Cristian Cadar

Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Department of Computing
Imperial College London

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. My research interests span the areas of software engineering, program analysis and computer security, with a focus on building practical tools for improving software reliability.

Previously, I received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, an M.Eng. in Computer Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Computer Science and one in Mathematics also from MIT.

News

I am looking for bright and motivated PhD students interested in doing research in the areas of software testing, bug-finding, program analysis, and computer security. I am particularly looking for students having a strong background in systems programming and compilers, and experience with building and working with large software systems. Please send me email if you are interested in doing a PhD in my group, and attach a CV to your email. At the current time, I can only provide funding for students meeting the EPSRC eligibility rules. You can find more information about the PhD program in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London at this link.

Publications

• KLEE: Unassisted and Automatic Generation of High-Coverage Tests for Complex Systems Programs
  Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dunbar, Dawson Engler
  USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008)
  Awarded the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award
  San Diego, CA, December 2008
  
  
• EXE: Automatically Generating Inputs of Death
  Cristian Cadar, Vijay Ganesh, Peter Pawlowski, David Dill, Dawson Engler
  ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC)
  Volume 12, No. 2, December 2008
  This is an extended version of our CCS 2006 paper
  
  
• Preventing memory error exploits with WIT
  Periklis Akritidis, Cristian Cadar, Costin Raiciu, Manuel Costa, Miguel Castro
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland Security 2008)
  Berkeley/Oakland, California, May 2008
  
  
• Data Randomization
  Cristian Cadar, Periklis Akritidis, Manuel Costa, Jean-Phillipe Martin, Miguel Castro
  Microsoft Research TR-120-2008
  
  
• RWset: Attacking Path Explosion in Constraint-Based Test Generation
  Peter Boonstoppel, Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  ETAPS Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2008)
  Budapest, Hungary, March-April 2008
  
  
• EXE: Automatically Generating Inputs of Death
  Cristian Cadar, Vijay Ganesh, Peter Pawlowski, David Dill, Dawson Engler
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2006)
  Alexandria, Virginia, October-November 2006
  
  
• Automatically Generating Malicious Disks using Symbolic Execution
  Junfeng Yang, Can Sar, Paul Twohey, Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland Security 2006)
  Berkeley/Oakland, California, May 2006
  
  
• Execution Generated Test Cases: How to Make Systems Code Crash Itself
  Cristian Cadar, Dawson Engler
  International SPIN Workshop on Model Checking of Software (invited paper)
  San Francisco, CA, August 2005
  A longer version of this paper appeared as Stanford Technical Report CSTR-2005-04
  
  
• Exploring the Acceptability Envelope
  Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Huu Hai Nguyen
  Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications Companion (OOPSLA 2005 Companion)
  San Diego, CA, October 2005
  
  
• Enhancing Server Availability and Security Through Failure-Oblivious Computing
  Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dumitran, Daniel Roy, Tudor Leu, William Beebee Jr.
  USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2004)
  San Francisco, CA, December 2004
  
  
• A Dynamic Technique for Eliminating Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (and Other Memory Errors)
  Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dumitran, Daniel Roy, Tudor Leu
  Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2004)
  Tucson, AZ, December 2004
  
  
• Efficient Specification-Assisted Error Localization
  Brian Demsky, Cristian Cadar, Daniel Roy, and Martin Rinard
  International Workshop on Dynamic Analysis (WODA 2004)
  Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2004
  
  
• Collection of Algorithmic Problems Solved in Pascal
  Cristian Cadar and Mihai Stroe
  ISBN: 973-9116-76-0, 216 pages, 1999
  Coordinator: Prof. A. Atanasiu
  
  
• Information Technology
  Cristian Cadar and Valentin Gheorghita
  ISBN: 973-98770-9-5, 256 pages, 1999
  ISBN: 973-97534-4-2, 247 pages, 2000
  Coordinators: Prof. N. Tapus and Prof. V. Iorga
  
  

Selected Talks

• KLEE: Effective Testing of Systems Programs
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  Versions of this talk were presented at:
  • Stanford Security Workshop 2009, Stanford, CA, USA, April 16, 2009
  • USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008), San Diego, CA, USA, December 9, 2008
  • Workshop on State-space Exploration for Automated Testing (SSEAT 2008), Seattle, WA, USA, July 24, 2008
  
  
• RWset: Attacking Path Explosion in Constraint-Based Test Generation
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  ETAPS Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2008)
  Budapest, Hungary, April 2, 2008
  
  
• EXE: Automatically Generating Inputs of Death
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2006)
  Alexandria, Virginia, USA, November 2, 2006
  
  
• A Dynamic Technique for Eliminating Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (and Other Memory Errors)
  Available in PPSX and PDF format
  Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2004)
  Tucson, AZ, December 8, 2004
  
  

Teaching

Spring 2010

• Operating Systems (2nd year)
• Software Engineering Practice (MSc)

Program Committees

• IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2010)
• ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2010)
• Workshop on Constraints in Software Testing, Verification and Analysis (CSTVA 2010)

Software

• KLEE is now open source! Please go to the new KLEE website for more details.