John Aycock

Silly stuff   Courses   Books   Papers   Research

Upcoming Courses Winter 2009 CPSC 217, Introduction to Computer Science for Multidisciplinary Studies I Fall 2008 CPSC 527/627, Computer Viruses and Malware Course description and registration information Course web page (course access only, sorry) Recent Courses Taught CPSC 411, Compiler Construction I CPSC 457, Principles of Operating Systems CPSC 510, Compiler Construction II CPSC 527/627, Computer Viruses and Malware (was CPSC 599.48/601.92) CPSC 599.55/601.02, Compiler Code Generation and Optimization CPSC 528/628, Spam and Spyware (was CPSC 599.63/601.12) CPSC 601.89, Readings in Compiler Construction Research Interests Computer security, especially things like Viruses Worms Trojan horses Spyware Spam Phishing Fraud Zombies Botnets ...and anything else related to malicious software that I forgot to list. Future threats and defenses against them Multidisciplinary things related to computer security, including areas like art, economics, ethics, and law My security research lab, the Double Secret Security Lab, is co-located with the Programming Languages Lab in ICT 618A. I am affiliated with the iCORE Information Security Lab (iCIS) and the Institute for Security, Privacy, and Information Assurance (ISPIA). Past Projects (At least those with web pages..) SPARK, the Scanning, Parsing, And Rewriting Kit AGATE: All Good Acronyms Taken, Evidently Books J. Aycock. Reading and Modifying Code, BookSurge, 2008. Where to buy it Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk BookSurge FAQ The book is self-published. That means it's no good, right? The book content has actually been reviewed by more people than any given peer-reviewed publication I've ever had. Self-publishing also allowed me to keep the costs as low as possible. Why is the book so cheap? I wanted to make a low-cost, useful guidebook that would make a good supplementary textbook for programming courses without breaking the bank. In any case, I'm not getting rich off it: any royalties I get from the sale of the book will be donated to charity.       J. Aycock. Computer Viruses and Malware. Advances in Information Security, volume 22, Springer-Verlag, 2006. Reviews G. Ledin. M. Stamp. A. Ortiz-Tapia. An Authentic Breakthrough, IEEE Distributed Systems Online 7, 12 (2006). Papers J. Aycock and J. Sullins. Ethical Proactive Threat Research. Workshop on Ethics in Computer Security Research, 2010, to appear. J. Aycock and A. Borsotti. Early Action in an Earley Parser. Acta Informatica 46, 8 (December 2009), pp. 549-559. N. Friess, H. Crawford, and J. Aycock. A Multi-Agent Approach to Testing Anti-Spam Software. 1st International Workshop on Defence against Spam in Electronic Communication, 2009, pp. 38-42. J. Aycock, J. M. Gutiérrez Cárdenas, and D. M. N. de Castro. Code Obfuscation using Pseudo-Random Number Generators. 1st International Workshop on Software Security Process, 2009, pp. 418-423. H. Crawford and J. Aycock. Supraliminal Audio Steganography: Audio Files Tricking Audiophiles. 11th International Workshop on Information Hiding (LNCS 5806), Springer, 2009, pp. 1-14. M. McDonald, J. Ong, J. Aycock, H. Crawford, and N. Friess. A Lightweight Drive-by Download Simulator, 18th Annual EICAR Conference, 2009, pp. 141-152. N. Friess and J. Aycock. A Kosher Source of Ham, MIT Spam Conference, 2009, 9pp. J. Nielson, D. M. N. de Castro, and J. Aycock. Image Spam – ASCII to the Rescue! Malware '08, short paper, pp. 65-68. J. Aycock and A. Aycock. Why I Love/Hate Wikipedia: Reflections upon (not quite) subjugated knowledges, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 8, 2 (May 2008), pp. 92-101. H. Crawford and J. Aycock. Kwyjibo: Automatic Domain Name Generation, Software: Practice & Experience 38, 14 (2008), pp. 1561-1567. M. Nielsen, D. Bertram, S. Pun, J. Aycock, and N. Friess. Global-scale Anti-spam Testing in Your Own Back Yard, Fifth Conference on Email and Anti-Spam (CEAS 2008), 8pp. J. Aycock, H. Crawford, and R. deGraaf. Spamulator: