Security and Privacy Research Lab

UW CSE Security Lab member Camille Cobb was invited to present to the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) Aspirations Award winners this past weekend. The award ceremony was held at Google Kirkland, with roughly 20 young women award recipients present. Camille surveyed the broad field of computer security, and also offered a focused discussion of her work on computer security for developing world applications. Thank you Camille!

This year USENIX introduced a new conference: the Enigma. Some think that Enigma is destined to be one of the hottest new security conferences out there. This year USENIX invited Security Lab co-director Yoshi Kohno to speak about his work on security and privacy for the Internet of Things. Check out his talk, which will be online here.

Since 2013, the UW CSE Security Lab has helped lead the charge in tackling an emerging challenge: computer security for augmented reality devices. Today, the lab launched a new website focused on its augmented reality efforts. Readers can now track the lab’s efforts on augmented reality and security here: http://ar-sec.cs.washington.edu/. Lab member Kiron Lebeck will present his latest research results on augmented reality security, with professors Franzi Roesner and Yoshi Kohno, at HotMobile 2016.

Last night UW CSE Security Lab co-director Prof. Franzi Roesner presented to a crowded auditorium at Roosevelt High School, in Seattle. Roosevelt High School hosts a once-a-month “Science and Society” evening enrichment program for high school students and their parents. The goal of the lecture series is to get students thinking about the role of science, engineering, and technology in their own lives, be informed citizens, and get some ideas about STEM career paths. Franzi’s talk, entitled “The invisible trail: Pervasive tracking in a connected age,” covered her research on web privacy and web tracking.

The Security Lab innertube water basketball team clinches a win for its first game of the season. The team benefited from an intense coaching session in advance of the game, thanks to the experience of seasoned innertube water basketball player and team captain Prof. Franzi Roesner. Also present for the first game were lab members and friends Camille Cobb, Yoshi Kohno, Kiron Lebeck, Lucy Simko, Alex Takakuwa, Paul Vines, and Ruthie Vines.

UW CSE revolutionized data collection and analysis in low-resource settings with the creation of the Open Data Kit (ODK), a suite of free, open-source mobile tools. ODK – a project spearheaded by the late professor Gaetano Borriello – has been deployed in more than 40 countries to monitor elections, to conserve natural resources, to track health care outcomes, and much more. Now, UW CSE is poised to do for money management what we did for data with the launch of our new Digital Financial Services Research Group. The new effort is funded by the Gates Foundation, under the primary directorship of CSE faculty member Richard Anderson. Security Lab co-directors Yoshi Kohno and Franzi Roesner are co-leading the computer security elements of this new effort. Read more about this new group here.

The Technology Alliance hosts a monthly Discovery Series seminar, with the stated goal of inviting leading researchers to give talks that can help inform local business and civic leaders about new and important technical advances. UW CSE professor and security lab co-director Franzi Roesner gave this month’s presentation. Franzi spoke about online tracking and smartphone security. Read more online here.

The UW CSE Security Lab participated in today’s CSE Open House, for visiting K-12 students. The lab’s hosted activity: a sequence of cryptographic puzzles. Check out the puzzles here. And what did the students get, if they solved the puzzles? An SSL (Super Smart Learner) certificate. A big thank you to Anna Kornfeld Simpson, Adam Lerner, Lucy Simko, Eric Zeng, Camille Cobb, and Alex Takakuwa for preparing the puzzles and the SSL certificates.

The National Science Foundation hosts a periodic (once every few months, in general) invited lecture on computer security. UW CSE Security Lab co-director Yoshi Kohno gave this months invited lecture, on the topic of Computer Security and the Internet of Things.

Congratulations Alex Takakuwa for delivering a great quals talk today! The quals talk is the key milestone for receiving an MS at UW, en route to a PhD. Congratulations Alex!