Andreas Zeller
LightNews LightNews
banner
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Andreas Zeller
@andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
8 followers 0 following 79 posts
Software researcher at https://cispa.de., working on https://fandango-fuzzer.github.io, https://www.cispa.de/s3, @TheFuzzingBook, @TheDebuggingBook, and more […]

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://mastodon.social/@AndreasZeller, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Andreas Zeller @andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · Nov 28
I have been selected to become an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to analyzing software and its development process". Happy and honored!

Let today be my "thanks giving" day: A huge thank you to all of you who endorsed and supported me - today and throughout […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
Dear Prof. Andreas Zeller, Recognizing the achievements of its members is an important part of the mission of IEEE. Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for elevation to IEEE Fellow. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. It is my great pleasure to inform you that the IEEE Board of Directors, at its November 2025 meeting elevated you to IEEE Fellow, effective 1 January 2026 with the following citation: for contributions to analyzing software and its development process
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Today is my "forced maintenance day":

* Mail has lost all my emails sent since Monday
* Mail search is broken too
* Search in reminders cannot find anything
* New Keynote is full of ads!?
* Invoke Python-3.13, get 3.14 instead - venvs are messed up
* LaTeX "minted" crashes (likely b/c Python) […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
January 30, 2026 at 10:42 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Fuzzing software becomes much more effective if you can generate _valid_ inputs. We have now built the first approach to _statically_ extract complete and precise input grammars from parser code, producing syntactically valid and diverse inputs by […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
January 28, 2026 at 4:11 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Fuzzing software becomes much more effective if you can generate _valid_ inputs. We have now built the first approach to _statically_ extract complete and precise input grammars from parser code, producing syntactically valid and diverse inputs by construction. Enjoy! […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
January 28, 2026 at 4:05 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
After a visit to Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) in Bochum, seeing my awesome colleagues Thorsten Holz, Marcel Böhme, @gannimo, and many more, now on my way to Paris to celebrate ten years of Software Heritage with the great Roberto Di Cosmo
January 27, 2026 at 5:59 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
A researcher used more than 2,000 em-dashes in his papers, revealing AI-based manipulation in 400+ papers since 1985. Professor Zeller claims he "typed" these dashes into the paper by using "two hyphens" and a "typesetting" system.
$ cd ~/Papers/ $ grep -e '[ ~]-- ' */*.tex | wc -l 2258 $
January 8, 2026 at 8:34 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Happy New Year! I am thrilled to report that Jacek Śliwerski, Tom Zimmermann, and I won the ACM SIGSOFT 2026 Impact Award 🏆 for "When do changes induce fixes?" (MSR 2005). The paper introduced the SZZ algorithm for linking change histories and bug databases, which, since then, has become […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
January 6, 2026 at 4:01 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Problem: Reviewers did not read the paper.
Solution: Write a detailed rebuttal and point to all the places in the paper that answer their questions.
New problem: Reviewers did not read the rebuttal.
December 22, 2025 at 1:15 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
In my vision talk "Should AI Coders Experiment More?" last Monday, I sketched how future AI "super-coders" would learn from their own experiments with software to acquire large amounts of knowledge and far surpass current LLM-based AI coders.

The talk is now […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
Your Future Program-Specific Expert • Can exactly predict the effect of some input or some code change • Trained on millions of code + input experiments with your software • Can tell what needs to be changed or input to achieve a particular effect • Keeps on experimenting and learning 24/7 • Can coordinate with other AI experts to learn even more > There’s been an explosion! What could this be? < My data shows this happened right after stirring the oxygen tank, suggesting a malfunction in this component. > Can you change the configuration to minimize energy consumption while keeping oxygen levels up? < Here’s a configuration that, based on my simulation experiments, will do that > Can we change the flight software to get back to Earth ASAP? < Great idea, Andreas! I’d propose the following code changes, all tested already … > What is the best order in which to turn the components back on? < Start with life support. Then turn on the flight computer …
December 19, 2025 at 8:25 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Today at 16:00 CET, I'll give a vision talk "Should AI Coders Experiment More?", paving the way to AI “super coders” that may become way more competent than the most experienced programmers - and also way more competent than any LLM-based coders. Details here […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 9:26 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Time to get serious again. New blog post "Reviewer-Author Collusion Rings and How to Fight Them": https://andreas-zeller.info/2025/12/07/Reviewer-Author-Collusion-Rings-and-How-to-Fight-Them.html
Recently, I again heard rumors of a _collusion ring_ in Software Engineering research – a group of authors and reviewers who agree to favorably review each other’s papers. I have no evidence that such a ring actually exists, but if I were to set up one, here’s how: Use a messaging app like WhatsApp or WeChat to create a user group. Give the group an innocuous name, say “Researchers in XYZ”, where XYZ is some currently popular research topic. Post papers you wrote, discuss research results, complain about reviewers – in short, do whatever researchers talk about with each other. So, what could be wrong with this? The important thing is that there is an implicit understanding that all group members will review each other’s papers favorably. Of course, this would never admitted or discussed in my group: First rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. If someone were to check the group, it’s just a regular chat group of XYZ lovers ...
December 8, 2025 at 4:34 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Bonus material for The LaTeX Korrektor! Some of you asked: "What are these photos and posters in the background?" Here they come, enlarged and with some details. Enjoy! #latex #latexkorrektor

In case you missed it, watch all six episodes of the LaTeX […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
A description of the items shown in the LaTeX Korrektor background: * Diomidis Spinellis
, Author of
 “Advice for writing LaTeX documents” * LaTeX 2ε 
Cheat Sheet * Helmut Kohl
, German Chancellor
 1982–1988 * A fictitious
 event poster "Lack Leder LaTeX, Hamburg" * A fictitious
 LaTeX 
propaganda 
poster
December 7, 2025 at 12:24 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Series finale! The LaTeX Korrektor 6/6 - Ten Commandments https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HAodiqJwyD4 #latex #latexkorrektor

