exclusively to PhD research projects on STEM disciplines: life sciences and health, experimental sciences, physics, chemistry and mathematics.<br />
<br />
The call for applications is intended for the pursuit of a doctoral degree in the fields of technology, engineering, physics, mathematics, life and health sciences and is aimed at individuals who fulfill the requirements to be admitted into a doctoral degree programme, provided that they also fulfil the mobility requirements and that they have not previously enrolled in the doctoral studies applied for.<br />
<br />
Download complete information about the programme [https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/becas-de-la-caixa/doctorado-inphinit/descripcion-del-programa here].<br />
<br />
==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL<br />
<br />
[[File:Rack01.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Quinta's rack.]]<br />
<br />
Quinta is the Navigators' processor farm.<br />
<br />
It is a computational cluster dedicated to large-scale experiments of distributed systems.<br />
<br />
It is currently comprised of 42 physical machines, which compose a test bed with more than 300 processing cores, 1.3 TB of RAM and 33 TB of storage.<br />
<br />
===Tutorials===<br />
* [[Quinta_Usage|Using Quinta]]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/c/cb/Basic_quinta.pdf Basic Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on September 28, 2010)]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/0/01/Quinta_advanced.pdf Advanced Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on November 1st, 2013)]<br />
<br />
===Hardware===<br />
* [[Quinta_Hardware|Hardware description]]<br />
<br />
===Environments===<br />
====Up-to-Date====<br />
* debian-8-jessie<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-xen|debian-xen]]<br />
* ubuntu-14.04<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-java|ubuntu-java]]<br />
* ubuntu-kvm<br />
<br />
====Discontinued====<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-12.04|ubuntu-12.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-base|ubuntu-10.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-base|debian-5-lenny]]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T08:38:38Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL<br />
<br />
[[File:Rack01.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Quinta's rack.]]<br />
<br />
Quinta is the Navigators' processor farm.<br />
<br />
It is a computational cluster dedicated to large-scale experiments of distributed systems.<br />
<br />
It is currently comprised of 42 physical machines, which compose a test bed with more than 300 processing cores, 1.3 TB of RAM and 33 TB of storage.<br />
<br />
===Tutorials===<br />
* [[Quinta_Usage|Using Quinta]]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/c/cb/Basic_quinta.pdf Basic Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on September 28, 2010)]<br />
* [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/0/01/Quinta_advanced.pdf Advanced Quinta usage (Navtalk presented on November 1st, 2013)]<br />
<br />
===Hardware===<br />
* [[Quinta_Hardware|Hardware description]]<br />
<br />
===Environments===<br />
====Up-to-Date====<br />
* debian-8-jessie<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-xen|debian-xen]]<br />
* ubuntu-14.04<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-java|ubuntu-java]]<br />
* ubuntu-kvm<br />
<br />
====Discontinued====<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-12.04|ubuntu-12.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_ubuntu-base|ubuntu-10.04]]<br />
* [[Quinta_debian-base|debian-5-lenny]]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T08:36:20Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
* [[La_Caixa_Scholarship|Apply for Scholarships]]<br />
* [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today]]<br />
* [[Fact Sheet]]<br />
* [[Messages from distinguished ex-Navigators]]<br />
* [[October 2005: It was twenty years ago today]]<br />
* [[The Navigators Research Book of Style]]<br />
* Hotels near FCUL</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/La_Caixa_ScholarshipLa Caixa Scholarship2019-11-02T08:35:25Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MaxCompNetworks19Publication:MaxCompNetworks192019-07-26T14:04:00Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|document=Document for Publication-MaxCompNetworks19.pdf<br />
|title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization<br />
|author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Fernando Ramos<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=oct<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing network virtualization systems share a few characteristics, namely they target one data center of a single operator and only offer traditional networking services. As such, their support for critical applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains, while enforcing diverse security<br />
requirements, is limited. This paper enhances the state-of-the-art by presenting a multi-cloud network virtualization system, allowing the provision of virtual networks of containers. Our solution enables a provider to enrich its network substrate with public and private cloud-based resources, increasing flexibility and the range of supplied services. One challenging aspect that we tackle is the embedding of virtual network requests to the substrate infrastructure, as existing work is unfit to a modern data center context, scales poorly or does not consider the security of virtual resources. We propose a scalable heuristic that considers security as a first-class citizen and is specifically tailored to a hybrid multi-cloud domain. We evaluate our algorithm with large-scale simulations that consider realistic network topologies and our prototype in a substrate composed of one private data center and two public clouds. The system scales well for networks of thousands of switches employing diverse topologies and improves on the virtual network acceptance ratio, provider revenue, and embedding delays. Our results show that the acceptance ratios are less than 1% from the optimal and that the system can provision a 10 thousand container virtual network in approximately 2 minutes.<br />
|journal=Computer Networks<br />
|volume=161<br />
|pages=45-60<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/File:Document_for_Publication-MaxCompNetworks19.pdfFile:Document for Publication-MaxCompNetworks19.pdf2019-07-26T14:03:54Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:INFORUM2019Publication:INFORUM20192019-07-19T09:08:03Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=inproceedings<br />
|title=Geração de Testes de Software para Verificação de Faltas e Funcionalidades<br />
|author=Francisco Araujo, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
