Recent Papers

These papers are included here as a convenience.
You are legally obliged to respect the copyright laws in using this material.
The copyright for all conference and journal papers lies with the publisher.

Links to Sections:  Dependability  Survivability and Security  Education  Other Areas  Dissertations & Theses

Dependability

  • Xiang Yin, John C. Knight, Elisabeth A. Nguyen, and Westley Weimer
    Formal Verification By Reverse Synthesis
    SAFECOMP 2008: The 27th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security
    Newcastle, UK (September 2008) (PDF)
  • John C. Knight and Patrick Graydon
    Engineering, Communications, and Safety
    2008 Australian Conference on Safety Related Programmable Systems,
    Adelaide, Australia (August 2007) (PDF)
  • Patrick J. Graydon, John C. Knight and Elisabeth A. Strunk
    Assurance Based Development of Critical Systems
    2007 International Symposium on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN),
    Edinburgh, Scotland (June 2007) (PDF)
  • Carlo A. Furia, Matteo Rossi, Elisabeth A. Strunk, Dino Mandrioli, John C. Knight
    Raising Formal Methods To The Requirements Level
    University of Virginia Technical Report CS-2006-24, Politecnico di Milano Technical Report 2006.64, (PDF)
  • Elisabeth A. Strunk, Carlo A. Furia, Matteo Rossi, John C. Knight, Dino Mandrioli
    The Engineering Roles of Requirements and Specification
    University of Virginia Technical Report CS-2006-21, Politecnico di Milano Technical Report 2006.61, (PDF)
  • Elisabeth A. Strunk and John C. Knight
    The Essential Synthesis of Problem Frames and Assurance Cases
    Expert Systems: The Journal of Knowledge Engineering (to appear)
  • William S. Greenwell and John C. Knight
    Framing analysis of software failure with safety cases
    Submitted to: Journal of Reliability Engineering and System Safety (PDF)
  • Elisabeth A. Strunk and John C. Knight
    Dependability Through Assured Reconfiguration in Embedded System Software
    IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp 172-187 (July 2006) (PDF)
  • William S. Greenwell, John C. Knight, C. Michael Holloway, and Jacob Pease
    A Taxonomy of Fallacies in System Safety Arguments
    24th International System Safety Conference, Albuequerque, NM (August 2006) (PDF)
  • Elisabeth A. Strunk and John C. Knight
    The Essential Synthesis of Problem Frames and Assurance Cases
    2nd International Workshop on Applications and Advances in Problem Frames, co-located with 29th International Conference on Software Engineering, Shanghai, China (May 23 2006) (PDF)
  • Strunk, Elisabeth A., Xiang Yin, and John C. Knight
    Echo: A Practical Approach to Formal Verification
    FMICS-05: Tenth International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, Lisbon, Portugal (September 2005) (PDF)
  • Kimberly S. Wasson, Kendra N. Schmid, Robyn R. Lutz, John C. Knight
    Using Occurrence Properties of Defect Report Data to Improve Requirements
    RE-2005: International Requirements Engineering Conference, Paris, France (September 2005) (PDF)
  • Strunk, Elisabeth A., John C. Knight, and M. Anthony Aiello
    Assured Reconfiguration of Fail-Stop Systems
    DSN 2005: The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks,
    Yokohama, Japan (June 2005) (PDF)
  • Strunk, Elisabeth A., John C. Knight, and M. Anthony Aiello
    Distributed Reconfigurable Avionics Architectures
    23rd Digital Avionics Systems Conference, Salt Lake City, UT (October 2004) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Elisabeth A. Strunk, William S. Greenwell, and Kimberly S. Wasson
    Specification and Analysis of Data for Safety-Critical Systems
    22nd International System Safety Conference, Providence RI (August 2004) (PDF)
  • Greenwell, William S., Elisabeth A. Strunk, and John C. Knight
    Failure Analysis and the Safety-Case Lifecycle
    IFIP Working Conference on Human Error, Safety and System Development (HESSD)
    Toulouse, France (August 2004) (PDF)
  • Strunk, Elisabeth A. and John C. Knight
    Assured Reconfiguration of Embedded Real-Time Software
    The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2004)
    Florence, Italy, (June 2004)  (PDF)
  • Greenwell, William S., John C. Knight and Elisabeth A. Strunk
    Risk-Based Classification of Incidents
    IRIA 03 Workshop on Investigation and Reporting of Incidents and Accidents, Williamsburg, VA (September 2003) (PDF)
  • Wasson, Kimberly S., John C. Knight, Elisabeth A. Strunk, and Sean R. Travis
    Tools Supporting the Communication of Critical Application Domain Knowledge in High Consequence Systems Development
    SAFECOMP 2003, The 22nd International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Edinburgh, Scotland (September 2003) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly S., and John C. Knight
    Improving Communication of Critical Domain Knowledge in High-Consequence Software Development: An Empirical Study
    21st International System Safety Conference, Ottawa, Canada (August 2003) (PDF)
  • Strunk, Elisabeth A., and John C. Knight
    Functionality/Dependability Co-design in Real-Time Embedded Software
    Workshop on Co-design for Embedded Real-time Systems (CERTS'03), Co-located with the Euromicro International Conference on Real-Time Systems (July 2003) (PDF)
  • Greenwell, William S. and John C. Knight
    What Should Aviation Safety Incidents Teach Us?
    Technical Report CS-2003-12, University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science (April 2003) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and S.M. Parikh
    Simulation technology for free flight system performance and survivability analysis
    21st Digital Avionics Systems Conference, Irvine, CA (November 2002) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C.,
    Software Challenges in Aviation Systems (summary of keynote presentation)
    International Conference of Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Catania, Italy (September 2002) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly S., John C. Knight, C. Michael Holloway
    The Role of Natural Language in Accident Investigation and Reporting Guidelines
    2002 Workshop on the Investigation and Reporting of Incidents and Accidents, Glasgow, Scotland (July, 2002) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly, S., John C. Knight
    In Search of Best Practices for the Use of Natural Language in the Development of High-Consequence Systems
    Fastabstracts, International Conference of Dependable Systems and Networks, Bethesda, MD (June, 2002) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C.,
    Safety Critical Systems: Challenges and Directions (summary of state-of-the-art presentation)
    International Conference on Software Engineering, Orlando, FL (May 2002) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly S., John C. Knight, and Elisabeth A. Strunk
    Erroneous Requirements: A Linguistic Basis for Their Occurrence and an Approach to Their Reduction
    Software Engineering Workshop, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (December, 2001) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly S., John C. Knight, and Elisabeth A. Strunk
    A Linguistic Analysis of Requirements Errors and Its Application
    University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report CS-2001-30 (November 2001)
    (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Kimberly S. Hanks, and Sean R. Travis
    Tool Support for Production Use of Formal Techniques

