Develop System Design Methods
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Submitted by RDingledine on Wed, 12/20/2017 - 12:29pm
This project develops methods to provide citizens information about technologies that obstruct, restrict, or tamper with their access to information. Internet users need an objective, independent, third-party service that helps them determine whether their Internet service provider or government is restricting access to content, specific protocols, or otherwise degrading service. Towards this goal, we are (1) monitoring attempts to block or manipulate Internet content and communications; and (2) evaluating various censorship circumvention mechanisms in real-world deployments}.
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Submitted by Anupam Datta on Wed, 12/20/2017 - 10:50am
Organizations, such as hospitals, financial institutions, and universities, that collect and use personal information are required to comply with privacy regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Similarly, to ensure customer trust, web services companies, such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Amazon, publish privacy policies stating what they will do with the information they keep about customers' individual behaviors.
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Submitted by Latifur Khan on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:49pm
The "Virtual Laboratory and Curriculum Development for Secure Mobile Computing" project at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) will develop a set of courses and a virtual laboratory in mobile system security with an emphasis on securing smart phones. The courses that will be developed will include topics such as Android taint analysis using existing tools or development of new tools, scalable Android security threat analysis on applications (apps), and smart phone forensics.
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Submitted by Koushik Chakraborty on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:45pm
One of the key challenges in trustworthy computing is establishing trust in the hardware layer, which is the execution platform of all software applications. Modern multiprocessor system-on-chips employ many specialized components, and scalable network-on-chips (NoC) are often deployed to efficiently connect these components. In the light of these trends, this project investigates secure and reliable computation, when the underlying NoC is compromised.
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Submitted by Alenka Zajic on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:42pm
Most traditional approaches to computer security assume that information from the system can only be sent through intended output channels, such as network connection, monitor, portable disk drive, etc. Side-channel and covert-channel attacks circumvent these protections by extracting information that is leaked or deliberately sent from the system through unintended signals, such as electromagnetic emanations, power consumption, timing of computational activity, etc.
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Submitted by Yaling Yang on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:39pm
Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology has the flexibility of implementing a large part of physical layer functions in software. It is one of the major technologies that will provide broadband services to millions of US residences. However, unlike conventional radio whose RF signals are tightly regulated by FCC-certified hardware, the software components of SDR can be easily exploited by hackers to create a wide range of unauthorized waveforms to launch attacks on many security-critical wireless systems.
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Submitted by XiaoFeng Wang on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:36pm
Mobile computing technologies are rapidly evolving and phone (and other mobile device) manufacturers are under constant pressure to offer new product models. Each manufacturer customizes operating system software for its devices and often changes this software to support its new models. Given the many manufacturers in the mobile device marketplace and the many different generations of products, there are many customized branches of mobile operating systems in use at any time.
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Submitted by Yanfang Ye on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:27pm
Malware (e.g., viruses, worms, and Trojans) is software that deliberately fulfills the harmful intent of an attacker. It has been used as a major weapon by the cyber-criminals to launch a wide range of attacks that cause serious damages and significant financial losses to many Internet users. To protect legitimate users from these attacks, the most significant line of defense against malware is anti-malware software products, which predominately use signature-based methods to recognize threats.
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Submitted by Michael Rosulek on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:22pm
This project aims to obtain provably optimal cryptographic constructions, using objectively practical techniques, for a wide range of tasks. To achieve this goal, the project makes progress on three technical fronts. First, a general-purpose framework is developed that encompasses and systematizes known practical cryptographic techniques from many domains. Second, the project develops techniques for proving concrete, fine-grained lower bounds about constructions within this framework. Finally, techniques from program synthesis will be applied to the new framework.
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Submitted by David Choffnes on Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:13pm
Internet users concerned about their privacy, including whistleblowers and dissident citizens of totalitarian states, depend on reliable means to access Internet services anonymously. However, recent events publicized in popular press demonstrate that these services offer little privacy and anonymity in practice. For example, recent subpoena requiring Twitter to provide connection details of suspected Wikileaks supporters showed that governments can readily discover the network identities of Web users.
