Adapt

Whether it is on their smartphones, in their browsers or on social networks, people are confronted with an increasingly unmanageable number of privacy settings. What is needed is a new, more scalable paradigm that empowers them to regain control over the collection and use of their data. This is particularly the case for mobile apps people download on their smartphones. These apps have been shown to collect and share a wide variety of sensitive data, with users unable to keep up.

Modern critical infrastructure relies on successful interdependent function among many different types of networks. For example, the Internet depends on access to the power grid, which in turn depends on the power-grid communication network and the energy production network. For this reason, network science researchers have begun examining the robustness of critical infrastructure as a network of networks, or a multilayer network. Research in network anomaly detection systems has focused on single network structures (specifically, the Internet as a single network).

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}.

Rapid advances in technology now enable simultaneous access to both telephony and Internet services from smart phone devices that people carry with them at all times. Although this convergence of telephony with the Internet offers many benefits, it also provides cyber criminals the ability to develop increasingly sophisticated attacks that combine resources from both the telephony and Internet channels.

Tools for dynamic detection of malicious software ("malware"), such as antivirus software, often create a protected "analysis environment" (or "sandbox") in which to test suspicious software without risk to the computer system. Malware authors have responded by developing environment-awareness techniques, to enable their malware to recognize and behave differently in a sandbox environment, thereby evading detection. Authors of defense software are endeavoring to ensure that analysis environments exhibit realistic characteristics.