|Project=Project:SEAL,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=sep<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=O aumento da complexidade do software empregue em produtos industriais está diretamente relacionada com o crescimento exponencial do número de funcionalidades presentes nestes, introduzidas com vista a responder às exigências do mercado. Essa complexidade cresce quando é necessário criar variantes das aplicações a partir de diversos componentes de software, como acontece em sistemas embebidos. Tal complexidade dificulta o teste e a validação do software para os seus requisitos, bem como pode originar vulnerabilidades de segurança. Programas de software industrial necessitam de ser testados adequadamente, em termos de funcionalidades e de segurança, por forma a garantir elevados níveis de qualidade. Embora já existam ferramentas automáticas de validação de segurança, não existe nenhuma ferramenta que possibilite a reutilização de resultados de testes entre versões de aplicações, de modo a validar estas versões e variantes da maneira mais eficiente possível. Este trabalho propõe uma abordagem que permite testar variantes ainda não testadas a partir de resultados das que já foram avaliadas. A abordagem foi implementada numa ferramenta com base na aplicação de fuzzing American Fuzzy Lop (AFL) e foi validada com um conjunto de programas de diferentes versões. Os resultados experimentais mostraram que a ferramenta consegue obter melhores resultados que o AFL.<br />
|booktitle=Simpósio de Informática (INFORUM)<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:INFORUM2019Publication:INFORUM20192019-07-19T09:06:53Z<p>Nuno: Created page with "{{Publication |type=inproceedings |title=Geração de Testes de Software para Verificação de Faltas e Funcionalidades |author=Francisco Araújo, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Ferreira..."</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=inproceedings<br />
|title=Geração de Testes de Software para Verificação de Faltas e Funcionalidades<br />
|author=Francisco Araújo, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Ferreira Neves, <br />
|Project=Project:SEAL, <br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=sep<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract= O aumento da complexidade do software empregue em produtos industriais está diretamente relacionada com o crescimento exponencial do número de funcionalidades presentes nestes, introduzidas com vista a responder às exigências do mercado. Essa complexidade cresce quando é necessário criar variantes das aplicações a partir de diversos componentes de software, como acontece em sistemas embebidos. Tal complexidade dificulta o teste e a validação do software para os seus requisitos, bem como pode originar vulnerabilidades de segurança. Programas de software industrial necessitam de ser testados adequadamente, em termos de funcionalidades e de segurança, por forma a garantir elevados níveis de qualidade. Embora já existam ferramentas automáticas de validação de segurança, não existe nenhuma ferramenta que possibilite a reutilização de resultados de testes entre versões de aplicações, de modo a validar estas versões e variantes da maneira mais eficiente possível. Este trabalho propõe uma abordagem que permite testar variantes ainda não testadas a partir de resultados das que já foram avaliadas. A abordagem foi implementada numa ferramenta com base na aplicação de fuzzing American Fuzzy Lop (AFL) e foi validada com um conjunto de programas de diferentes versões. Os resultados experimentais mostraram que a ferramenta consegue obter melhores resultados que o AFL. <br />
|booktitle=Simpósio de Informática (INFORUM)<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:Computing2018Publication:Computing20182019-07-19T09:00:41Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=An Empirical Study on Combining Diverse Static Analysis Tools for Web Security Vulnerabilities based on Development Scenarios<br />
|author=Paulo Nunes, Ibéria Medeiros, José Fonseca, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Miguel Correia, Marco Vieira,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=feb<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Automated Static Analysis Tools (ASATs) are one of the best ways to search for vulnerabilities in applications, so they are a resource widely used by developers to improve their applications. However, it is well-known that the performance of such tools is limited, and their detection capabilities may not meet the requirements of the project regarding the criticality of the application. Diversity is an obvious direction to take to improve the true positives, as different tools usually report distinct vulnerabilities, however with the cost of also increasing the false positives, which may be unacceptable in some scenarios. In this paper, we study the problem of combining diverse ASATs to improve the overall detection of vulnerabilities in web applications, considering four development scenarios with different criticality goals and constraints. These scenarios range from low budget to high-end (e.g., business critical) web applications. We tested with five ASATs under two datasets, one with real WordPress plugins and another with synthetic test cases. Our findings revealed that combining the outputs of several ASATs does not always improve the vulnerability detection performance over a single ASAT. By using our procedure a developer is able to choose which is the best combination of ASATs that fits better in the project requirements.<br />
|journal=Computing<br />
|volume=101<br />
|number=2<br />
|pages=161–185<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:FGCS19Publication:FGCS192019-07-19T08:57:56Z<p>Nuno: Created page with "{{Publication |type=article |title=BigFlow: Real-time and Reliable Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection for High-Speed Networks |author=Eduardo Viegas, Altair Santin, Alysson Bessan..."</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=BigFlow: Real-time and Reliable Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection for High-Speed Networks<br />
|author=Eduardo Viegas, Altair Santin, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, <br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=apr<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing machine learning solutions for networkbased intrusion detection cannot maintain their reliability over time when facing high-speed networks and evolving attacks. In this paper, we propose BigFlow, an approach capable of processing evolving network traffic while being scalable to large packet rates. BigFlow employs a verification method that checks if the classifier outcome is valid in order to provide reliability. If a suspicious packet is found, an expert may help BigFlow to incrementally change the classification model. Experiments with BigFlow, over a network traffic dataset spanning a full year, demonstrate that it can maintain high accuracy over time. It requires as little as 4% of storage and between 0.05% and 4% of training time, compared with other approaches. BigFlow is scalable, coping with a 10-Gbps network bandwidth in a 40-core cluster commodity hardware. <br />
