Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)

Online reputation systems are ubiquitous for customers to evaluate businesses, products, people, and organizations based on reviews from the crowd. For example, Yelp and TripAdvisor rank restaurants and hotels based on user reviews, and RateMDs allows patients to review doctors and hospitals. These systems can however be leveraged by spammers to mislead and manipulate the inexperienced customers with fake but well-disguised reviews (spams). To comprehensively protect customers and honest businesses, advanced spam detection techniques have been deployed.

Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) technologies enable real-time information sharing and driving automation, with the potential of significantly improving safety and efficiency of the transportation system. However, cyber-security threats may compromise the efficiency of infrastructure operations and the safety of passengers, posing a significant challenge for CAV deployment. This collaborative project develops a novel CAV testing platform to address the critical needs for assessing the security and safety concerns of the CAV system in an effective and realistic manner.

Vulnerabilities in cryptographic implementations seriously reduce the security guarantees of algorithms in practice and lead to attacks. An effective fix to the vulnerable code problem is automatic code checking. However, existing code verification tools cannot adequately cover cryptographic properties due to deficiencies in both accuracy, in terms of missed detection and false alarms, and scalability, in terms of complexity and runtime. The technology in this transition-to-practice project is to help secure cryptographic implementations, which are the foundation of many advanced systems.

The power grid is a highly complex control system and one of the most impressive engineering feats of the modern era. Nearly every facet of modern society critically relies on the proper operation of the power grid such that long or even short interruptions can impose significant economic and social hardship on society. The current power grid is undergoing a transformation to a Smart Grid, that seeks to monitor and track diagnostic and operational information so as to enable a more efficient and resilient system.

Mobile computing devices typically use encryption to protect sensitive information. However, traditional encryption systems used in mobile devices cannot defend against an active attacker who can force the mobile device owner to disclose the key used for decrypting the sensitive information. This is particularly of concern to dissident users who are targets of nation states.