    International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Hong Kong (November 2001) (PDF)
  • Hanks, Kimberly, S., John C. Knight
    Improving Dependability through the Application of Rigorous Theoretical Linguistics to Requirements Capture,
    Fastabstracts: International Conference of Dependable Systems and Networks, Goteborg, Sweden (July, 2001) (PDF)
  • Knight J.C., P.T. Fletcher, and B. Hicks,
    Tool Support for Production Use of Formal Techniques
    Short paper, FM `99: World Congress on Formal Methods, Toulouse, France, (September 1999) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and M.F. Dunn,
    Software quality through domain-driven certification
    Annals of Software Engineering, vol. 5 (1998) pp. 293-315.
  • Ammann, P., D.L. Lukes, and J.C. Knight,
    Applying Data Redundancy to Differential Equation Solvers
    Annals of Software Engineering, vol. 4 (1998) pp. 65-77.
  • Knight, J.C., C.L. DeJong, M.S. Gibble, and L.G. Nakano,
    Why Are Formal Methods Not Used More Widely?
    Fourth NASA Formal Methods Workshop, Hampton, VA (September 1997) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and L.G. Nakano,
    Software Test Techniques for System Fault-Tree Analysis
    SAFECOMP `97, York, UK (September 1997) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and S.S. Brilliant,
    Preliminary Evaluation of a Formal Approach to User Interface Specification
    Tenth International Conference of Z Users, LNCS 1212 Springer Verlag, Reading, UK (April 1997) (PDF)
  • Brilliant, S.S., J.C. Knight, and M.E. Elder,
    Formal Specification of a User Interface
    American Nuclear Society Meeting on Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human Machine Interface Technologies, May 1996, University Park, PA.
  • Elder, M.C. and J.C. Knight,
    Specification of User Interfaces for Safety-Critical Systems
    MRCAS `95, Second International Symposium on Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, November 1995, Baltimore, MD.
  • Wika, K.G. and J.C. Knight,
    On the Enforcement of Software Safety Policies
    10th Annual IEEE Conference on Computer Assurance (COMPASS `95), June 1995, Gaithersburg, MD.
  • Wika, K.G. and J.C. Knight,
    Software Safety in a Medical Application
    MRCAS '94, First International Symposium on Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, September 1994, Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Dunn, M.F. and J.C. Knight,
    The Role of Domain Analysis in Quality Assurance
    Twelfth Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, September 1994, Portland OR.
  • Knight J.C., A.G. Cass, A.M. Fernandez, and K.G. Wika,
    Testing a Safety-Critical Application
    ISSTA `94, International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (workshop section), August 1994, Seattle, WA.
  • Ammann, P.E., S.S. Brilliant, and J.C. Knight,
    The Effect Of Imperfect Error Detection On Reliability Assessment Via Life Testing
    IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
    Vol. 20, No. 2, (February 1994).
  • Myers, E.A. and J.C. Knight,
    An Improved Software Inspection Technique And An Empirical Evaluation Of Its Effectiveness
    Communications of the ACM
    Vol. 36, No. 11, pp. 50-61 (November, 1993).

