Formal methods

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) operate nearly all of society's critical infrastructures (e.g., energy, transportation and medicine). In performing mission critical functions, CPSs exhibit hybrid (both discrete and continuous) behavior as they use digital technology to control and monitor physical processes. CPS security analysis is particularly challenging because an attacker can make use of a wide variety of vulnerabilities in the digital elements of the system (e.g., the network), the physical elements of the system, or some combination.

Computers form the backbone of any modern society, and often process large amounts of sensitive and private information. To help secure the software, and the sensitive data, a number of secure hardware-software and processor architectures have been proposed. These architectures incorporate novel protection and defense mechanisms directly in the hardware where they cannot be modified or bypassed, unlike software protections.

As companies collect consumer data in increasingly larger quantity and mine the data more deeply, trade-offs arise with respect to companies' practices about information privacy. A company may choose practices that augment targeted advertisements or services. However, the financial rewards associated with privacy practices are highly uncertain, since they are affected by a company's competition with rivals.

Access control refers to mechanisms for protecting access to confidential information, such as sensitive medical data. Management of access control policies, in applications that involve several collaborating parties, poses several challenges. One of these is in ensuring that each party in such a collaboration only obtains the minimal set of access permissions that they require for the collaboration. In a domain such as healthcare, it may be critical that access be minimized in this way, rather than allowing all parties equal access to the sensitive information.

The emergence of smartphones and more generally mobile platforms as a vehicle for communication, entertainment, and commerce has led to a revolution of innovation. Markets now provide a dizzying array of applications that inform and aid every conceivable human need or desire. At the same time, application markets allow previously unknown multitudes of application developers access to user devices through fast- tracked software publishing with well-documented consequent security concerns.