Christian Collberg

About

Christian Collberg is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Lund, obtained in 1992. His research interests include security, software protection, reverse engineering, and research ethics. He is involved in various departmental activities and is accessible via his office in GS 758 or by email at collberg@cs.arizona.edu. His work focuses on advancing understanding and techniques in computer security and software protection, contributing to the academic community through research and teaching.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Operating system
• Engineering
• Database
• Philosophy
• Systems engineering
• Programming language
• Software engineering

Selected publications

• Repeatability in computer systems research

  Communications of the ACM · 2016-02-25 · 230 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  To encourage repeatable research, fund repeatability engineering and reward commitments to sharing research artifacts.

  PublisherDOI

• Code obfuscation against symbolic execution attacks

  2016-12-05 · 138 citations

  article

  Code obfuscation is widely used by software developers to protect intellectual property, and malware writers to hamper program analysis. However, there seems to be little work on systematic evaluations of effectiveness of obfuscation techniques against automated program analysis. The result is that we have no methodical way of knowing what kinds of automated analyses an obfuscation method can withstand.

  PublisherDOI

• Distributed application tamper detection via continuous software updates

  2012-12-03 · 74 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We present a new general technique for protecting clients in distributed systems against Remote Man-at-the-end (R-MATE) attacks. Such attacks occur in settings where an adversary has physical access to an untrusted client device and can obtain an advantage from tampering with the hardware itself or the software it contains.

  PublisherDOI

• Measuring Reproducibility in Computer Systems Research

  2014-01-01 · 55 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We describe a study into the willingness of Computer Systems researchers to share their code and data. We nd that . . . . We also propose a novel sharing specication scheme that will require researchers to specify the level of reproducibility that reviewers and readers can assume from a paper either submitted for publication, or published.

  Publisher

• Toward Digital Asset Protection

  IEEE Intelligent Systems · 2011-11-01 · 40 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Man-at-the-end (MATE) attacks are an understudied branch of computer security. These attacks involve an adversary gaining an advantage by violating software or hardware under their control, directly or via a remote connection. On an individual scale, MATE attacks could violate the privacy and integrity of medical records and other sensitive personal data, and on a larger scale, they could cripple a national infrastructure (such as a power grid and the Internet itself). The goal of software prote…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• EAGER: Man-at-the-End Attacks: Defenses and Evaluation Techniques

  NSF · $286k · 2011–2014

• TWC TTP: Small: Mitigating Insider Attacks in Provenance Systems

  NSF · $496k · 2013–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen Kobourov

  University of Arizona

  14 shared

• Clark Thomborson

  12 shared

• Jasvir Nagra

  11 shared

• Ginger Myles

  IBM Research - Almaden

  8 shared

• Suzanne Westbrook

  Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital

  6 shared

• Todd A. Proebsting

  5 shared

• A. Huntwork

  Amazon (United States)

  5 shared

• Mila Dalla Preda

  University of Verona

  5 shared

Similar researchers at University of Arizona

• Alon Efrath-37
• Saumya Debrayh-35
• Roberto Giacobazzih-29