Douglas Low's Home Page

Current Whereabouts

I've moved! I'm now studying for my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A.

Previous Occupation

I was the webmaster and Internet Studies programmer for the Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Previous Years' Course of Study

After five enjoyable (?) years of study at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, I obtained a BSc(Hons) and an MSc with Distinction in Computer Science. Various sidetracks in Physics, Calculus, Algebra, Statistics and Computational Mathematics were explored along the way.

My Masters Thesis in Computer Science was about Java obfuscation, that is to say, it involved making the reverse-engineering of Java bytecode more difficult. My supervisors were Dr. Christian Collberg and Professor Clark Thomborson. Dr. Christian Collberg maintains a page of obfuscation links.

Download my Masters thesis:

While studying at the University of Auckland, I wrote the following papers:

A Taxonomy of Obfuscating Transformations
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~collberg/Research/Publications/CollbergThomborsonLow97a/index.html
Co-authored with Dr. Christian Collberg and Professor Clark Thomborson.
Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.
Technical Report #148. July 1997.
This paper is about code obfuscation and it forms a part of my Masters thesis. A modified form of the paper is the subject of New Zealand Patent Application #328057.
Manufacturing Cheap, Resilient, and Stealthy Opaque Constructs
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~collberg/Research/Publications/CollbergThomborsonLow98a/index.html
Co-authored with Dr. Christian Collberg and Professor Clark Thomborson.
Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.
ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL'98). January 1998.
The intention is to use such constructs for code obfuscation. It is summarised in my Masters thesis.
Protecting Java Code Via Code Obfuscation
obfuscation.html
Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.
ACM Crossroads, Spring 1998 issue.
This is a short introduction to code obfuscation.
Breaking Abstractions and Unstructuring Data Structures
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~collberg/Research/Publications/CollbergThomborsonLow97d/index.html
Co-authored with Dr. Christian Collberg and Professor Clark Thomborson.
Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.
IEEE International Conference on Computer Languages (ICCL'98).
This paper extends the design of our Java obfuscation tool described in the first paper. We add transformations that affect data structures and abstractions.

In the area of Computer Science, apart from my thesis topic, my interests include compilers, computational combinatorics and constraint satisfaction (AI).

Other Interests

I like to read science fiction, fantasy, and action/adventure novels. Card games will also serve to pass time. My ability at chess (both Western and Chinese) is reasonable and I enjoy playing other strategy games. I also enjoy practising origami. This is the Japanese art of paper folding and is a way of turning boring 2-dimensional sheets of paper into 3-dimensional sculptures, without using glue or scissors.

Last updated: 4th September 1998. All comments to the maintainer.