Trent Brunson | Searcharxiv

arXiv2019

Manticore: A User-Friendly Symbolic Execution Framework for Binaries and Smart Contracts

An effective way to maximize code coverage in software tests is through dynamic symbolic execution$-$a technique that uses constraint solving to systematically explore a program's state space. We introduce an open-source dynamic symbolic execution framework called Manticore for analyzing binaries and Ethereum smart contracts. Manticore's flexible architecture allows it to support both traditional and exotic execution environments, and its API allows users to customize their analysis. Here, we discuss Manticore's architecture and demonstrate the capabilities we have used to find bugs and verify the correctness of code for our commercial clients.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2015

Classification of critical phenomena in hierarchical small-world networks

A classification of critical behavior is provided in systems for which the renormalization group equations are control-parameter dependent. It describes phase transitions in networks with a recursive, hierarchical structure but appears to apply also to a wider class of systems, such as conformal field theories. Although these transitions generally do not exhibit universality, three distinct regimes of characteristic critical behavior can be discerned that combine an unusual mixture of finite- and infinite-order transitions. In the spirit of Landau's description of a phase transition, the problem can be reduced to the local analysis of a cubic recursion equation, here, for the renormalization group flow of some generalized coupling. Among other insights, this theory explains the often-noted prevalence of the so-called inverted Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in complex networks. As a demonstration, a one-parameter family of Ising models on hierarchical networks is considered.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