|journal=Future Generation Computer Systems<br />
|volume=93<br />
|pages=473-485<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:TIM2019Publication:TIM20192019-07-19T08:54:24Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin, Luis Carmo<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=In recent years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded systems and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate the use of blockchains as a resource to overcome such challenges. We start with a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also made a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control. We implement a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. We evaluate the security and performance of our blockchain-based measuring system by executing tests with data from real speed meter sensors. The results are promising and validate the feasibility of our idea. Finally, we point out the<br />
main challenges related to our approach, suggesting alternatives and potential issues to be addressed by future works.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement<br />
|volume=68<br />
|number=5<br />
|pages=1503-1514<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:TIM2019Publication:TIM20192019-07-19T08:43:48Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|document=http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~nuno/PAPERS/TIM18.pdf<br />
|title=Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin, Luis Carmo<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=In recent years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded systems and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate the use of blockchains as a resource to overcome such challenges. We start with a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also made a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control. We implement a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. We evaluate the security and performance of our blockchain-based measuring system by executing tests with data from real speed meter sensors. The results are promising and validate the feasibility of our idea. Finally, we point out the<br />
main challenges related to our approach, suggesting alternatives and potential issues to be addressed by future works.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement<br />
|volume=68<br />
|number=5<br />
|pages=1503-1514<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:Mendes2019charonPublication:Mendes2019charon2019-07-19T08:41:33Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=CHARON: A Secure Cloud-of-Clouds System for Storing and Sharing Big Data<br />
|author=Ricardo Mendes, Tiago Oliveira, Vinicius Vielmo Cogo, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Alysson Bessani,<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD, Project:BioBankCloud, Project:DiSIEM, Project:IRCoC,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=We present CHARON, a cloud-backed storage system capable of storing and sharing big data in a secure, reliable, and efficient way using multiple cloud providers and storage repositories to comply with the legal requirements of sensitive personal data. CHARON implements three distinguishing features: (1) it does not require trust on any single entity, (2) it does not require any client-managed server, and (3) it efficiently deals with large files over a set of geo-dispersed storage services. Besides that, we developed a novel Byzantine-resilient data-centric leasing protocol to avoid write-write conflicts between clients accessing shared repositories. We evaluate CHARON using micro and application-based benchmarks simulating representative workflows from bioinformatics, a prominent big data domain. The results show that our unique design is not only feasible but also presents an end-to-end performance of up to 2.5x better than other cloud-backed solutions.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing<br />
|note=10.1109/TCC.2019.2916856<br />
|volume=Early Access<br />
|pages=1--12<br />
|url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8713877<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MaxCompNetworks19Publication:MaxCompNetworks192019-07-19T08:40:45Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization<br />
|author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Fernando Ramos<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=oct<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing network virtualization systems share a few characteristics, namely they target one data center of a single operator and only offer traditional networking services. As such, their support for critical applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains, while enforcing diverse security<br />
requirements, is limited. This paper enhances the state-of-the-art by presenting a multi-cloud network virtualization system, allowing the provision of virtual networks of containers. Our solution enables a provider to enrich its network substrate with public and private cloud-based resources, increasing flexibility and the range of supplied services. One challenging aspect that we tackle is the embedding of virtual network requests to the substrate infrastructure, as existing work is unfit to a modern data center context, scales poorly or does not consider the security of virtual resources. We propose a scalable heuristic that considers security as a first-class citizen and is specifically tailored to a hybrid multi-cloud domain. We evaluate our algorithm with large-scale simulations that consider realistic network topologies and our prototype in a substrate composed of one private data center and two public clouds. The system scales well for networks of thousands of switches employing diverse topologies and improves on the virtual network acceptance ratio, provider revenue, and embedding delays. Our results show that the acceptance ratios are less than 1% from the optimal and that the system can provision a 10 thousand container virtual network in approximately 2 minutes.<br />
|journal=Computer Networks<br />
|volume=161<br />
|pages=45-60<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:TIM2019Publication:TIM20192019-07-19T08:40:00Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin, Luis Carmo<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=In recent years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded systems and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate the use of blockchains as a resource to overcome such challenges. We start with a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also made a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control. We implement a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. We evaluate the security and performance of our blockchain-based measuring system by executing tests with data from real speed meter sensors. The results are promising and validate the feasibility of our idea. Finally, we point out the<br />
