Harishankar Vishwanathan | Rutgers University

About Me

I’m interested in building systems that are secure, verifiable, and efficient. My research interests are broadly in Operating Systems, Programming Languages and Formal Methods. I’m privileged to work under the guidance of Prof. Srinivas Narayana and Prof. Santosh Nagarakatte. Currently, I work closely with the eBPF run-time in the Linux kernel; specifically I am looking at the static program analysis taking place in the eBPF in-kernel verifier.

I previously completed a Masters from the University at Buffalo. I worked with Prof. Steven Ko, Prof. Karthik Dantu, and Prof. Lukasz Ziarek on developing richer runtimes for trusted applications written for the ARM TrustZone trusted execution enviroment. I have also worked with Prof. Anton Burtsev on designing fast hash tables that utilize the high bandwidth provided by modern memory (DRAM) subsystems.

News

Jul 2024: Paper on scaling the verification of abstract operators in the Linux eBPF verifier using our tool Agni and fixing latent unsound abstract operators is accepted to SAS '24.
Apr 2024: Submitted a patch to the Linux kernel fixing a latent unsoundness in the eBPF verifier. The patch has been upstreamed.
Nov 2023: Presented a talk and demoed our tool Agni to the Linux community at LPC '23. See the slides here.
Oct 2023: Presented my Ph.D. qualifying talk on Developing Verified Static Analyzers for Kernel Extensions. See the slides and a report on work related to my research. Officially a Ph.D. candidate.
May 2023: Artifact for CAV '23 submission on verifying the range analysis in the eBPF verifier is available at zenodo and github.
May 2023: Presented a talk on verifying the range analysis in the eBPF verifier of the Linux Kernel at NJPLS '23.
Apr 2023: Paper on the verifying the range analysis in the eBPF verifier of the Linux kernel is accepted to CAV '23. See the paper here.
Apr 2022: Artifact for CGO '22 submission on tristate numbers receives Artifact Reusable and Results Reproduced badges.
Dec 2021: Paper on the abstract domain of tristate numbers (used in the Linux kernel's eBPF verifier) is accepted to CGO '22. See the paper here.
May 2021: Linux kernel patch introducing a new algorithm for multiplication of tristate numbers is upstreamed.
Apr 2019: Poster about garbage-collected runtimes for Trusted Applications written for ARM TrustZone is accepted to MobiSys '19.

Publications

SAS

Fixing Latent Unsound Abstract Operators in the eBPF Verifer of the Linux Kernel

Harishankar Vishwanathan, Matan Shachnai, Srinivas Narayana, Santosh Nagarakatte

Static Analysis Symposium (SAS), 2024.

PDF Code
CAV

Verifying the Verifier: eBPF Range Analysis Verification

Harishankar Vishwanathan, Matan Shachnai, Srinivas Narayana, Santosh Nagarakatte

International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV), 2023.

PDF Code
CGO

Sound, precise, and fast abstract interpretation with tristate numbers

Harishankar Vishwanathan, Matan Shachnai, Srinivas Narayana, Santosh Nagarakatte

International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO), 2022.

PDF Code Distinguished Paper Award
MobiSys

Partitioning Garbage Collection Between the Secure and Normal Worlds for Trusted Applications (poster)

Harishankar Vishwanathan, Chang Min Park, Sidharth Kumar Mishra, Karthik Dantu, Steven Y. Ko, Lukasz Ziarek

International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), 2019.

PDF

Teaching

TA, CS 416/518, Operating Systems, with Srinivas Narayana at Rutgers University, Fall 2023.
TA, CS 143A, Operating Systems, with Anton Burtsev at University of California, Irvine, Fall 2020.
TA, CS 238P, Operating Systems, with Anton Burtsev at University of California, Irvine, Spring 2020.
TA, CSE 486/586, Distributed Systems, with Steven Y. Ko at University at Buffalo, Spring 2019.