Per Mellstrand

Experiment based validation of CIIP

The connection between critical infrastructure Protection (CIP) and critical information infrastructures protection (CIIP) is a major research area. We describe our view of how a combined experimental approach can be used to build targeted resilient software required for critical infrastructure.

Safe Execution of Unreliable Software

Abstract We introduce a method, Lightweight Privilege Separation, enabling safe execution of unreliable software. Our method introduces no new software vulnerabilities and is fairly easy to implement. Furthermore, we show by experiments that the execution overhead is in the order of milliseconds per execution of the unreliable process at hand. We compare our method with earlier attempts of privilege separation such as OpenSSH. The paper concludes with a discussion on generalizations of our approach in the form of abstract machines and their interpreters.

Retooling and securing systemic debugging

There are a few major principal tools that have long supported the often frustrating and time-consuming part of software development and maintenance that is debugging. These tools are the symbolic debugger, the profiler, the tracer and the crash dump analyzer. With the advancement of dynamic protection mechanisms directed towards hindering or thwarting exploitation of software vulnerabilities (a subset of possible software bugs), combined with a shift from developers being in charge of the development of one distinct piece of software to, instead, piecing a large assortment of third party components and libraries into a common service or platform, many of the mechanisms that the aforementioned tools rely on have been either eliminated, circumvented or otherwise rendered inefficient. In this article, we present an industrial case illustrating this shift, highlighting specific issues and challenges facing the effective use of aforementioned tools, then look at how recent developments in tracing frameworks can be further improved to remedy the situation. Lastly, we introduce such a tool alongside initial experimentation and validation.

Distributed Control in Electricity Infrastructures

Different driving forces push the electricity production towards decentralization. As a result, the current electricity infrastructure is expected to evolve into a network of networks, in which all system parts communicate with each other and influence each other. Multiagent systems and electronic markets form an appropriate technology needed for control and coordination tasks in the future electricity network. We present the PowerMatcher, a market-based control concept for supply and demand matching (SDM) in electricity networks. In a simulation study we show the ability of this approach to raise the simultaneousness of electricity production and consumption within (local) control clusters. This control concept can be applied in different business cases like reduction of imbalance costs in commercial portfolios or virtual power plant operation of distributed generators. Two PowerMatcher-based field test configurations are described, one currently in operation, one currently under construction