main challenges related to our approach, suggesting alternatives and potential issues to be addressed by future works.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement<br />
|volume=68<br />
|number=5<br />
|pages=1503-1514<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:TIM2019Publication:TIM20192019-07-19T08:39:07Z<p>Nuno: Created page with "{{Publication |type=article |title=Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems |author=Wilson Melo Jr, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Neves, Altair Santin, Luis Carmo |Re..."</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Using Blockchains to Implement Distributed Measuring Systems<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Neves, Altair Santin, Luis Carmo<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=In recent years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded systems and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate the use of blockchains as a resource to overcome such challenges. We start with a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also made a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact the way measuring instruments are used in consumer relations while improving security and simplifying metrological regulation and control. We implement a vehicle speed measuring system using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. We evaluate the security and performance of our blockchain-based measuring system by executing tests with data from real speed meter sensors. The results are promising and validate the feasibility of our idea. Finally, we point out the<br />
main challenges related to our approach, suggesting alternatives and potential issues to be addressed by future works.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement<br />
|volume=68<br />
|number=5<br />
|pages=1503-1514<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MaxCompNetworks19Publication:MaxCompNetworks192019-07-18T10:41:31Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization<br />
|author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Neves, Fernando Ramos<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=oct<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing network virtualization systems share a few characteristics, namely they target one data center of a single operator and only offer traditional networking services. As such, their support for critical applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains, while enforcing diverse security<br />
requirements, is limited. This paper enhances the state-of-the-art by presenting a multi-cloud network virtualization system, allowing the provision of virtual networks of containers. Our solution enables a provider to enrich its network substrate with public and private cloud-based resources, increasing flexibility and the range of supplied services. One challenging aspect that we tackle is the embedding of virtual network requests to the substrate infrastructure, as existing work is unfit to a modern data center context, scales poorly or does not consider the security of virtual resources. We propose a scalable heuristic that considers security as a first-class citizen and is specifically tailored to a hybrid multi-cloud domain. We evaluate our algorithm with large-scale simulations that consider realistic network topologies and our prototype in a substrate composed of one private data center and two public clouds. The system scales well for networks of thousands of switches employing diverse topologies and improves on the virtual network acceptance ratio, provider revenue, and embedding delays. Our results show that the acceptance ratios are less than 1% from the optimal and that the system can provision a 10 thousand container virtual network in approximately 2 minutes.<br />
|journal=Computer Networks<br />
|volume=161<br />
|pages=45-60<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MaxCompNetworks19Publication:MaxCompNetworks192019-07-18T10:39:01Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|document=http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~nuno/PAPERS/ComputerNetworks19_nvirt.pdf<br />
|title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization<br />
|author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Neves, Fernando Ramos<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=oct<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing network virtualization systems share a few characteristics, namely they target one data center of a single operator and only offer traditional networking services. As such, their support for critical applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains, while enforcing diverse security<br />
requirements, is limited. This paper enhances the state-of-the-art by presenting a multi-cloud network virtualization system, allowing the provision of virtual networks of containers. Our solution enables a provider to enrich its network substrate with public and private cloud-based resources, increasing flexibility and the range of supplied services. One challenging aspect that we tackle is the embedding of virtual network requests to the substrate infrastructure, as existing work is unfit to a modern data center context, scales poorly or does not consider the security of virtual resources. We propose a scalable heuristic that considers security as a first-class citizen and is specifically tailored to a hybrid multi-cloud domain. We evaluate our algorithm with large-scale simulations that consider realistic network topologies and our prototype in a substrate composed of one private data center and two public clouds. The system scales well for networks of thousands of switches employing diverse topologies and improves on the virtual network acceptance ratio, provider revenue, and embedding delays. Our results show that the acceptance ratios are less than 1% from the optimal and that the system can provision a 10 thousand container virtual network in approximately 2 minutes.<br />
|journal=Computer Networks<br />
|volume=161<br />
|pages=45-60<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MaxCompNetworks19Publication:MaxCompNetworks192019-07-18T10:37:06Z<p>Nuno: Created page with "{{Publication |type=article |title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization |author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Neves, Fernando Ramos |Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD, |ResearchLin..."</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=Secure Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization<br />
|author=Max Alaluna, Eric Vial, Nuno Neves, Fernando Ramos<br />
|Project=Project:SUPERCLOUD, <br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=oct<br />
