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Last week Temitope Oluwafemi presented his work on analyzing the security of an unlikely target — the CFL light bulbs attached to home automation systems. The light bulbs were not designed for network connectivity. But, by connecting them to home automation-controlled dimmers, they can become reachable by unauthorized parties. The paper answers questions about the possibility to remotely compromise light bulbs, cause fires, seizures and other physical injuries. Fortunately, no fires were started, but we did pop/char some bulbs. It is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/oluwafemit/HomeAutomationFinal.pdf. (This work was also with Sidhant Gupta, Shwetak Patel, and Tadayoshi Kohno, and appeared at the Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results (LASER) workshop.)

The UW Tech Policy Lab is a unique, interdisciplinary collaboration that aims to enhance technology policy through research, education, and thought leadership. The new venture — enabled by a founding gift of $1.7 million from Microsoft — brings together experts from the University’s School of Law, Information School, and Computer Science and Engineering.

The Tech Policy Lab was launched Thursday evening at an event keynoted by University of Washington President Michael Young, Microsoft Executive Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith, and Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Head of Microsoft Research Peter Lee, plus the three UW co-directors of the Lab: Ryan Calo from the School of Law, Batya Friedman from the Information School, and Yoshi Kohno from Computer Science and Engineering.

Learn more about the Tech Policy Lab here. See photographs of the launch event here. Read a Seattle Times article here.

Congratulations to Dr. Alexei Czeskis! Dr. Czeskis defended his PhD thesis, titled “Practical, Usable, and Secure Authentication and Authorization on the Web”, today. Google is very fortunate to have Dr. Czeskis join their team!

UW CSE Security Lab member Franzi Roesner presented LayerCake today to a packed room at USENIX Security 2013. In the photo, everyone is paying attention and fully engaged 20 minutes into the talk! LayerCake is a modified version of Android that supports secure UI embedding. Franzi brought some LayerCake phones with her, and lots of people also joined her for a demo after the talk. The source code for LayerCake is available.

The UW CSE Security Lab is looking forward to the 2013-2014 academic year! Security Lab members Tamara Denning, Miro Enev, Karl Koscher, and Franzi Roesner (alphabetically) are scheduled to graduate with their PhDs this academic year. They will join the list of lab alumni, which includes Roxana Geambasu, now a professor at Columbia University in New York, and Alexei Czeskis, who will defend next week and join Google’s world-class security team in Mountain View.

Tammy’s interests are in the human aspects of computer security and privacy, with a focus on emerging technologies; past areas of work include security for implantable medical devices, the security of consumer technologies in the home, and security awareness and education. Her web page: http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tdenning/.

Miro works on applying machine learning methods to quantitatively understand and defend against privacy and security risks in emerging technologies, with a focus on smart sensor environments. His web page: http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~miro/.

Karl works on securing embedded systems through evaluating existing systems (such as automobiles) and developing new tools and techniques to help secure these systems. His web page: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~supersat/.

Franzi’s work has focused on security and privacy issues in the domains of third-party web tracking, permission granting in modern operating systems (such as smartphones), secure embedded user interfaces, and most recently, emerging augmented reality platforms. Her web page: http://www.franziroesner.com/.

UW Security Lab’s Franzi Roesner just released LayerCake, a modified version of Android that supports secure application embedding. Learn about LayerCake on the LayerCake web page, https://layercake.cs.washington.edu/. The paper behind this work will appear at USENIX Security 2013.

Congratulations to Alexei Czeskis! His advisor, Yoshi Kohno, hooded him at today’s UW CSE graduation ceremony. Alexei is scheduled to defend his PhD disseration on August 19, 2013.

The 2013 Seattle Science Festival is the region’s only large-scale, community-wide celebration of science and technology. It brings hands-on exhibits, shows, demonstrations and performances to venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. All events provide experiences that educate, engage and inspire an interest in science and technology and stimulate imagination and innovation. The festival runs June 6-16, 2013.

SSF features a “cool jobs” series where attendees can learn, first-hand, from successful and dynamic professionals in some of the most promising fields in science and technology. CSE’s Oren Etzioni, Yoshi Kohno (Security Lab), and Helene Martin will join Code.org’s Hadi Partovi in a panel that highlights the opportunities in computer science: this Sunday, June 9th, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, at the Seattle Public Library (Central Library) in the Microsoft Auditorium. (The event is free, but registration is required.)

Additional information here.

For the sixth year in a row, the University of Washington has won the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Next month the team will head to San Antonio in an attempt to win their third consecutive National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition crown.

Amazonians got an opportunity to play Control-Alt-Hack after a day of internal training. Control-Alt-Hack is a computer security-themed card game that is designed to be both fun and educational.