Chair’s Message | Student Events

Sept. 10, 2021

Dear Cybersecurity and Privacy community,

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind as we press forward into a new semester and double down on our promise to bolster student engagement across the board. 

We kicked off our weekly lecturer series last week with a talk on Side Channel Attacks led by our very own Dr. Daniel Genkin, associate professor at SCP. He led a very engaging conversation that continued amongst students as they left the auditorium. I cannot think of a better way to kick off a series.

Earlier this week Daniel, along with his first year Ph.D. student Jason Kim, and researchers from University of Michigan, University of Adelaide and Tel Aviv University published their research on a new transient execution attack named Spook.js. The researchers specifically focused on Google Chrome’s Strict Site Isolation feature and were able to successfully launch side channel attacks using speculative execution and type confusion. The full paper can be found on their website spookjs.com

Today, we welcome Neil Gong, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, to the virtual stage where he will discuss Secure Federated Learning. We are all eager to hear what he has to say.

On the horizon we have a something I want to make sure our students, both online and on campus, are aware of. We will be hosting a Town Hall styled event later this fall which we are wanting to be entirely student driven. To put it simply: We want to hear from you!

SCP has many opportunities for all our students, on-campus and online, to get involved in events, activities and governance. A town hall format would allow us to discuss existing and new channels for student engagement unique to the school. It is also my hope that this town hall format will bring a fresh perspective to our school and give us new ideas for future events. 

Stephen Eick, SGA Graduate student body president, will speak on the role the SGA plays for our graduate students. He also passed along some great resources that you can view here

I hope you consider joining us and give us the opportunity to hear your voice.

Go Jackets!

Sincerely,

Richard DeMillo

Chair, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy

Charlotte B. And Roger C. Warren Chair of Computing

Visit me at https://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/richard-demillo

Follow me @rad_atl and @richde