Old Projects

Towards Automated Diagnosis of Misconfigured Program

A first attempt at determining the cause of program faults using precise methods.

Holes in Heuristic Phishnets

Examines when heuristics work — and the mistakes made when attempting to automatically classify phish.

Lightweight, Content-based Taint Propagation for Tracking Sensitive Information

Tracks sensitive information as it is written to the persistent state of a user’s machine.

Using Rootkit Technology for Honeypot-Based Malware Detection

System call subversion in Windows to create a white-hat rootkit for stealthy malware behavior observation.

Ruby Picasa Image Grabber

A Ruby script to scrub an RSS feed for new albums and automate grabbing.

Ruby Longest Common Subsequence

Simple implementation of the longest common subsequence algorithm.

Easy Textbox Link (WordPress Plugin)

Adds a textbox to posts with title + permalink; hover/click selects all for quick copy-paste and encourages linking.

AmdaZulo

A 5-way superscalar processor for an LC3b-based architecture (2 ALU pipes, 2 memory pipes, control pipe, RAT + 32 physical regs, tournament branch predictor, OoO memory queue, 4-wide fetch, OoO commit…).

Name combines Tomasulo’s Algorithm + Amdahl’s Law.

VHDL BlackJack

BlackJack in VHDL on a Spartan 3E FPGA, interfacing with VGA + keyboard (works; not pretty).

μNIX Operating System

(“mu-nix”) A lightweight Linux-like OS written from scratch for ECE398SSL. Sloppy code, fun month.

UIUCMap

Customizable maps of UIUC buildings — built when campus looked intimidating (then it wasn’t).

arwin

Windows address resolver: DLL name + function name → resolves address in memory (useful for shellcoding).

Mjolinir

Keylogger that logs into an IRC server and awaits commands.

Footsteps

Award-winning Engineering Open House project using RFID to track physical locations.

C2o

Award-winning Engineering Open House project analyzing RNG effectiveness.

KittySteg!

Award-winning Engineering Open House steganography project: embed binary/ASCII data into images.

odfhex

Converts `objdump -d` output into C hex code (handy for shellcoding).

ASP Image Preloader

Generates ASP code that preloads all images in a specified directory.

Mirage

Creates a sizeable square overlay that can cover desktop icons (security through obscurity).

DateCrack

Spawned copies into a programs directory; with minimal config, could trick trial-period checks.

Internet Image Navigator

Scoured a target website for images and sequentially downloaded them.

AuctionWizard

Worked with online auction sites to generate HTML for personal auctions. Development stopped after a cease & desist.

Defcon 15 Summary

Quick summary of talks attended at DEF CON.

Format String Exploits

Basic explanation with examples of writing arbitrary memory locations (compiled/reworked from common references).

Ettercap and ARP Poisoning

A basic talk explaining ARP poisoning and the basics of Ettercap.

Exploring the Behavior of Flash Worms on a Large Topology

Undergraduate thesis presentation — how fast infection can spread (fascinating and/or terrifying).

Windows and Linux Shellcoding

Outlines basic methods of shellcoding in Windows and Linux; includes arwin + odfhex utilities.

Steganography — Security through Obscurity

Intro to steganography + a small algorithm for embedding data within images.

Forcible Insertion — How to Break Windows

Hooking + forcibly inserting plugins into apps without a plugin interface (includes demo + example routine).

TheMechmania 9 Cheating Experience

A security audit story from the ACM programming contest era.

Webtrash Hacking

XSS, injection vulnerabilities, and other “trashy” topics (hurriedly prepared, famously so).

Chair of SIGMIL

Special Interest Group for Military Applications — reverse engineering, programming, cryptology, computer security.

Member of the Association for Computing Machinery

A group devoted to learning and exploring the world of computers.