Survivability and Security

  • Anh Nguyen-Tuong, David Evans, John C. Knight, Benjamin Cox, Jack W. Davidson
    Security through Redundant Data Diversity
    The 38th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN 2008, Anchorage, AK (June 2008) (PDF)
  • J. Rowanhill, G. Wasson, Z. Hill, J. Basney, Y. Kiryakov, J. Knight, A. Nguyen-Tuong, A. Grimshaw and M. Humphrey.
    Dynamic System-wide Reconfiguration of Grid Deployments in Response to Intrusion Detections.
    High Performance Computing Conference (HPCC 2007), Sept 26-28, 2007. Houston, TX. (PDF)
  • Z. Hill, J. Rowanhill, A. Nguyen-Tuong, J. Basney, G. Wasson, J. Knight and M. Humphrey.
    Meeting Virtual Organization Performance Goals through Adaptive Grid Reconfiguration.
    8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing (Grid 2007), Austin, TX, Sept 19-21, 2007 (PDF)
  • Benjamin Cox, David Evans, Adrian Filipi, Jonathan Rowanhill, Wei Hu, Jack Davidson, John Knight, Anh Nguyen-Tuong, and Jason Hiser
    N-Variant Systems A Secretless Framework for Security through Diversity
    15th USENIX Security Symposium Vancouver, BC (August 2006) (PDF)
  • Wei Hu, Jason Hiser, Dan Williams, Adrian Filipi, Jack W. Davidson, David Evans, John C. Knight, Anh Nguyen-Tuong, and Jonathan Rowanhill.
    Secure and Practical Defense Against Code-injection Attacks Using Software Dynamic Translation
    Second International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments. Ottawa, Canada, June 14-16, 2006. (PDF)
  • A. Grimshaw, M. Humphrey, J.C. Knight, A. Nguyen-Tuong, J. Rowanhill, G. Wasson, and J. Basney.
    The Development of Dependable and Survivable Grids.
    2005 Workshop on Dynamic Data Driven Applications (associated with the 2005 International Conference on Computational Science). Emory University, Atlanta, GA. May 22-25, 2005 (PDF)
  • David Evans, Adrian Filipi, Jonathan Rowanhill, Anh Nguyen-Tuong, John C. Knight, Jack W. Davidson,
    Secretless Security Structures>
    University of Virginia Computer Science Technical Report CS-2005-17, April 2005
  • Scandariato, Riccardo and John C. Knight
    An Automated Defense System to Counter Internet Worms
    Proceedings of SRDS 2004, 23rd Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems
    Florianopolis, Brazil (October 2004) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C. and Elisabeth A. Strunk
    Achieving Critical System Survivability through Software Architectures
    Architecting Dependable Systems, (R. de Lemos, C. Gacek, and A. Romanovsky Eds)
    Springer Verlag (2004) (PDF)
    © Springer-Verlag, http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html)
  • Rowanhill, Jonathan C., Philip E. Varner and John C. Knight
    Efficient Hierarchic Management For Reconfiguration of Networked
    Information Systems

