CORE

Authorship attribution techniques identify the author of an unsigned document such as an e-mail, memo, or social media post by analyzing candidate authors' writing styles for tell-tale "fingerprints" such as distinctive words and sentence structure. Everyone leaves these fingerprints in his or her writing. This creates a problem for people who have a need to remain anonymous, people including whistleblowers and journalists working in states hostile to their work.

An important problem in computer security is verifying that people using computing devices are authorized to use them, not just when they first sign on to the device but during the whole time they are using them. Most existing continuous authentication schemes impose burdens on users, for instance, when systems quickly log users out and require frequent re-entry of passwords. This project will build and evaluate FIRMA, a user-transparent, continuous authentication software framework that collects usage data, targeted at corporate security contexts where such monitoring can be done.

To avoid phishing and to know which website to trust people are told to "look for the lock" and "read the url." However, the display of a lock or other signals of safety does not guarantee that the site is trustworthy, safe from malware, or not a phishing attack. This research includes consultation with industry technical professionals and policy makers in all sectors of the economy to better understand the gaps between ideal safety and practice.

With the rise of digital photography and social networking, people are capturing and sharing photos on social media at an unprecedented rate. Such sharing may lead to privacy concerns for the people captured in such photos, e.g., in the context of embarrassing photos that go "viral" and are shared widely. At worst, online photo sharing can result in cyber-bullying that can greatly affect the subjects of such photos.

Authorship attribution techniques identify the author of an unsigned document such as an e-mail, memo, or social media post by analyzing candidate authors' writing styles for tell-tale "fingerprints" such as distinctive words and sentence structure. Everyone leaves these fingerprints in their writing. This creates a problem for people who have a need to remain anonymous, people including whistleblowers and journalists working in states hostile to their work.