Master Thesis - Evaluating Rust codebases using public information i Lund

Thesis Worker at Volvo Cars

Welcome to explore the world of Volvo Cars by writing your thesis with us! As a thesis worker in our organization you are supported by a supervisor who follows you during your project. All thesis projects are arranged in business critical areas and therefore you will be able to contribute to our company purpose – providing freedom to move in a safe, sustainable and personal way – from day one! 

Background 

One of the weaknesses the Rust tooling has is the way that project's dependencies are resolved and managed. Currently a project dependency is pulled automatically by cargo from crates.io or a configured crate registry in source format and then built and linked locally. This allows many opportunities for supply chain types of attacks, but also stresses unnecessarily the VCC (Volvo Car Corporation) infrastructure by forcing sources to be analyzed multiple times, compiled, etc. It also leaves the organization in a problematic position regarding reviewing and auditing the external dependencies not once, but in multiple instances.  

Rust provides exceptionally good tools to control and evaluate that risk such as crev, geiger, vet et al. As part of this thesis, we want to create an automatic checker that concatenates and condenses information on every crate to evaluate the risk for each of our production cargo. 
 

Additionally, we want to set up jobs to monitor how reproducible our builds are.  

Scope 

We want to enhance our Rust production environment by extending and incorporating the information publicly available. To achieve that we intend to collect information using various data sources (crev, vet, Geiger, audit, etc.) and report it to the user. We intend to use that information together with simple machine learning model to evaluate crates in absence of information.  
 

Relevant technical domains 

System verification and validation, system security, system reliability, software quality 

Your contribution is our future 

• You should love to hack and explore new areas while looking at the big picture.  
• You should have some experience with software development (C/Rust, git, scripting).  
• You should have a background in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, electronics, or other relevant fields. 
• We believe in excellence through collaboration and thus we would like to have at least two people collaborating for this thesis. Parts of the thesis could be split out as summer work, and/or part time work at Volvo Cars in case you are interested. 

Students may work at the Lund site (Delta 3, Scheelevägen 23, 223 63 Lund / Ideon Park) or at the Göteborg site (PV3B / Gunnar Engellaus väg 21, 418 78 / Torslanda) 

Duration  

• The work to start in 2023  
• The duration for this thesis work is 20-24 weeks.  
• 15-30 ECTS (academic credits) if in agreement with your Thesis Advisor in University  
• This thesis is to be conducted by 2 Students working in pairs. 

Be part of the change – apply today!

Selection will be ongoing during the application period, so do not hesitate to send in your application. Attach your resume and cover letter and copies of grades. You may provide a reference if you would like.
Please note that due to GDPR, applications via email will not be accepted.

Please apply no later than by January 15th, 2023.

The thesis will be mentored/supervised by Nikolaos Korkakakis and Julius Gustavsson. The hiring manager is Philippe Burlion. For any recruitment inquiries feel free to contact us at student-work.lund@volvocars.com.

We are Volvo Cars 
Volvo Cars is a company on a mission to bring traditional car manufacturing into a connected, sustainable and smart future. Since 1927, we've been known for our commitment to safety and for creating innovative cars that make life less complicated. In 2010, we decided to radically redefine our business, resulting in a totally new generation of cars and technology, as well as steady growth and record sales - and we're only getting started. By 2025, we aim to have yearly sales of 1.2 million cars, 50% of which will be electric vehicles and sold directly to customers through digital channels. We also intend to strengthen our position as a modern, progressive employer committed to diversity and gender and racial equality. We believe in the power of people. Join us and be part of Volvo Cars' transformation.