    The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2004)
    Florence, Italy, (June 2004) (PDF)
  • Hill, Jonathan C., John C. Knight
    Selective Notification: Combining Forms of Decoupled Addressing for
    Internet-Scale Command and Alert Dissemination
    Technical Report CS-2003-14, Department of Computer Science,
    University of Virginia, (April 2003) (PDF)
  • Knight, John, Elisabeth A. Strunk and Kevin J. Sullivan
    Towards a Rigorous Definition of Information System Survivability
    DISCEX 2003, Washington DC (April 2003) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Dennis Heimbigner, Alexander Wolf, Antonio Carzaniga, Jonathan Hill, Premkumar Devanbu, Michael Gertz
    The Willow Architecture: Comprehensive Survivability
    for Large-Scale Distributed Applications
    Intrusion Tolerance Workshop, DSN-2002 The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Washington DC (June 2002) (PDF)
  • Varner, Philip E., John C. Knight
    Security Monitoring, Visualization, and System Survivability
    Information Survivability Workshop - 2001 (Final Date TBD) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Dennis Heimbigner, Alexander Wolf, Antonio Carzaniga,
    Jonathan Hill, Premkumar Devanbu, Michael Gertz
    The Willow Survivability Architecture
    Information Survivability Workshop - 2001 (Final Date TBD) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Matthew C. Elder
    Fault Tolerant Distributed Information Systems
    International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Hong Kong (November 2001) (PDF)
  • Wang, C., J. Davidson, J. Hill, J. Knight
    Protection of Software-based Survivability Mechanisms
    International Conference of Dependable Systems and Networks, Goteborg, Sweden (July, 2001) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Kevin J. Sullivan, Matthew C. Elder, Chenxi Wang
    Survivability Architectures: Issues and Approaches
    DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition (DISCEX 2000), Hilton Head SC (January 2000) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and K.J. Sullivan
    On the Definition of Survivability
    University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report CS-TR-33-00 (PDF)
  • Wang, C., J.C. Knight, M. Elder
    On Viral Propagation and the Effect of Immunization
    16th ACM Annual Computer Applications Conference, New Orleans, LA (December 2000) (PDF)
  • Sullivan, K., J.C. Knight, X. Du, and S. Geist,
    Information Survivability Control Systems
    Twenty-first International Conference on Software Engineering, (May 1999),
    Los Angeles, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press (PDF)
  • Knight, J., M. Elder, X. Du
    Error Recovery in Critical Infrastructure Systems

    Computer Security, Dependability, & Assurance: From Needs to Solutions
    IEEE Computer Society (Order Number PR00337) (PDF)
  • Knight, John C., Elder, Matthew C., Flinn, James, Marx, Patrick
    Analysis of Four Critical Infrastructure Applications
    Computer Science Report No. CS-97-27, September 19, 1998
    (Available by request, send e-mail to knight at cs dot virginia dot edu)

