Security and Privacy Research Lab

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!

Get a sneak peek at this Sunday’s 60 Minutes episode in which UW CSE researchers remotely compromise a car driven by Leslie Stahl, part of a segment examining cybersecurity threats and the Internet of Things. (See a photo of the set-up at right.)

During the segment featured in the CBS preview, the head of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, Dan Kaufman, DARPA Program Manager Kathleen Fisher, and UW Ph.D. alum Karl Koscher demonstrate how hackers can control various functions of a motor vehicle. The demo is based on research conducted by a team from UW CSE (Alexei Czeskis, Yoshi Kohno, Karl Koscher and Franzi Roesner) and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego.

Get a sneak peek at the 60 Minutes episode in the CBS preview here – the preview is all UW CSE, all the time!

Read more about the automotive security collaboration between UW CSE and UCSD here.

Tune into your local CBS affiliate Sunday, February 8th at 7:00 pm to catch the full segment!

National Science Foundation Assistant Director for CISE, Jim Kurose, testified to the House Science & Technology Subcommittee yesterday about cybersecurity. The report cites the UW CSE Security and Privacy lab efforts on computer security for automobiles and medical devices. Read the testimony here

The US Federal Trade Commission — like the UW CSE Security and Privacy Lab — is interested in the Internet of Things. The FTC just released a report, titled “Internet of Things: Privacy and Security in a Connected World“, that discusses UW CSE Security and Privacy research and quotes lab member Yoshi Kohno.

The UW CSE Security and Privacy Lab’s co-director, Professor Franzi Roesner, was honored with the UW CSE William Chan Memorial Dissertation Award. Congratulations Franzi! Very well deserved!

The Forum on Cyber Resilience is a newly-established National Academies roundtable. Professor Yoshi Kohno, UW CSE Security and Privacy lab co-director, joins as an inaugural member. The Forum on Cyber Resilience will facilitate and enhance the exchange of ideas among scientists, practitioners, and policy makers concerned with urgent and important issues related to the resilience of the nation’s computing and communications systems, including the Internet, other critical infrastructures, and commercial system.

On Saturday December 6, more than 450 middle school and high school students and their families visited UW CSE for the annual UW Computing Open House, kicking off Computer Science Education Week.

Security and Privacy Lab PhD students Anna Kornfeld Simpson, Paul Vines, and Peter Ney hosted a session on computer security. Their room was filled with interested students! Thanks Anna, Paul, and Peter for helping inspire the next generation of computer scientists!

Today was the departmental holiday party. Security and Privacy lab PhD student Paul Vines asked Dr. CSE how to interpret his advisor’s use of the word “interesting.” We all found that to be a very interesting question. This slide gives Dr. CSE’s guidelines for “How to Interpret Professorese”.

The faculty and student skits were awesome, as always.