Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington
UW CSE PhD student Paul Vines delivered a fabulous talk today at the Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES’15). Rook is a censorship-resistance platform for transferring data covertly between parties by hiding the data in the traffic of online games. You can read more about Rook here.
Congratulations Anna Kornfeld Simpson for the great Quals Talk today! The Quals Talks is a major milestone in the UW CSE PhD process, and is what entitles a UW CSE graduate student to receive their masters degree en route to the PhD. Congratulations Anna for completing this major milestone!
The Daily Free Press has an article today entitled “U.K. researchers work to combat social media malware”.
Security lab member Adam Lerner has a great quote in the article. Quoting from the article: “Adam Lerner, a current doctoral student in computer science at the University of Washington, said issues regarding network security, such as link shortening and user privacy in general, are an important area of research. ‘Our daily lives are becoming connected to the Internet, which is the biggest network we’ve got,’ Lerner said. ‘Phones, cars, thermostats, you name it. Whenever something’s connected to a network, that network becomes a potential avenue of attack. In the same vein, more and more important aspects of our lives, both private and public, are taking place on the Internet, via these networked technologies. The goal of network security research … is to protect people and the things we care about from malicious behavior.'”
Great quote Adam!
Every year, the National Academy of Engineering invites roughly 100 of the top engineers under the age of 45 from around the country to participate in its Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, a two-and-a-half day event focused on cutting-edge research in various fields of engineering. The 2015 symposium, which is taking place this week in Irvine CA, features a diverse range of topics, including the search for exoplanets, metamaterials, forecasting natural disasters, and cybersecurity and privacy.
It is an honor to be invited to the symposium, and an even higher honor to be invited to speak. This year, professor Franzi Roesner, co-director of UW CSE’s Security and Privacy Research Lab, delivered one of the opening talks of the program.
In her presentation, Computer Security and Privacy: Where Human Factors Meet Engineering, Franzi highlighted the challenge of designing technologies that match user expectations when it comes to security and privacy. She described a new model for granting permissions, “user-driven access control,” that removes the burden of making decisions from the user in favor of having the system automatically grant permissions based on how the user naturally interacts with existing applications.
The 2015 UW Engineering Lecture Series – three evening public lectures sponsored by the UW Alumni Association – is all CSE this year! And, moreover, two out of three are from the Security Lab!
All lectures are at 7:30 p.m. in Kane Hall 130.
Security Lab alum Karl Koscher, of 60 Minutes car hacking fame, is in the news once again for exposing the vulnerabilities of motor vehicle systems with a team at University of California, San Diego, where he is doing a postdoc with UCSD CSE professors and UW CSE Ph.D. alums Stefan Savage and Geoff Voelker.
This time, Karl and his fellow researchers demonstrate for Wired magazine and the USENIX security conference a new threat for motorists: common plug-in devices such as those provided by insurance firms to monitor a vehicle’s location, mileage and speed.
Read more in the Wired article here.
Congratulations Dr. Temitope Oluwafemi! Dr. Oluwafemi presented his final PhD defense today and will be joining Intel’s prestigious Engineering Leadership Program, where he will focus on the Internet of Things. Tope’s dissertation was titled “Using Component Isolation to Increase Trust in Mobile Devices” and was co-advised by Security Lab faculty members Tadayoshi Kohno and Franziska Roesner. Congratulations Tope!
Security lab member Kiron Lebeck gave a great Quals Talk today at UW CSE. The Quals Talk is a major milestone along the path to a PhD and what qualifies one to receive a Masters degree in Computer Science & Engineering, along with all the relevant coursework. Congratulations Kiron for this major milestone!
Congratulations to security lab members Ian Smith and Tope Oluwafemi! Ian graduated today with a Masters degree in Computer Science & Engineering. Tope participated in the Electrical Engineering PhD graduation ceremony and hooding and is scheduled to give his final PhD defense talk later this summer. Congratulations to both of you for all that you have accomplished!
Security and Privacy lab co-director Yoshi Kohno was shocked today at soccer when everyone on the team entered the field wearing a shirt with his photo on it! What a fun surprise!
The first time this photo of Yoshi appeared on a shirt was in 2006, when UCSD decided to play a prank on UW and created “UCSD North — Seattle Branch” shirts. Read more about that history here.