Security and Privacy Research Lab

Congratulations to Adam Lerner for a great talk at MobiSys 2015! Using a data set of 87 million scans from a mobile phone barcode scanning application, Adam and colleagues analyzed the use of QR codes in the wild. You can read more about this work here. Great job Adam!

Congratulations to Peter Ney! Peter successfully defended his quals project today. Next stop: Generals. Congratulations Peter! Great job!

Sometimes it can be hard to know what your advisors are thinking. Apparently Yoshi was talking about how to avoid shooting yourself in the foot with a bucket of Legos during a research meeting with Kiron and fellow advisor Franzi. Maybe it made sense at the time? The quote was captured for posterity on Franzi’s white board.

Congratulations to Anna Kornfeld Simpson, who won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

Congratulations to Will Scott, who won an Open Technology Fund Information Controls Fellowship!

Learn about the Information Controls Fellowship here.

Lab member Kiron Lebeck and his group won this week’s department TGIF competition, building the strongest gumdrop-and-toothpick bridge. These photos document the final collapse of the bridge.

UW CSE Security Lab co-director Franzi Roesner spoke about the “security mindset” and about the privacy concerns associated with third-party web tracking at the Pacific Science Center’s March Teen Science Cafe. Thanks to all of the attendees for their smart and insightful questions!

Last night was the UW CSE TGIF Chess Competition. Lab member Anna Kornfeld Simpson tied for the grand prize, out of 16 total competitors. It was quite an amazing, intense competition. Lab member Kiron Lebeck also swiftly annihilated one of his advisors, Yoshi Kohno, as can be seen on the right. Yoshi’s in check mate, but neither side lost any pieces in the battle. Immediately after his victory, lab member Tope Oluwafemi called Kiron to discuss research, as can also be seen in the photo.

UW CSE Security Lab co-director Yoshi Kohno has been awarded the Short-Dooley endowed professorship. See the full announcement here. Congratulations Yoshi!

Congratulations Temitope Oluwafemi! Tope passed his PhD General Exam today. Next step: His PhD Final Defense. Congrats Tope!