The Internet on a Laptop, ACM ITiCSE 2008, pp. 142-147. J. Aycock and A. Maurushat. "Good" Worms and Human Rights, ACM SIGCAS Computers & Society 38, 1 (March 2008), pp. 28-39. (This is an extended version of TR 2006-846-39 below.) J. Aycock. Painting the Internet. Leonardo 41, 2 (April 2008), pp. 112-113. Transactions section. (This is the condensed and extended version of TR 2006-834-27 below.) N. Friess, J. Aycock, and R. Vogt. Black Market Botnets, MIT Spam Conference, 2008, 8pp. (This is an extended version of TR 2007-873-25 below.) J. Szabo, J. Aycock, R. Acton, J. Denzinger. The Tale of the Weather Worm, ACM SAC 2008, pp. 2097-2102. (This is an extended version of TR 2007-858-10 below.) S. Pun, E. Parsons, M. Nielsen, D. Ma, and J. Aycock. Predictions about the Prediction Scam. Virus Bulletin (Spam Supplement), February 2008, p. S2. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. R. Vogt, J. Aycock, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Quorum Sensing and Self-Stopping Worms. 5th ACM Workshop on Recurring Malcode (WORM 2007), pp. 16-22. J. Aycock and A. Maurushat. Future Threats. 17th Virus Bulletin International Conference, 2007, pp. 275-281. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. J. Aycock. A Design for an Anti-Spear-Phishing System. 17th Virus Bulletin International Conference, reserve paper, 2007, pp. 290-293. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. N. Friess and J. Aycock. Black Market Botnets, Technical Report 2007-873-25, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2007. R. H. Hemmingsen, J. Aycock, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Spam, Phishing, and the Looming Challenge of Big Botnets. EU Spam Symposium, 2007, also as Technical Report 2007-865-17, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary. Errata. J. Aycock. Covert Zombie Ops. Virus Bulletin, May 2007, pp. 11-13. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. J. Szabo, J. Aycock, R. Acton, J. Denzinger. The Tale of the Weather Worm, Technical Report 2007-858-10, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2007. R. Acton, N. Friess, and J. Aycock. Inverse Geolocation: Worms with a Sense of Direction. Malware '07, pp. 487-493. A. Fink, J. Denzinger, and J. Aycock. Extracting NPC behavior from Computer Games using Computer Vision and Machine Learning Techniques. IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2007, pp. 24-31. R. Vogt, J. Aycock, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Army of Botnets, 14th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, 2007, pp. 111-123. (This is an extended version of TR 2006-840-33 below.) J. Aycock and A. Maurushat. "Good" Worms and Human Rights, Technical Report 2006-846-39, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2006. R. Vogt and J. Aycock. Attack of the 50 Foot Botnet, Technical Report 2006-840-33, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2006. J. Aycock. Teaching Spam and Spyware at the University of C@1g4ry, Third Conference on Email and Anti-Spam (CEAS 2006), short paper, pp. 137-141. J. Aycock, R. deGraaf, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Anti-Disassembly using Cryptographic Hash Functions, Journal in Computer Virology 2, 1 (August 2006), pp. 79-85. (This is an enhanced version of the EICAR 2006 paper and the 2005 technical report below.) J. Aycock. Painting the Internet: A Different Kind of Warhol Worm, Technical Report 2006-834-27, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2006. J. Aycock, R. deGraaf, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Anti-Disassembly using Cryptographic Hash Functions, 15th Annual EICAR Conference, 2006, pp. 38-47. Errata. (This is an enhanced version of the 2005 technical report below.) J. Aycock and N. Friess. Spam Zombies from Outer Space, 15th Annual EICAR Conference, 2006, pp. 164-179. Errata. (An earlier version appeared as Technical Report 2006-808-01, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2006.) J. Aycock and J. Uhl. Choice in the Classroom. