Posted by The JAACS is the Alumni Association of the three Computer Science Institutes INF, IIUN and DIUF of the Universities of Bern, Neuchâtel, and Fribourg. More information about the association and how to register can be found at https://www.jointalumni.ch/admission.
The JAACS annually awards a prize for the best Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral thesis at the INF, IIUN and DIUF that was defended during the academic year. The winners are selected by the respective institutes and are presented the award at the institute’s end-of-year event.
| PhD
Dr. Mehdi Noroozi Beyond Supervised Representation Learning INF, Bern
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Master
Marc-Andrea Tarnutzer Web Communication Analysis of Android Applications INF, Bern |
Abstract
Mobile applications commonly communicate with web servers as an integral part of the functionality they provide, but what kinds of data are communicated, and what kinds of security vulnerabilities does this leave these apps open to? To answer these questions, Marc-Andrea Tarnutzer has developed a software analysis tool, called Jandrolyzer, and he has applied the tool to a corpus of both open-source and closed-source Android apps.
He found that the secure https protocol was more common on open-source than closed-source apps, and that closed-source apps made more use of web communication to access ad services. He found many security issues, such as unnecessary disclosure of server configurations, outdated web servers, lack of API authentication or authorization, and shell command injection threats.
Laudatio
In this work, Marc-Andrea Tarnutzer developed an open-source software analysis tool, called Jandrolyzer, to determine how data flows from mobile apps to web servers. He uncovered a significant number of security issues in both open-source and closed-source apps. His work is reported in a full conference paper to be presented at SANER 2020, IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering.
Link: http://scg.unibe.ch/bib/Tarn19a
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Bachelor
Mario Hess Pervasive Visualization in Immersive Augmented Reality for Software Performance Monitoring INF, Bern |
Abstract
In this thesis, we propose the use of a city visualization that dynamically provides developers a pervasive view of the continuous performance of a system and lessens the cognitive load required to monitor it. We use an immersive augmented reality device (Microsoft HoloLens) to display our visualization and extend the integrated development environment on a computer screen to use the physical space.
Our effort explores a new visual metaphor to support the exploration and analysis of possibly very large and multidimensional performance data. Our initial result indicates that the city metaphor can be effectually employed to analyze dynamic performance data on a large and non-trivial software system.
We conducted an initial user study with ten participants, comparing performance and user experience in immersive augmented reality to that with a standard computer screen.
Laudatio
Mario Hess implemented a novel “code city” augmented reality visualization of software performance using the Microsoft HoloLens. He also carried out the evaluation himself with ten participants, and contributed to the writing of a short paper published at ICPE 2019, the ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering.
Link: http://scg.unibe.ch/bib/Hess19a