Social, behavioral and economic science
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Submitted by Theodore Allen on Wed, 10/18/2017 - 10:33am
Researchers have found that over 90% of successful cyber attacks exploit vulnerabilities that could have been fixed with available patches. Vulnerabilities can be weak passwords or software with bugs on personal computers, mobile devices, or printers. Yet, decision-making about manually applying patches is difficult. First, a substantial fraction of vulnerabilities are fixed each month by automatic patching. Second, applying patches can have side-effects, making software unusable. Third, organizations have limited abilities to estimate the profit from applying patches.
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Submitted by Yong Guan on Wed, 10/18/2017 - 10:29am
Validating a user's identity is one of the fundamental security requirements in cyberspace. Current authentication approaches require people to create and remember secret credentials such as complex passwords, or to possess special hardware authentication tokens. Both are vulnerable to being compromised, or illegally shared. Even worse, authentication is typically supported solely at the start of a session.
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Submitted by Bart Knijnenburg on Tue, 10/17/2017 - 12:54pm
Household Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are intended to collect information in the home and to communicate with each other, to create powerful new applications that support our day-to-day activities. Existing research suggests that users have a difficult time selecting their privacy settings on such devices. The goal of this project is to investigate how, why and when privacy decisions of household IoT users are suboptimal, and to use the insights from this research to create and test a simple single user interface that integrates privacy settings across all devices within a household.
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Submitted by arege on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 4:43pm
Infrastructure systems (such as power, water and banking) have experienced a surge in cyberattacks over the past decade. These attacks are becoming more sophisticated and resilient, suggesting that the perpetrators are intelligent, determined and dynamic. Unfortunately, current cyberdefense measures are reactive and frequently ineffective. Defenders need to move to a proactive approach, which will require an understanding of the human characteristics and behaviors of the people behind these cyberattacks.
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Submitted by Arjun Mukherjee on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 4:01pm
Online opinions now play a pivotal role in decision making and influence a wide spectrum of our lives. Choices of restaurants at which to dine, places to stay, universities to attend, books to read, doctors to consult, and even political candidates to vote for, are largely influenced by crowdsourced opinions. However, it is estimated that up to 30% of reviews on websites are fake. As a larger part of the US economy is becoming driven by social opinions, it poses a serious risk to the general public (e.g., by getting mislead to invest on low quality products, services or doctors).
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Submitted by Apu Kapadia on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 3:26pm
Cameras are now pervasive on consumer devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, and new wearable devices like Google Glass and the Narrative Clip lifelogging camera.
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Submitted by Anton Dahbura on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 2:56pm
User behavior is a critical element in the success or failure of computer security protections. The field of Human Security Informatics (HSI) combines security informatics and human-computer interaction design to learn how the design of a human-computer interface can affect the security of a computer system. This research project is contributing to the scientific foundations of HSI by modeling how multitasking users behave when making security-critical decisions.
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Submitted by Abbadi El on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 2:27pm
Much of human communication is now mediated by online social networks. Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube now compete for our collective attention in much the same way as television, radio, and newspapers did for previous generations. But contemporary online social media are qualitatively different from media of the past. Online communication leaves a record of who said what to whom, when, and on what topic.
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Submitted by alfredkobsa on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 12:54pm
Household Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are intended to collect information in the home and to communicate with each other, to create powerful new applications that support our day-to-day activities. Existing research suggests that users have a difficult time selecting their privacy settings on such devices. The goal of this project is to investigate how, why and when privacy decisions of household IoT users are suboptimal, and to use the insights from this research to create and test a simple single user interface that integrates privacy settings across all devices within a household.
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Submitted by alfredkobsa on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 12:50pm
Numerous surveys find that Internet users want to limit the personal data that is being collected about them, as well as control the usage of their data. Existing and proposed regulation in the U.S. accords users such rights, in the form of a "transparency and control" obligation on personal data collectors: users should be informed about the rationale of requests for personal data so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to disclose their data.
