Call for Papers

Typical software engineering methodologies are largely focused on programmer productivity and their methods have been known to introduce significant execution inefficiency as a side effect. Recent work investigating efficient and timely software has attempted to enhance software execution efficiency while preserving the source code-level abstractions and object-orientation that enhance a programmer’s productivity.

Such efforts seek to undo the side effects on security and performance overhead by reclaiming software execution efficiency and reducing indirection, as well as performing automatic program de-layering and program specialization (de-bloating). Several promising results from these efforts have demonstrated their viability in improving program execution efficiency as well as reduction of the cyber security attack surface. As a result, the community may benefit by investing in the development of tool ecosystems to take advantage of this recent progress, to mature the technologies, and determine how best to transparently deploy them.

Download the Call For Papers (PDF)

Scope

Despite some early progress within the research community, software executable transformation is not a solved science. Some critical problems reverse engineering and binary understanding are, in the general case, undecidable. Various automated tools and ecosystems will need to be investigated and developed to guarantee the effectiveness and correctness of transformation efforts and to enhance and ensure the security of transformed software. The FEAST workshop will include topics geared toward:

• Understanding issues of software executable transformation for various programming languages and environment, and the potential methods for alleviating those issues.
• Identification of tools to be investigated and developed for guaranteeing correctness, enhancing security, and enabling non-critical/undesired feature removal
• Identification of layers and areas of computing systems that are suitable for and can benefit from software customization/transformation, along with identification of associated challenges and constraints, and the particular adaptation to the methodology needed to operate within the identified areas
• Automated extraction of models from software executables that are amenable to formal methods analysis and verification

Contact Programm Committee Chairs

Submissions

Submissions should be in two-column, 10-point format, double-blind, and can be up to 6 pages in length with as many additional pages as necessary for references. Detailed submission instructions can be found at https://feast18.hotcrp.com .

Important dates

• July 8, 2018

  Submission Deadline for Workshops

• July 30, 2018

  Workshop Papers Notification

• August 19, 2018

  Submission of Camera Ready Papers to Publisher

• October 15, 2018

  Main Conference Technical Program