Emilio Coppa

Info

Research interests:

I like to study how programs run. During my PhD, I have analyzed programs to improve or predict their performance. After the PhD, I used program analyses to find bugs/vulnerabilities in real-world applications or to perform reverse engineering, e.g., in the context of malware. I am also fascinated by low-level (attack) techniques such as Return-Oriented Programming.

Position:

Assistant professor at LUISS University.

Extra:

Coach and/or team manager of the Italian Cybersecurity Team during 2017-2019, and 2024.
National organizer of CyberChallenge.IT during 2017-2019.
Local organizer of CyberChallenge.IT at Sapienza University of Rome during 2017-2023.

Email:

ecoppa [at] luiss.it

Office:

Luiss University, Viale Romania 32, Rome - room 508

:

github.com/ercoppa

Funded projects

Thesis Opportunities

Education

Projects

SymFusion

SymFusion devises a novel hybrid instrumentation approach for concolic execution, where the core components of an application can be instrumented at compilation time (e.g., using an LLVM pass), while the remaining components can be dynamically instrumented at execution time (e.g., using QEMU DBT). The goal is to achieve the benefits of both approaches in terms of efficiency and flexibility.
Related papers: [SYMFUSION-ASE22]

DroidReach

Framework for testing the reachability of native functions in Android applications. Solving this task can be essential for several security tasks, e.g., to show that a vulnerable function within a library is indeed reachable by an application and thus it requires immediate attention.
Related papers: [DROIDREACH-ESORICS22]

Fuzzolic - Fuzzing + Concolic

Fuzzolic is a new concolic executor based on QEMU. It can be paired with a coverage-guided fuzzer, such as AFL++, to find bugs in real-world programs.
Related papers: [FUZZYSAT-ICSE21], [FUZZOLIC-COSE21]

Fuzzy-SAT - Approximate solving

Fuzzy-SAT is an approximate solver that can efficiently solve queries generated by concolic execution using techniques borrowed from the fuzzing domain.
Related papers: [FUZZYSAT-ICSE21], [FUZZOLIC-COSE21]

SymNav - Visually assisting symbolic execution

A prototype tool that visualizes the state of a symbolic execution analysis by plotting relevant data on a sunburst (that represent the symbolic execution tree), and on the control flow graph of the program. Furthermore, the tool allows the user to interact and refine the analysis, allowing him to interactively prune the symbolic execution tree
Related papers: [SYMNAV-VIZSEC19]

MemSight - Reasoning on symbolic pointers

A new approach to symbolic memory that reduces the need for concretization, hence offering the opportunity for broader state explorations and more precise pointer reasoning.
Related papers: [MEMSIGHT-ASE17] [MEMSIGHT2-STVR19] [MINT-ISEC22]

NearestFit - Predicting MapReduce performance

The NearestFit progress indicator targets accuracy of progress predictions for MapReduce jobs in the presence of data skewness and super-linear computations. This is achieved combining performance profiling, machine learning techniques, and data streaming algorithms.
Related papers: [CF-SOCC15]

Hadoop Internals - Diagrams

This project contains several diagrams describing Apache Hadoop internals (2.3.0 or later).

aprof - Input-sensitive profiling

aprof is a Valgrind tool for performance profiling designed to help developers discover hidden asymptotic inefficiencies in the code. From one or more runs of a program, aprof measures how the performance of individual routines scales as a function of the input size, yielding clues to its growth rate.
Related papers: [CDF-PLDI12] [CDFM-CGO14] [CDF-TSE14] [C-VAL14]

Publications

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Teaching

• [2023-2024] Informatica: professor. website.
• [2023-2024] Cybersecurity (Web Security module): professor. website.
• [2022-2023] Advanced techniques for finding bugs in real-world software: professor. website.
• [2022-2023] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo): professor. website.
• [2022-2023] Cybersecurity (Web Security module): professor. website.
• [2021-2022] Advanced techniques for finding bugs in real-world software: professor. website.
• [2021-2022] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo): professor. website.
• [2021-2022] Web Security and Privacy (Web Security module): professor. website.
• [2021-2022] Cybersecurity (Web Security module): professor. website.
• [2020-2021] Advanced techniques for finding bugs in real-world software: professor. website.
• [2020-2021] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo): professor. website.
• [2020-2021] Computer and Network Security: professor. website.
• [2019-2020] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo): adjunct professor. website.
• [2018-2019] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo I): adjunct professor. website.
• [2017-2018] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo I): adjunct professor. website.
• [2016-2017] Computer System Architecture (Sistemi di Calcolo I): teaching assistant. website.
• [2015-2016] Fondamenti di Informatica II: teaching assistant.