ATAXONOMY OF SECURITY FAULTS IN THE UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty
of
Purdue University
by
Taimur Aslam
In Partial Ful llment of the
Requirements for the Degree
of
Master of Science August
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This thesis is dedicated to my parents
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iwould like to thank my thesis advisor Dr Eugene Spa ord for guiding me through
my reaserch Dr Spa ord provided me the insight to tackle di erent problems read
several drafts of the thesis and made invaluable comments I also thank him for b eing
so patient and willing to work with myoddschedule I also thank my committee
memb ers Dr AdityaMathur Dr Samuel Wagsta Dr Michal Young Dr William
Gorman provided invaluable feedbacktoimprove the format of this thesis
I am greatly indebted to myparents for their supp ort and encouragementover
the years I would not have b een able to make it this far without their supp ort I
am also grateful to my sister for her supp ort in so many di erentendeavors and for
b eing a great friend
I thank Dan Schikore Mark Crosbie Steve Lo din and Muhammad Tariq who
pro ofread manuscripts of my thesis and made invaluable comments Thanks to all my
friends and everyb o dy in the COAST lab who provided much needed supp ort and
made sure that I maintained my sanity ThankstoFrank Wang for implementing the
front end to the database prototyp e
This acknowledgementwould not b e complete without mentioning Sadaf and some
vealways b een an inspiration to me very sp ecial p eople who ha
This work was supp orted in part by gifts from Sun Microsystems Bell Northern
Research and Hughes Research Lab oratories equipment loaned to the COAST group
by the U S Air Force and a contract with Trident Data Systems This supp ort is
gratefully acknowledged
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURES viii
ABSTRACT ix