Publications and software

Student's thesis and dissertations

• A. Puntambekar, Terrain Mapping and Obstacle Detection for Unmanned Autonomous Ground Robots Without Sensor Stabilization, M.S. Thesis, December 2006 (Full thesis, PPT Presentation).
• V. Venkitarakrishnan, CBWare - Distributed Middleware for Autonomous Ground Vehicles, M.S. Thesis, December 2006 (Thesis: front pages, body, PPT Presentation).
• R. Mathur, M.S., Normalizing Metamorphic Malware using Term-Rewriting, M.S. Thesis, December 2006 (Full thesis).
• Suresh Golconda, Steering Control for a Skid-Steered Autonomous Ground Vehicle at Varying Speed, M.S. Thesis, February 2005 (Full thesis).
• E. U. Kumar, Abstract Stack Graph as a Representation to Detect Obfuscated Calls in Binaries. Master’s Thesis, The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, December 2004 (Full thesis).
• A. Kapoor, An Approach Towards Disassembly of Malicious Binary Executables. Master's Thesis, The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, November 2004 (Full thesis).
• M. Mohammed, Zeroing in on Metamorphic Computer Viruses. Master's Thesis, The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, May 2003 (Full thesis).
• J-C. Deprez, Ph.D., “Detecting Ripple Effects of Program Modifications on a Software System’s Functionality,” May 2003 (Full dissertation).
• P. K. Singh, A Physiological Decomposition of Virus and Worm Programs. Master's Thesis, The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, May 2002. (Full thesis)
• J-C. Deprez. A Context-Sensitive Formal Transformation for Restructuring Programs. Master's Thesis, The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, December 1997.
  Full thesis (PDF)
• J. Nandigam. A Measure for Module Cohesion. The Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, May 1995. Table of contents. (ftp directory).

Publications (classified by area of research)

Autonomous Ground Vehicles

• Guest editor, IEEE Computer, December 2006, Special Issue on Unmanned Vehicles
• G. Seetharaman, A. Lakhotia, E. P. Blasch, Unmanned Vehicles Come of Age: The DARPA Grand Challenge, IEEE Computer, 39 (12), pp. 26-29, December 2006 (link).
• A. Lakhotia, S. Golconda, A. Maida, P. Mejia, A. Puntambekar, G. Seetharaman, and S. Wilson, “CajunBot: Architecture and Algorithms,” Journal of Field Robotics, , 23 (8), 2006, 555-578, DOI: 10.1002/rob.20129, (Full paper).
• A. Maida, S. Golconda, P. Mejia, A. Lakhotia, and C. Cavanaugh, “Subgoal-based local navigation and obstacle avoidance using a grid-distance field,” International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems (IJVAS) 4 (2-4), 2006, pp. 122-142, (Full paper).
• S. Golconda, P. Mejia, and A. Lakhotia, “Extendable Grid Representation for Navigation and Obstacle Detection,” IEEE Position Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS 2006), San Diego, April 2006.