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 37, 4 (December 2005), pp. 84-88. R. deGraaf, J. Aycock, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Better Port Knocking with Strong Authentication. ACSAC 2005, pp. 409-418. N. Friess, R. Vogt, and J. Aycock. Timing is Everything. Computers & Security 24, 8 (November 2005), pp. 599-603. K. Wilson and J. Aycock. NEST: NEtwork Server Tool. 11th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications, 2005, pp. 1107-1111. (An early version of this was described in the poster and tech report below.) A. Hirt and J. Aycock. Anonymous and Malicious. 15th Virus Bulletin International Conference, October 2005, pp. 2-8. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. J. Aycock, R. deGraaf, and M. Jacobson, Jr. Anti-Disassembly using Cryptographic Hash Functions, Technical Report 2005-793-24, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2005. Errata. J. Aycock and M. Zastre. An Exceptional Programming Language. 2005 International Conference on Programming Languages and Compilers, H. R. Arabnia, ed., ISBN 1-932415-75-0, pp. 137-141. J. Aycock. Your Computer is Toast. Virus Bulletin, invited comment, June 2005, p. 2. Copyright is held by Virus Bulletin Ltd., but is made available on this site for personal use free of charge by permission of Virus Bulletin. References and additional information. J. Aycock and S. Bertazzon. Using Malware to Improve Software Quality and Security. 14th Annual EICAR Conference, 2005, pp. 239-252. Reprinted in Chapter 12 of Malware: An Introduction, R. K. J. Bandamutha, ed., Icfai University Press, 2006, pp. 205-222. J. Aycock and K. Barker. Viruses 101. ACM SIGCSE 2005, pp. 152-156. J. Aycock. Extending Old Compiler Tools with Meta-Tools. 2004 International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice, H. R. Arabnia and H. Reza, eds., ISBN 1-932415-29-7, pp. 841-845. K. Wilson and J. Aycock. NEST: NEtwork Server Tool. 5th International Conference on Internet Computing, poster, 2004, p. 700. Full paper is available as Technical Report 2004-746-11, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2004. J. Aycock and K. Barker. Creating a Secure Computer Virus Laboratory. 13th Annual EICAR Conference, 2004, 13pp. J. Aycock. The ART of Compiler Construction Projects. ACM SIGPlan Notices 38, 12 (December 2003), pp. 28-32. J. Aycock. A Brief History of Just-in-Time. ACM Computing Surveys 35, 2 (June 2003), pp. 97-113. (This is an enhanced version of the 2001 technical report below.) J. Aycock. OpenBSD in the Classroom, Daemon News, June 2003. J. Aycock. A Program Execution Model Based on Generative Dynamic Grammars. IASTED International Conference on Computer Science and Technology (CST 2003), pp. 411-416. J. Aycock, D. Pereira, and G. Jodoin. UCPy: Reverse-Engineering Python. PyCon DC 2003, 9pp. D. Pereira and J. Aycock. Dynamic Region Inference, Technical Report 2002-709-12, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2002. D. Pereira and J. Aycock. Instruction Set Architecture of Mamba, a New Virtual Machine for Python. Technical Report 2002-706-09, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2002. J. Aycock and R. N. Horspool. Practical Earley Parsing. The Computer Journal 10, 6 (2002), pp. 620-630. J. Aycock. AGATE: Unifying Languages and Operating Systems. Technical Report 2002-703-06, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2002. J. Aycock. The Design and Implementation of SPARK, a Toolkit for Implementing Domain-Specific Languages. Journal of Computing and Information Technology CIT (Special Issue on Domain-Specific Languages) 10, 1 (2002), pp. 55-66. J. Aycock. A Brief History of Just-in-Time. Technical Report 2001-689-12, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2001. J. Aycock. Why Bison is Becoming Extinct. ACM Crossroads 7.5 (Mid Summer 2001). J. Aycock, N. Horspool, J. Janousek, and B. Melichar. Even Faster Generalized LR Parsing. Acta Informatica 37, 8 (2001), pp. 633-651. J. Aycock and N. Horspool. Schrödinger's