|year=2019<br />
|abstract=Existing network virtualization systems share a few characteristics, namely they target one data center of a single operator and only offer traditional networking services. As such, their support for critical applications that need to be deployed across multiple trust domains, while enforcing diverse security<br />
requirements, is limited. This paper enhances the state-of-the-art by presenting a multi-cloud network virtualization system, allowing the provision of virtual networks of containers. Our solution enables a provider to enrich its network substrate with public and private cloud-based resources, increasing flexibility and the range of supplied services. One challenging aspect that we tackle is the embedding of virtual network requests to the substrate infrastructure, as existing work is unfit to a modern data center context, scales poorly or does not consider the security of virtual resources. We propose a scalable heuristic that considers security as a first-class citizen and is specifically tailored to a hybrid multi-cloud domain. We evaluate our algorithm with large-scale simulations that consider realistic network topologies and our prototype in a substrate composed of one private data center and two public clouds. The system scales well for networks of thousands of switches employing diverse topologies and improves on the virtual network acceptance ratio, provider revenue, and embedding delays. Our results show that the acceptance ratios are less than 1% from the optimal and that the system can provision a 10 thousand container virtual network in approximately 2 minutes.<br />
|journal=Computer Networks<br />
|volume=161<br />
|pages=45-60<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Main_PageMain Page2018-10-19T05:53:04Z<p>Nuno: /* Announcements */</p>
<hr />
<div>We are the Navigators, a research team on distributed systems, their architectures, their algorithms, in their several skins: fault tolerance, real-time, security, and combinations thereof. <br />
<br />
We also pursue the quest for [[Brief Resume: The Navigators team today|the right balance]] between science and technology. Some people say that Informatics (a.k.a. computer science and<br />
engineering) belongs to a new breed, of what are called techno-sciences.<br />
We believe that techno-scientists should accompany theoretical mastery with a deep knowledge of their environment — computer technology — as well as astro-physicists know the sky, or marine biologists know the sea.<br />
<br />
We study new theories to explain distributed systems, and new algorithms to take advantage from them. But we also like to do [[Software|proof-of-concept experiments]] about the theory we work on. We try that our [[Publications|papers and theses]] tell a good story as clearly as possible. We work hard for our demonstrations to be convincing and captivating. Because we believe [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|science is made for others]]. <br />
<br />
Our greatest riches are our [[The_Navigators_Research_Book_of_Style|culture]], and our [[People|researchers and students]]. If you believe in the former, you can become one of the latter. Welcome!<br />
<br />
<div class="homepagebigbox"><br />
==Announcements==<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project AQUAMON -- Dependable Monitoring with Wireless Sensor Networks in Water Environments -- started today. During the next 3 years we will develop a dependable monitoring platform for application in aquatic environments using wireless sensor networks.<br />
* (1/Oct/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project uPVN -- User-centric Programmable Virtual Networks -- started today. During the next 3 years we aim to build the next generation of virtual networks: VNets that are fully programmable.<br />
* (20/Sept/2018) The NavTalks seminars have started for a new year of research presentations and useful discussions.<br />
* (1/Aug/2018) The (FCT-funded) research project SEAL-- SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications -- started today. During the next 3 years we will design and build tools to make your web applications more secure!<br />
* (11/Apr/2018) Based on the final demonstration of the Supercloud project last month, here is a video about [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vygTlX7oTEY Sirius], the multi-cloud network virtualization platform.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Latest publications==<br />
{{#ask:[[Category:Publication]]<br />
|?#=Pagename<br />
|mainlabel=Pagename<br />
|?author<br />
|?abstract<br />
|?address<br />
|?award<br />
|?booktitle<br />
|?chapter<br />
|?doi<br />
|?edition<br />
|?editor<br />
|?institution<br />
|?intype<br />
|?journal<br />
|?key<br />
|?month<br />
|?number<br />
|?pages<br />
|?publisher<br />
|?school<br />
|?series<br />
|?title<br />
|?type<br />
|?url<br />
|?volume<br />
|?year<br />
|limit=10<br />
|format=template<br />
|template=PublicationRef<br />
|sort=NumPubDate<br />
|order=descending<br />
|headers=show<br />
|named args=yes<br />
|link=none<br />
|searchlabel=<br />
}}<br />
</div><div class="homepagebox"><br />
<br />
==Events==<br />
<br />
[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks] <br />
What: [http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/NavTalks#slNT20171024 NavTalk], When: '''Thu 2018-Sep-20, 12:00am''', Where: '''room 6.3.38''' <br/><br />
{| style="border-spacing: 5px; text-align: left; "<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Alysson_Bessani | Alysson Bessani]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''SMaRtChain: A Principled Design for a New Generation of Blockchains'''<br />
|-<br />
| style="vertical-align: top;white-space: nowrap;" | [[Rui_Miguel | Rui Miguel]] || style="vertical-align: top;" | presents || style="vertical-align: top;" | '''Named Data Networking with Programmable Switches '''<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
<!--<br />
''('''Summer break -- No Navtalk''')''<br />
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[http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Navtalk_Events Past Navtalk Events]</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:I2MTC2018Publication:I2MTC20182018-10-09T06:28:53Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=inproceedings<br />
|document=Document for Publication-I2MTC2018.pdf<br />
|title=How Blockchains can improve Measuring Instruments Regulation and Control<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Luis Carmo, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2018<br />
|abstract=In the last years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded hardware and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate how blockchains can help to overcome such challenges. We propose a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also develop a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact how measuring instruments are used in consumer relations, at the same time that improve security and simplify metrological regulation and control. At the end, we point out the main challenges, suggesting alternatives and potential research lines for future works.<br />