Viruses and Worms

• A. Walenstein, R. Mathur, M. Chouchane, and A. Lakhotia, “Design Space of Metamorphic Malware,” 2^nd International Conference on Information Warfare (ICIW2007), Monterey, CA, March 2007 (Paper).
• M. Chouchane and A. Lakhotia, “Using Engine Signature to Detect Metamorphic Malware,” Proceedings of the Fourth ACM Workshop on Recurring Malcode (WORM), Fairfax, VA, November 2006, pp. 73-78 (Full paper, PowerPoint Presentation).
• A. Walenstein, R. Mathur, M. Chouchane, and A. Lakhotia, “Normalizing Metamorphic Malware Using Term Rewriting”, IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2006), Philadelphia, PA, September 2006. **RECEIVED BEST PAPER AWARD** (Full paper, Powerpoint presentation).
• A. Lakhotia, E. U. Kumar, and M. Venable, “A Method for Detecting Obfuscated Calls in Malicious Binaries,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,  Volume 31, Number 11, November 2005, pp. 955-968 (http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TSE.2005.120, sorry I do not have soft copy of final version.).
• M. Karim, A. Walenstein, A. Lakhotia, and L. Parida, "Malware Phylogeny Generation using Permutations of Code," European Research Journal of Computer Virology, 1, 2005, pp. 13-23 (PDF).
• M. Venable, M. R. Chouchane, Md. E. Karim, and A. Lakhotia, "Analyzing Memory Accesses in Obfuscated x86 Executables," K. Julisch and C. Kruegel (Eds.): Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA) 2005, LNCS 3548, pp. 1 – 18, 2005. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005 (PDF, PPT presentation.)
• A. Lakhotia, M. E. Karim, A. Walenstein, and L. Parida, "Malware Phylogeny using Maximal Pi-Patterns", EICAR 2005 Conference: Best Papers Proceedings, Malta, pp. 156-174, April-May, 2005, (Full paper).
• U. K. Eric, A. Kapoor, and A. Lakhotia, "DOC- Answering the Hidden 'Calls' of Virus," Virus Bulletin, April 2005, (Full paper).
• A. Lakhotia and M. Mohammed, “Imposing Order on Program Statements and its implication to AV Scanners,” in Proceedings of 11^th IEEE Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Delft, The Netherlands, November 2004, pp. 161-171, © Copyright 2004, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA. (Full paper, Download from IEEE)
• A. Lakhotia and U. Eric, “Stack Shape Analysis to Detect Obfuscated Calls in Binaries,” in Proceedings of Fourth IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Chicago, IL, September 2004, pp. 17-26. (Full paper)
• P. K. Singh, M. Mohammed, and A. Lakhotia, “Using Static Analysis and Verification for Analyzing Virus and Worm Programs,” in Proceedings of Second European Conference on Information Warfare, Reading, UK, June 2003.
• P. K. Singh and A. Lakhotia, "Static Verification of Worm and Virus Behavior in Binary Executables using Model Checking," (extended abstract) in 4^th IEEE Information Assurance Workshop, West Point, NY, June 2003 (Full paper).
• A. Lakhotia, A. Kapoor, and E. U. Kumar, “Are Metamorphic Viruses Really Invincible?” Virus Bulletin, December 2004 and January 2005, (Part 1 and Part 2).
• M. Venable, P. Pathak, and A. Lakhotia, “Getting into Beagle’s Backdoor,” Virus Bulletin, July 2004, pp. 9-13 (Complete issue).
• A. Lakhotia and P. K. Singh, Challenges in getting 'Formal' with viruses, Virus Bulletin, September 2003 (Complete Issue).

Reverse engineering

• A. Lakhotia and J-C. Deprez, "Restructuring functions with low cohesion," In Proceedings of the 6th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, (WCRE'99), Atlanta, GA, USA, October 6-8, 1999, © Copyright 1999, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA. (Abstract) (Full paper)
• A. Lakhotia and J-C. Deprez, "Restructuring programs by tucking statements into functions." Journal of Information & Software Technology, 40, © Copyright 1998, Elsevier Science B.V., pp. 677-689. (Abstract) (Full paper)
• A. Lakhotia. "DIME: A Direct Manipulation Environment for Evolutionary Development of Software", In Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Program Comprehension, (IWPC'98) Ischia, Italy, June 1998, © Copyright 1998, IEEE Computer Society Press, 72-79. (Abstract) (Full paper)
• J. Gravley and A. Lakhotia, "Identifying enumeration types modeled with symbolic constants", Proc. of 3rd Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Monterey, CA, November 1996, © Copyright 1996, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 227-236. (abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Clustsys: A system for creating software subsystem classifications", Documentation for the Clustsys system,(abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Wolf: a tool to recover dataflow oriented design from source code", Fifth Annual Workshop on Systems Reengineering Technology, Monterey, CA, Sponsored by Naval Surface Warfare Center, February 1995. (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia and J. M. Gravley, "Toward Experimental Evaluation of Subsystem Classification Recovery Techniques," Proc. of 2nd Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, Toronto, July 1995, © Copyright 1995, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 262-269. (abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "A unified framework for software subsystem classification techniques," J. Systems and Software, © Elsevier Science, Inc., Volume 36, March 1997, pp. 211-231. (abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "An approach to recovering data flow oriented design of a software system," (abstract) (full paper )
• A. Lakhotia, "What is the appropriate abstraction for understanding and reengineering a software system?" appeared in IEEE Reverse Engineering Newsletter. ( full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Architecture recovery techniques: a unified view and a measure of their goodness,(abstract) ( full paper)

  (A old version of the two subsytem classification papers. I now use the phrase subsystem classification instead of architecture recovery).