Token. Software – Practice & Experience 31, 8 (2001), pp. 803-814. J. Aycock and N. Horspool. Directly-Executable Earley Parsing. CC 2001 – 10th International Conference on Compiler Construction (LNCS 2027) , Springer-Verlag, 2001, pp. 229-243. J. Aycock and N. Horspool. Simple Generation of Static Single-Assignment Form. CC 2000 – 9th International Conference on Compiler Construction (LNCS 1781) , Springer-Verlag, 2000, pp. 110-124. R. N. Horspool and J. Aycock. Analysis of Equation Structure Using Least Cost Parsing. IWPT 2000 (6th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies), poster, pp. 307-308. J. Aycock. Aggressive Type Inference. Proceedings of the 8th International Python Conference, 2000, pp. 11-20. HTML PDF J. Aycock and M. Levy. An Architecture for Easy Web Page Updating. ACM Crossroads 6.2 (Winter 1999), pp. 15-18. J. Aycock and N. Horspool. Faster Generalized LR Parsing. CC '99 – 8th International Conference on Compiler Construction (LNCS 1575), Springer-Verlag, 1999, pp. 32-46. J. Aycock. Compiling Little Languages in Python. Proceedings of the 7th International Python Conference, 1998, pp. 69-77. HTML PostScript Source J. Aycock. Converting Python Virtual Machine Code to C. Proceedings of the 7th International Python Conference, 1998, pp. 43-50. HTML PostScript And from prehistory.. J. Aycock. MBL: A Language for Teaching Compiler Construction. Technical Report 1995-574-26, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 1995. Random Thoughts For a writer, a typo is disaster: no character ever died gloriously in a hail of mullets. Their house's electricity suddenly came back on, delivering a kick to the family joules. A quiet rhinoplasty is Dolby nose reduction. All the birds in ancient Rome were the same color. Rome was famous for its aqua ducks. The web page's design was tasteful, as if created by an elite squad of drunken monkeys. Cats right themselves; books don't. A stiff competitor is a starch-enemy. Pinocchio was happy; he was a-wood-chipper. The accident in his beloved "green" car was like a punch to the solar Lexus. Purple is when you yank on a cat's tail. A letter opener is what makes an "o" into a "c." Nothing provides instant clarity and reflection like pressing the "send" key. Slowly, the farm equipment turned, and its headlight illuminated a small bed. It was a cot in the tractor beam. Does a program that works with TIFF files have to take arguments? No wonder I'm so tired – I'm in the human race! That explains why people keep handing me cups of Gatorade. Old mail in your webmail account is cobwebmail. Make sure to cross your eyes and dot your "T"s. My antisocial networking website is wildly successful: no users yet. I read a book on approximation algorithms. It had about six chapters. An expensive, but well-lit, French apartment is both sunny and cher. Children can see up your nostrils at all times. Never attempt a shellsort until the turtles have stopped moving. If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he makes fish sticks and starts dressing all nautical and saying things like "Har! Y'ever been to sea?" Titles Most comments I receive about my web page are to do with the crossed-out titles up at the top. This may mean that most people don't read beyond line two of my web page. However, on the off chance that these hold some entertainment value, I've compiled a list of previous titles. What I Look Like Ooh, the suspense! Follow this link for a picture... My Old Web Pages Are you really that bored? I'm pleased to note, looking back, that they're all as bizarre as my current one: University of Victoria, August 2000 University of Victoria, October 1999 University of Calgary, May 1996 You rock, Wayback Machine. Where Not to Send Me Email I'm just putting these email addresses here so that email harvesters find them: ayc0ck@hotmail.com and 4ycock@gmail.com. I set the accounts up to see if I get any different spam samples there. If you want to send me email, please use the address on the top of this page instead.