Making Abstract Data Types Abstract An approach to make systems
safe from heap spray attacks Doug Tygar is an expert on computer
security in the broad sense. It started with his thesis work on
building secure operating systems. This work was notable for its
unique approach to this fundamental problem, partly driven by
the views of his famous advisor Michael Rabin. Since then he has
continued working on all aspects of security: including attacks
against intrusion detectors themselves, covert channels, and
spam and botnet protection. Today I want to talk about some
attacks on software systems and an attempt to try to model them
formally, and perhaps prevent them. This is related to some
research of Doug’s, but the ideas here are work still in
progress. Doug started his career as junior faculty at CMU,
where he taught a class on security. One thing about CMU
students, in general, they are good “hackers.” Even theory
students are known for being able to write code, and the systems
students are seriously good. At