Education

  • Knight, J.C.
    On Our Failure to Embrace Advances in Software Technology
    Safety-Critical Systems Club Newsletter, Fiftieth Issue, November 2007 (PDF)
  • Cohoon, J.P. and J.C. Knight
    Connecting Discrete Mathematics and Software Engineering
    36th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference, San Diego, CA (October 2006) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C.
    Should Software Engineers Be Licensed?
    Safety-Critical Systems Club Newsletter, Volume 14, Number 1, September 2004 (PDF)
    (Note that this article appeared in this newsletter only. It was reported incorrectly in the
    October 19, 2005 issue of Computer Weekly as an address).
  • Knight, J.C. and N.G. Leveson
    Software and Higher Education
    Inside Risks Column, CACM Vol. 49, No. 1 (January 2006) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and T.B. Horton
    Evaluating A Software Engineering Project Course Model Based On Studio Presentations
    35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Indianapolis, IN (October 2005) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C.
    Focusing Software Education on Engineering
    ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 30 Number 2 (March 2005) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C.
    Should Software Engineers Be Licensed?
    Safety-Critical Systems Club Newsletter, Volume 14, Number 1, September 2004 (PDF)
    (Note that this article appeared in this newsletter only. It was reported incorrectly in the
    October 19, 2005 issue of Computer Weekly as an address).
  • Horton, Thomas B., John C. Knight
    A Software Engineering Project Course Model Based on Studio Presentations
    33rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Boulder, CO (November 2003) (PDF)
  • Knight, J.C. and N.G. Leveson
    Should Software Engineers Be Licensed?
    Communications of the ACM, Vol 45, No. 11, November 2002 (PDF)

Other Areas

  • Knight, John C.
    Desert Island Books
    Annals of Software (PDF)
  • French, J.C., J. C. Knight, A. L. Powell,
    Applying Hypertext Structures to Software Documentation
    Journal of Information Processing and Management, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1997) pp. 219-231.
  • Sullivan K.J., and J.C. Knight,
    Assessment of an Architectural Approach to Large-Scale Systematic Reuse
    Eighteenth International Conference on Software Engineering, (March 1996), Berlin, Germany.
  • Powell, A.L., J.C. French, and J.C. Knight,
    A Systematic Approach to Creating and Maintaining Software Documentation
    ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, February 1996, Philadelphia, PA.
  • Dunn, M.F. and J.C. Knight,
    Automating The Detection Of Reusable Parts In Existing Software
    15th International Conference on Software Engineering May 1993, Baltimore, MD.

Recent Ph.D. Dissertations and M.S. Theses by my Students

  • Greenwell, William.
    Pandora: An Approach to Analyzing Safety-Related Digital-System Failures
    Ph.D. Dissertation, August 2006 (PDF)

  • Graydon, Patrick.
    Formal Specification of Static Configuration Data
    M.S. Thesis, June 2006 (PDF)

  • Wasson, Kimberly.
    CLEAR Requirements: Improving Validity Using Cognitive Linguistic Elicitation and Representation
    Ph.D. Dissertation, May 2006 (PDF)

  • Strunk, Elisabeth.
    Reconfiguration Assurance in Embedded System Software
    Ph.D. Dissertation, May 2005 (PDF)

  • Rowanhill, Jonathan.
    Survivability Management Architecture for Very Large Distributed Systems
    Ph.D. Dissertation, July 2004 (PDF)

  • Greenwell, William S.
    Learning Lessons from Accidents and Incidents Involving Safety-Critical Software Systems
    M.S. Thesis, May 2003 (PDF)

  • Varner, Philip E.
    Policy Specification for Non-Local Fault Tolerance in Large Distributed Information Systems
    M.S. Thesis, May 2003 (PDF)

  • Strunk, Elisabeth A.
    The Role of Natural Language in a Software Product
    M.S. Thesis, May 2002 (PDF)

  • Elder, Matthew C.
    Fault Tolerance in Critical Information Systems
    Ph.D. Dissertation, May 2001 (PDF)

  • Wang, Chenxi
    A Security Architecture for Survivability Mechanisms
    Ph.D. Dissertation, October 2000 (PDF)


   


Copyright © 2003 John C. Knight.