CAREER

Unstructured, decentralized systems --- including ad-hoc/sensor networks and peer-to-peer networks --- are emerging as a central focus of computer science research. Methods for securing these systems are critical; however, these systems differ markedly from classical distributed systems (which are, in comparison, more ``structured'' and well-organized) and thus current cryptographic models and mechanisms are simply not sufficient for addressing the full range of security requirements.

The rampant growth of stealthy rootkits poses a serious security threat to cyberspace. Specifically, with the capability of directly subverting the software root of trust of a computer system, a rootkit can surreptitiously take over the control of the system and maintain a hidden presence thereafter. To effectively defend against them, researchers have explored various anti-rootkit solutions. Unfortunately, to our disadvantage, the state-of-the-art defense is mainly reactive and cannot meet the challenges in the arms-race against them.

Overlay anonymity systems like Tor are effective against many kinds of attacks on privacy, but they have significantly slower network performance than regular Internet traffic. The purpose of this project is to explore the design of anon.next, an anonymity system for the next-generation Internet. In anon.next, we embed anonymizing proxies into new Internet architectures, so that the network itself can provide efficient and effective privacy protection in a way that overlay designs cannot. This project seeks to make major advances in two areas key to the design of anon.next.

Recently, the digital world has moved to a "cloud" computing and storage model, where businesses are offering storage space, computing power, and access to applications for rent. While this new model presents numerous opportunities, consumers of cloud services will face new challenges in data privacy and integrity.

As the Internet emerges as the platform for computation, we have become increasingly reliant on cryptography to provide privacy and security in many of our day-to-day activities. We rely on cryptographic protocols to protect our credit card numbers from hackers in electronic transactions and our personal information from unauthorized access on online social networks. However, the design of many cryptosystems do not adequately account for new computational and cryptographic attacks made possible by advances in quantum computing and complex protocol interactions on the Internet.