|booktitle=International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC)<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:I2MTC2018Publication:I2MTC20182018-10-09T06:28:34Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=proceedings<br />
|document=Document for Publication-I2MTC2018.pdf<br />
|title=How Blockchains can improve Measuring Instruments Regulation and Control<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Luis Carmo, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2018<br />
|abstract=In the last years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded hardware and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate how blockchains can help to overcome such challenges. We propose a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also develop a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact how measuring instruments are used in consumer relations, at the same time that improve security and simplify metrological regulation and control. At the end, we point out the main challenges, suggesting alternatives and potential research lines for future works.<br />
|booktitle=International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC)<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:I2MTC2018Publication:I2MTC20182018-10-09T06:28:01Z<p>Nuno: Created page with "{{Publication |type=inproceedings |document=Document for Publication-I2MTC2018.pdf |title= How Blockchains can improve Measuring Instruments Regulation and Control |author=Wilson..."</p>
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<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=inproceedings<br />
|document=Document for Publication-I2MTC2018.pdf<br />
|title= How Blockchains can improve Measuring Instruments Regulation and Control<br />
|author=Wilson Melo Jr, Luis Carmo, Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Altair Santin<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=may<br />
|year=2018<br />
|abstract=In the last years, measuring instruments have become quite complex due to the integration of embedded hardware and software components and the increasing aggregation of new features. Consequently, metrological regulation and control require more efforts from notified bodies, becoming slower and more expensive. In this work, we evaluate how blockchains can help to overcome such challenges. We propose a conceptual model for implementing measuring instruments in a distributed blockchain-based architecture, and compare it with traditional measuring instruments and distributed measuring models discussed in previous works. We also develop a security analysis, demonstrating that blockchains-based measuring systems can impact how measuring instruments are used in consumer relations, at the same time that improve security and simplify metrological regulation and control. At the end, we point out the main challenges, suggesting alternatives and potential research lines for future works.<br />
<br />
|booktitle=International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC)<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/File:Document_for_Publication-I2MTC2018.pdfFile:Document for Publication-I2MTC2018.pdf2018-10-09T06:23:31Z<p>Nuno: </p>
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<div></div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:Garcia2016sieveqPublication:Garcia2016sieveq2018-10-09T06:19:24Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=article<br />
|title=SieveQ: A Layered BFT Protection System for Critical Services<br />
|author=Miguel Garcia, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Alysson Bessani,<br />
|Project=Project:SEGRID, Project:MASSIF,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=jun<br />
|year=2018<br />
|abstract=Firewalls play a crucial role in assuring the security of today’s critical infrastructures, forming a first line of defense by being placed strategically at the front-end of the networks. Sometimes, however, they have exploitable weaknesses, allowing an adversary to bypass them in different ways. Therefore, their design should include improved resilience capabilities to allow them to operate correctly in highly adverse environments. This paper proposes SieveQ, a message queue service that protects and regulates the access to critical systems, in a way similar to an application-level firewall. SieveQ achieves fault and intrusion tolerance by employing an architecture based on two filtering layers, enabling efficient removal of invalid messages at early stages and decreasing the costs associated with Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) replication of previous solutions. Our experimental evaluation shows that SieveQ improves existing replicated-firewalls resilience in the presence of corrupted messages by faulty nodes. Furthermore, it accommodates high loads, as it is able to handle sixteen times more security events per second than what was processed by the SIEM employed in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.<br />
|journal=IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing<br />
|volume=15<br />
|number=3<br />
|pages=511-525<br />
|url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7517292/<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:CCarvalhoMs03Publication:CCarvalhoMs032018-10-02T17:56:02Z<p>Nuno: </p>
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<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Infra-estrutura de Chave Pública do Ministério da Justiça<br />
|author=Claudia Carvalho<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=apr<br />
|year=2003<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:MMendoncaMs05Publication:MMendoncaMs052018-10-02T17:55:24Z<p>Nuno: </p>
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<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=ASASP – Actualização Segura de Aplicações em Sistemas POS<br />
|author=Manuel Mendonça<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=jan<br />
|year=2005<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:JAntunesMs06Publication:JAntunesMs062018-10-02T17:54:29Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Vulnerability Assessment Through Attack Injection<br />
|author=João Antunes,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=nov<br />
|year=2006<br />
|abstract=Our reliance on computer systems for everyday life activities has increased<br />
over the years as more and more tasks are accomplished with their help.<br />
The increasing complexity of the problems they address also require the<br />
development of more elaborated solutions. So, applications tend to become<br />
larger and more complex. On the other hand, the ever present tradeoff<br />
