Professor Amiri Sani, UCR Professor Receive $500,000 NSF Award to Improve Security of OS Kernels

Computer Science Professor Ardalan Amiri Sani from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and Professor Zhiyun Qian from UC Riverside’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering have received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (the Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace program) for a project on “Deep and Efficient Dynamic Analysis of Operating System Kernels.” The objective of this project is to improve the security of operating system (OS) kernels through deep analysis and testing. OS kernels are the foundation of computer systems such as personal computers, smartphones, servers, as well as the internet infrastructure in general. Modern OS kernels are enormously complex and contain a large number of security vulnerabilities that slip through the testing phase onto end devices. Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art testing solution is insufficient as deeper parts of the OS remain hard-to-reach and therefore largely untested. The project aims to solve this precise issue by developing a set of innovative dynamic analysis and testing techniques that will greatly improve the security and quality of OS kernels.