The DEEDS Group
Dependable, Embedded Systems & Software Group

Andréas Johansson

DEEDS
Department of Computer Science (Fachbereich Informatik)
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT DARMSTADT
 

Address: Hochschulstr. 10
64289 Darmstadt GERMANY
Phone: +49(0) 6151 16 3121
Fax: +49(0) 6151 16 4310
Email: aja ät deeds dot informatik dot tu-darmstadt dot de
Office: S2|02, E 221

About

I was born on the 24th of March 1977 in Falkenberg, Sweden. After my Master's in Computer Engineering from Chalmers, Göteborg, I moved to Darmstadt to do my PhD. On my spare time, which I have too little of, I like to travel and hang around with friends. I also enjoy playing floorball, which to my great surprise is also played here in Darmstadt.

Research

My research topic is dependability assessment and enhancement of Operating Systems. The continued operation of Operating Systems, being key components in computer based systems, are of great importance to modern systems. Focusing on COTS OS's my research revolves around evaluation of key dependability properties of OS and the consequent use of such properties with the intent of enhancing the dependability of the complete system.

I have developed a methodology for measuring the error propagation within the OS. The focus of my work has been on errors in device drivers, which has become one of the dominant sources of OS failure. By measuring how errors in device drivers spread in the system one can compare drivers as well as system services on the basis of their error susceptibility.

By studying how errors in low level components of the system propagate to applications one can estimate the impact of such errors during operation of the system. By selectively choosing to remove the relevant propagation paths using SW wrappers one can achieve a platform for building dependable systems. The placement and composition of wrappers are here key issues of my research.

I am also interesting in the somewhat "gray" area between security and dependability. In theory the two areas share many concepts. A fault from a dependability viewpoint could be considered to be a vulnerability/attack from a security point of view. Within this area I'm looking into structured and systematic testing methodologies for security related issues, through the study of "error propagation".

Teaching

I am involved in several themed courses offered by the DEEDS group:

Regular courses:

  • SW/OS Fault-Tolerance

  • Introduction in Trusted Systems (Kanonik)

  • Operating Systems

  • Trustworthy Operating Systems

  • Dependability I: Reliable Distributed Systems

  • Dependability II: Robust Software Systems

  • Introduction to Computer Science II / Grundlagen der Informatik II (in German)

Seminars:

  • Embedded Mobile Systems

  • Secure/Trusted Operating Systems

  • Secure and Reliable OS

  • Software Testing

  • Robust Software Systems

  • Dependable Embedded Systems

  • System Dependability and Security

  • Robust Software Design

I have also supervised Bachelor's and Master's theses. If you are interested in doing a thesis with me, please first check this page where we list offerings from our group:

DEEDS Thesis proposals

Publications

 

[1] Andréas Johansson, Neeraj Suri and Brendan Murphy, "On the Impact of Injection Triggers for OS Robustness Evaluation", To appear in the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), 2007.
[2] Andréas Johansson, Neeraj Suri and Brendan Murphy, "On the Selection of Error Model(s) For OS Robustness Evaluation", Proceedings of International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), 2007
[3] Andréas Johansson and Brendan Murphy, "Failure Analysis of Windows Device Drivers", Reliability Analysis of System Failure Data, Cambridge UK, 2007
[4] Constantin Sârbu, Andréas Johansson, Falk Fraikin and Neeraj Suri "Improving Robustness Testing of COTS OS Extensions", Proceedings of the 3rd International Service Availability Symposium (ISAS), Helsinki, Finland, May 15-16, 2006. (to appear in Springer Verlag's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series)
[5] Andréas Johansson and Neeraj Suri, "Error Propagation Profiling of Operating Systems", Proceedings of International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Yokohama, Japan, June 28 - July 1,2005
[6] Andréas Johansson, Adina Sarbu, Arshad Jhumka and Neeraj Suri, "On Enhancing the Robustness of Commercial Operating Systems", Proceedings of the International Service Availability Symposium (ISAS), München, May 2004, Springer Lecture Notes on Computer Science 3335 (M. Malek et al Editors), p. 148-159 (conference agenda and slides available here)
 
 

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