between time to deployment and thorough testing puts pressure on the<br />
quality of the software. Hence, applications tend to be released with little<br />
testing. Software bugs are continuously detected afterwards, resulting in<br />
security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious adversaries and<br />
compromise the systems’ security. The discovery of security vulnerabilities<br />
is then a valuable asset in the development of dependable systems.<br />
AJECT is presented as a new tool for vulnerability assessment, without requiring<br />
access to the source code or to any updated vulnerability database.<br />
The methodology utilized in the construction of AJECT emulates the behavior<br />
of an adversary by injecting attacks to trigger and detect abnormal<br />
behavior in the target systems. Preliminary experimental results in IMAP<br />
servers showed that AJECT was able to discover not only all known vulnerabilities, but also a previously unknown one.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:HMonizMs06Publication:HMonizMs062018-10-02T17:53:28Z<p>Nuno: </p>
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<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Randomized Intrusion-Tolerant Asynchronous Services<br />
|author=Henrique Moniz,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2006<br />
|abstract=Randomized agreement protocols have been around for more than two<br />
decades. Often assumed to be inefficient due to their high expected communication and time complexities, they have remained largely overlooked<br />
by the community-at-large as a valid solution for the deployment of fault tolerant distributed systems. This thesis aims to demonstrate that randomization can be a very competitive approach even in hostile environments<br />
where arbitrary faults can occur. The implementation of a stack of<br />
randomized intrusion-tolerant protocols is described, and its performance<br />
evaluated under different fault loads. The stack provides a set of relevant<br />
services ranging from basic communication primitives up to atomic broadcast.<br />
The protocols share a set of important structural properties, namely<br />
they tolerate arbitrary faults, have an optimal resilience, are time-free,<br />
completely decentralized, and signature-free. The experimental evaluation<br />
shows that the protocols are efficient and no performance reduction<br />
is observed under certain Byzantine faults.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves, Miguel Correia,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:JCardanaMs06Publication:JCardanaMs062018-10-02T17:52:41Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Analisador Comportamental de Rede<br />
|author=João Manuel Alexandre Cardana<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2006<br />
|abstract=A globalização das comunicações e a necessidade da partilha de informação, tem provocado um impacto inegável na segurança dos dados que transitam pelas redes de computadores. As vulnerabilidades que surgem constantemente, dia após dia, criaram a necessidade que novos dispositivos de segurança fossem desenvolvidos, com capacidades cada vez mais evoluídas. Por exemplo, equipamentos maioritariamente de prevenção de ataques, como as anteparas de segurança, deixaram de ser suficientes para fazerem face às ameaças, obrigando a que<br />
surgissem soluções para a descoberta de ataques/intrusões em tempo real.<br />
Muitos dos sistemas de detecção de intrusões comercializados actualmente, são incapazes de localizar novos ataques, que não estejam previstos nas suas bases de dados. Estes equipamentos precisam assim de uma actualização periódica das assinaturas de ataques para que se mantenham eficazes. Neste trabalho propõe-se um sistema complementar, que se baseia numa análise comportamental do funcionamento da rede. Neste sistema existe uma fase inicial de aprendizagem, que resulta na definição de um comportamento padrão da rede. Depois, na fase de detecção, procuram-se anomalias com algum significado estatístico, correspondendo cada uma delas potencialmente a um ataque. A solução proposta assenta em três processos distintos, que são executados com uma periodicidade reduzida. O processo de captura recolhe o tráfego existente na rede, retira<br />
alguns dados relevantes dos pacotes, e armazena-os numa estrutura hierárquica. No fim de cada período, o processo de análise aplica alguns métodos estatísticos para gerar um conjunto (caso exista) de excepções, que correspondem aos comportamentos anómalos que foram observados. Por último, o processo de decisão baseia-se nas excepções para, por exemplo, informar o administrador que um ataque está em curso, ou para interagir directamente com os<br />
outros equipamentos de rede de maneira a minorar (ou idealmente terminar) os efeitos do ataque. A tese descreve uma concretização deste modelo, e faz uma avaliação do protótipo numa rede de computadores sujeita a vários tipos de ataques. Os resultados mostram que o modelo descrito é eficaz para detecção de diversos ataques de negação de serviço.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:ETeixeiraMs07Publication:ETeixeiraMs072018-10-02T17:51:37Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|document=Document for Publication-ETeixeiraMs07.pdf<br />
|title=Ferramenta de Análise de Código para Detecção de Vulnerabilidades<br />
|author=Emanuel Teixeira,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=sep<br />
|year=2007<br />
|abstract=A análise de código é um mecanismo de apoio à detecção de anomalias ou erros de concretização existentes num ambiente de programação. Diversos factores podem levar ao aparecimento destes erros,<br />
destacando-se entre eles a programação inadequada, o conhecimento<br />
limitado das interfaces e outros factores inerentemente humanos, como<br />
o esquecimento. As ferramentas de análise podem então ter um impacto<br />
positivo no ciclo de desenvolvimento de um produto, permitindo<br />
poupar tempo, dinheiro e contribuindo para que a aplicação seja construída<br />
sem vulnerabilidades de segurança. A análise de código pode<br />
ser efectuada em três modos: estática, dinâmica ou manual; cada um<br />
destes modos têm as suas vantagens e desvantagens, sendo os mais<br />
usados os estáticos e os dinâmicos.<br />
Nesta tese aborda-se o problema de detecção de vulnerabilidades de<br />
segurança através de ferramentas de análise estática, focadas para a<br />
linguagem de programação C. A tese propõe um teste que permite<br />
avaliar e comparar o desempenho de diversas ferramentas de análise<br />
estática, nomeadamente em relação ao número de falsos alarmes por<br />
elas despoletadas. A tese descreve também uma nova ferramenta designada<br />
por Mute, que tem como objectivo uma melhor eficácia e<br />
precisão na detecção de um conjunto alargado de vulnerabilidades.<br />
Genericamente, o Mute utiliza um mecanismo de agregação de resultados<br />