Read the LaTeX advice by Diomidis Spinellis (@CoolSWEng): https://github.com/dspinellis/latex-advice

All six episodes of the LaTeX […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
December 6, 2025 at 8:18 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Why, oh why does your bibliography have all titles in lowercase? WHY? The LaTeX Korrektor 5/6 - Citations: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0nk72lkp4Y0 #latex #latexkorrektor

Missed previous episodes? This playlist has them all […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
December 5, 2025 at 8:08 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Can one reject papers because of bad typography? The LaTeX Korrektor 4/6 - Math Mode: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mc8roaLdEEA #latex #latexkorrektor

Missed previous episodes? This playlist has them all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsMdQQJ_bE&list=PL6dh-k4faL8qTs8LQOsfbY70owETfWy5L
December 4, 2025 at 8:10 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
This Friday at 11:00 am, I will be giving a talk on "Language-Based Software Testing" at Imperial College in London, covering our latest and greatest in testing systems with highly complex inputs and interactions. Details here: https://srg.doc.ic.ac.uk/seminars/25-12-zeller/
Language-Based Software Testing with José Antonio Zamudio Amaya, Marius Smytzek, Valentin Huber, Addison Crump, Alexi Turcotte, and many others Random test input generators (fuzzers) have become the prime detectors of vulnerabilities in software. While generic fuzzers easily adapt to arbitrary programs under test, they offer very little possibilities to control or shape the generated inputs. In this talk, I present FANDANGO, a novel language-based fuzzer that combines grammars with predicates over input elements to produce inputs that satisfy all the given predicates. Examples of what such predicates can express include input format constraints (“The length field should be equal to the length of the payload”) code features (“Any variable used must be declared beforehand”) statistical distributions (“Across all inputs, the voltage field must follow a Gaussian distribution, but never exceed 20 mV”) data collections (“The credit-card-number field should come from the Python faker library”) and more – actually, any property that can be expressed in a Python expression. In our experiments, FANDANGO efficiently solved complex file formats and satisfied demanding predicates, up to full-fledged programming languages as test inputs for compilers. This opens the door towards personalized fuzzing, where testers can make use of their own knowledge and LLM knowledge to very effectively fuzz systems. Includes live demos! Fandango is available at https://fandango-fuzzer.github.io/
December 3, 2025 at 10:53 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
The LaTeX Korrektor 3/6 - Vertical Space: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n9iLfnHMcVI #latex #latexkorrektor
December 3, 2025 at 8:26 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
The LaTeX Korrektor 2/6 - Dashes: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oDDbgwqZxxQ
December 2, 2025 at 8:05 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
For your enjoyment: "The LaTeX Korrektor" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EhsMdQQJ_bE #latex #latexkorrektor
December 1, 2025 at 8:08 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
I have been selected to become an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to analyzing software and its development process". Happy and honored!

Let today be my "thanks giving" day: A huge thank you to all of you who endorsed and supported me - today and throughout […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
Dear Prof. Andreas Zeller, Recognizing the achievements of its members is an important part of the mission of IEEE. Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for elevation to IEEE Fellow. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. It is my great pleasure to inform you that the IEEE Board of Directors, at its November 2025 meeting elevated you to IEEE Fellow, effective 1 January 2026 with the following citation: for contributions to analyzing software and its development process
November 28, 2025 at 1:14 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Today 11:20 at #ase2025/#AgenticSE, we have Kuangxiangzi Liu show how to automatically turn natural language protocol specs into #fandango formal specs, ready for massive automatic test generation […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
November 20, 2025 at 12:13 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
And another student of mine, Bernd Gruner, presenting continuous data flow-based threat modeling with FlowStrider at #ase2025
November 17, 2025 at 6:41 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
When you generate test inputs, how can you tell whether they pass or fail? Our BASHIRI tool learns such oracles with 95% accuracy - demo today at #ase2025: https://conf.researchr.org/details/ase-2025/ase-2025-tool-demonstration-track/21/BASHIRI-Learning-Failure-Oracles-from-Execution-Features
November 17, 2025 at 5:12 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Today at #ase2025: “The fault in our stats”, or how the majority of notebooks fails to check even the most basic statistical assumptions
November 17, 2025 at 12:38 AM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
On my way to Seoul, South Korea, visiting #ase2025 and then continuing to Shenzhen and Hong Kong. See you soon!
November 11, 2025 at 1:27 PM
andreaszeller.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
At #innosoftdays 2025 in #sevilla today, presenting novel ways for language- and AI-based software testing with #fandango

https://www.innosoftdays.com/
Andreas Zeller - New Ways to Test Software using AI November 6, 2025 10:30 AM Room: 'Salón de grados' About Andreas Zeller... Andreas Zeller is a faculty member at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and a Professor of Software Engineering at Saarland University, Germany. There, Zeller leads a globally recognized research group on Software Engineering and Automated Testing. His research on automated debugging, mining software archives, specification mining, and security testing has had a major impact both in academia and in the software industry. This is evidenced by the numerous international awards he has received. Zeller is also a distinguished member of the ACM (ACM Fellow). He holds an ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award, and has received two ERC Advanced Grants, among the most competitive research fundings in Europe for individual researchers. Currently, he and his team are developing cutting-edge projects in the field of software testing. Among his team members is José Antonio Zamudio, a former ETSII student and now a PhD candidate under Zeller’s supervision.
November 6, 2025 at 6:35 AM