Detect

This project studies Internet censorship using novel measurement techniques, ranging from low-level packet filtering on Internet Protocol (IP) networks to high-level censorship of social media content. Collectively these techniques can provide greater situational awareness of censorship dynamics. The project focuses on a suite of advanced inference techniques for when ?direct observation?

This project tackles the social and economic elements of Internet security: how the motivations and interactions of attackers, defenders, and users shape the threats we face, how they evolve over time, and how they can best be addressed. While security is a phenomenon mediated by the technical workings of computers and networks, it is ultimately a conflict driven by economic and social issues that merit a commensurate level of scrutiny.

The Wireless Philadelphia Network (WPN) is a metropolitan?area network (MAN) consisting of thousands of Tropos 5210 wireless mesh routers distributed across the entire city of Philadelphia and connected by a fiber backbone. This project is employing this network as a testbed to investigate three diverse security challenges facing any large-scale wireless network servicing a heterogeneous population.

There is a growing need for techniques to detect security vulnerabilities in hardware and at the hardware-software interface. Such vulnerabilities arise from the use of untrusted supply chains for processors and system-on-chip components and from the scope for malicious agents to subvert a system by exploiting hardware defects arising from design errors, incomplete specifications, or maliciously inserted blocks.

Emerging intelligent automobiles will be able to harness advance on-car sensors to support new applications such as pollution detection, road condition monitoring, and traffic control. All these applications require the ability to verify both the location and the time of a reading. This project involves the design of verification methods that make use of environment factors, such as the presence of light and shadows and the measured wireless signal strength, instead of conventional public key infrastructure-based methods, in order to verify when and where data was collected.