produzidos por várias ferramentas existentes, para decidir da<br />
existência ou não de uma vulnerabilidade. A tese inclui ainda uma<br />
avaliação comparativa do Mute e de diversas outras ferramentas.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/File:Document_for_Publication-ETeixeiraMs07.pdfFile:Document for Publication-ETeixeiraMs07.pdf2018-10-02T17:51:32Z<p>Nuno: </p>
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<div></div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:TCarvalhoMs08Publication:TCarvalhoMs082018-10-02T17:50:22Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Root Cause Analysis in Large and Complex Networks<br />
|author=Tiago Carvalho<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2008<br />
|school=Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Hyong Kim, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:LSousaMs09Publication:LSousaMs092018-10-02T17:49:35Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Privacy Policy Dynamics in Location Sharing Applications<br />
|author=Luís Fernandes Sousa<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2009<br />
|school=Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Norman Sadeh, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:LSousaMs09Publication:LSousaMs092018-10-02T17:49:18Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|title=Privacy Policy Dynamics in Location Sharing Applications<br />
|author=Luís Fernandes Sousa<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2009<br />
|address=Lisbon, Portugal<br />
|school=Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Norman Sadeh, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:Garcia_msc11Publication:Garcia msc112018-10-02T17:48:15Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|document=Document for Publication-garcia msc11.pdf<br />
|title=Diversity Management in Intrusion Tolerant Systems<br />
|author=Miguel Garcia,<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=sep<br />
|year=2011<br />
|abstract=One of the key benefits of using intrusion-tolerant systems is the possibility of ensuring correct behavior in the presence of attacks and intrusions. These security gains are directly dependent on the components exhibiting failure diversity. To what extent failure diversity is observed in practical deployment depends on how diverse are the components that constitute the system. In this thesis we present a study with operating systems (OS) vulnerability reports from the NIST National Vulnerability Database. We have analyzed the vulnerabilities of 11 different OS over a period of roughly 15 years, to check how many of these vulnerabilities occur in more than one OS. We found this number to be low for several combinations of OS. <br />
Hence, our analysis provides a strong indication that building a system with diverse OS may be a useful technique to improve its intrusion tolerance capabilities. However, even with diversity the attacker eventually will find vulnerabilities in all OS replicas. To mitigate/eliminate this problem we introduce diverse proactive recovery on the replicas. Proactive recovery is a technique that periodically rejuvenates the components of a replicated system. <br />
When used in the context of intrusion-tolerant systems, in which faulty replicas may be under control of some malicious user, it allows the removal of intrusions from the compromised replicas. We propose that after each recovery a replica starts to run a different software.<br />
The selection of the new replica configuration is a non-trivial problem, as we will explain, since we would like to maxi\-mize the diversity of the system under the constraint of the available configurations.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Alysson Bessani, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nunohttps://navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/wiki/Publication:Semedo2014LoadBalancingSDNPublication:Semedo2014LoadBalancingSDN2018-10-02T17:46:52Z<p>Nuno: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Publication<br />
|type=mastersthesis<br />
|document=Document for Publication-Semedo2014LoadBalancingSDN.pdf<br />
|title=Load Balancing in Real Software Defined Networks<br />
|author=Goncalo Miguel Alves Semedo<br />
|ResearchLine=Fault and Intrusion Tolerance in Open Distributed Systems (FIT)<br />
|month=dec<br />
|year=2014<br />
|abstract=Nowadays, network management can be a painful and tedious process, especially<br />
when we consider large networks with hundreds of switches and routers. In traditional networks, it is necessary to configure each equipment, one by one, typically using a command line in an error-prone process. Software Defined Networking (SDN) [19, 27] is a new paradigm that aims to change this current undesirable state of affairs. The main idea of SDN consists in logically centralizing network control in a SDN controller (or a cluster of controllers), which controls and monitors the behavior of the network. The goal is to separate the control plane from the data plane. This separation is possible by means of an API between the switches and the controller such as OpenFlow [30]. Networks thus become programmable, allowing the definition of the behavior of the entire network from a vantage point, the controller, thus facilitating the creation of advanced network policies, such as load balancing, routing and security. The main goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a load balancer using this new paradigm. Conventional load balancers are expensive specialized hardware equipment whereas our proposal is based on a software application running on top of the SDN controller. Additionally, our solution enables load balancing to be performed not only based on server choice, but also on the best path to the chosen server. To achieve our goal we used the Floodlight controller [8] implemented in Java. Using this controller we evaluated several combinations of algorithms for server and path selection. As particular algorithms are suitable for particular applications, we propose a Multi-Algorithm Load Balancer (MALOB), a load balancing application for SDNs that has the capability to adapt to the different types of requests, selecting the most appropriated algorithm accordingly with the type of request. One of the most relevant contributions<br />
of this dissertation is its evaluation. We used GENI [13], a large-scale testbed that enables the possibility of performing a variety of experiments, such as, protocol design and evaluation, distributed service offerings, content management and in-network service deployment. GENI allows us to explore the potential of underlying technologies such as SDN. An experimental evaluation made with a real network such as GENI, enabled us to take more faithful conclusions about the impact of our work.<br />
|school=Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa<br />
|advisor=Fernando Ramos, Nuno Ferreira Neves,<br />
}}</div>Nuno