• A. Lakhotia, S. Mohan, & P. Poolkasem, "On evaluating the goodness of architecture recovery techniques," TR-92-5-4, 1992. (full paper)

Program understanding experiments

• A. Lakhotia, "Requirements for Thought.Log--a system to log thoughts," March 1996. ( full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Understanding someone else's code: Analysis of experiences," J. Systems and Software, © Elsevier Science, Inc., Volume 23, Dec. 1993., pp. 269-175. ( full paper) for an earlier version that appeared in Reverse engineering Newsletter, 1993
• A. Lakhotia, "Analysis of experiences with modifying computer programs,"(abstract) (Full paper ).

Software metrics

• J. Nandigam, A. Lakhotia, & C. Cech, "Experimental evaluation of agreement between programmers in applying the rules of cohesion," Journal of Software Maintenance: Research and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, 11, pp. 35-53, 1999.
  An earlier tech report version. Technical Report CACS-TR-5-8-2, April 1998. (Abstract) ( full paper).
• A. Lakhotia, "Rule-based approach to computing module cohesion," Proceedings 15th ICSE, © IEEE Computer Science Press, 1993, pp. 35-44. (abstract) ( full paper).

  Older version. A. Lakhotia and J. Nandigam, "Computing module cohesion," CACS TR-91-5-4, 1991. (full paper )

Flow analysis of programs

Program slicing and integration

• M. Harman, A. Lakhotia, and D. Binkley, "Theory and Algorithms for Slicing Unstructured Programs," Journal of Information and Software Technology, 48 (7): 549-565 (2006).
• A. Lakhotia, J-C. Deprez, and Shreyash S. Kame, "Flow Analysis Models for Program Slicing Algorithms", CACS-TR-99-5-1, July 1999, (abstract) (Full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Improved interprocedural slicing algorithm," (abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Graph Theoretic Foundations of Program Slicing and Integration,"(abstract)(full paper)

Constructing call graph

• A. Lakhotia, "Constructing call multigraphs using dependence graphs", Proceedings 20th POPL, © ACM Press, 1993, pp. 273-284. (abstract) (full paper)
• A. Lakhotia, "Constructing call multigraphs, revisited," internal report. A better algorithm than the version appearing in POPL'93. (abstract) (full paper)

Prolog programming

• A. Lakhotia, L. Sterling, & D. Bojantchev, "Development of a Prolog Tracer by Stepwise Enhancement," Proc. the Third International Conference on Practical Applications of Prolog, Paris, April 1995, © ACM Press. (abstract) ( full paper)

Others

• M. Karim, L. Parida, A. Lakhotia, “Using Permutation Patterns for Content-Based Phylogeny,” 2006 Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics (PRIB2006), Hong Kong, China, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag,  August 2006.
• R. Loganantharaj, M. E. Karim, A. Lakhotia, “Recognizing TATA Promoters Based on Discriminating Frequency Analysis of Neighborhood  Tuples,” in Proceedings of the First Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Symposium (BIOT-04), Colorado Springs, September 24, 2004.
• K. Efe, V. Raghavan, and A. Lakhotia, “Content and Link Structure Analysis for Searching the Web”, Y. Zhang, A. Kandel, T. Y. Lin, Y. Y. Yao, (Eds.), World Scientific Press, 2003 (Full paper).
• T. W. Chan and A. Lakhotia, "Debugging Program Failures Exhibited by Voluminous Data," Journal of Software Maintenance: Research & Practice, John Wiley, Volume 10, pp. 111-150, 1998.

Software systems

• A. Lakhotia, "Requirements for Thought.Log--a system to log thoughts," March 1996. Note this is only a requirements document. Not the software itself. If you know of some system that meets some or all of the requirements please let me know. (full paper )
• A. Lakhotia, "Clustsys: a system for creating software subsystem classifications," (Source code)
• A. Lakhotia and T. Wongweeratorn, "Simple slicer: A program slicer for a toy language." ( Source code)
• A. Lakhotia and L. Sterling, "ProMiX: A partial evaluator for Prolog." ( Source code)
• Collection of assignment programs from a course conducted by me. They may be useful for experimenting with program analysis tools. (Source code )