IC Colloquium: Faster and More Trustworthy Systems With Specialization and Isolation
By: Hugo Lefeuvre - University of British Columbia
IC Faculty candidate
Abstract
Software usages grow much faster than computing hardware. Paradoxically, modern software systems make inefficient use of computing resources: decades of feature creep have made them too generic to perform well on any specific task.
These decades of growth have also made systems fragile -- and frankly insecure, glued together from countless components of diverse origins, critical or confidential, buggy, risky, AI-generated, or otherwise untrustworthy.
This talk will take the audience on a journey at the intersection of systems and security. I will give an overview of my past and present works applying specialization and isolation techniques to make systems more efficient and more trustworthy (Unikraft, FlexOS, CHERIoT), demonstrating the shortcomings of these techniques and how to address them (CIVs, SoK), and getting these advances deployed to better the real world. I will conclude with a forward-looking perspective on my research and impact plans towards achieving this vision of faster and more robust software systems.
Bio
Hugo Lefeuvre is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, where he researches topics at the intersection of systems and security. Earlier, he was a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester and a Microsoft PhD Research Fellow. His thesis was awarded the EuroSys Roger Needham PhD award and the honorable mention for the SIGOPS Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award.
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IC Faculty candidate
Abstract
Software usages grow much faster than computing hardware. Paradoxically, modern software systems make inefficient use of computing resources: decades of feature creep have made them too generic to perform well on any specific task.
These decades of growth have also made systems fragile -- and frankly insecure, glued together from countless components of diverse origins, critical or confidential, buggy, risky, AI-generated, or otherwise untrustworthy.
This talk will take the audience on a journey at the intersection of systems and security. I will give an overview of my past and present works applying specialization and isolation techniques to make systems more efficient and more trustworthy (Unikraft, FlexOS, CHERIoT), demonstrating the shortcomings of these techniques and how to address them (CIVs, SoK), and getting these advances deployed to better the real world. I will conclude with a forward-looking perspective on my research and impact plans towards achieving this vision of faster and more robust software systems.
Bio
Hugo Lefeuvre is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, where he researches topics at the intersection of systems and security. Earlier, he was a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester and a Microsoft PhD Research Fellow. His thesis was awarded the EuroSys Roger Needham PhD award and the honorable mention for the SIGOPS Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award.
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Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Host: Sanidhya Kashyap