Tianxin Tang, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science at Georgia Tech
Cybersecurity Virtual Lecture Series Co-sponsored by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy
Abstract:
This talk examines the problem of privacy-preserving approximate kNN search in an outsourced environment — the client sends the encrypted data to an untrusted server and later can perform secure approximate kNN search and updates. We design a security model and propose a generic construction based on locality-sensitive hashing, symmetric encryption, and an oblivious man. The construction provides very strong security guarantees, not only hiding the information about the data, but also the access, query, and volume patterns.
SpeakerBio:
Tianxin Tang is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science. She is interested in privacy-preserving techniques from the provable-security perspective, and her research primarily focuses on encrypted databases.
SCP Seminal Talk Presented by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy
Title: Safeguarding IoT Protocols: New Challenges and Verifiable Solutions
Abstract: The cloud-centered IoT infrastructure has emerged to help IoT manufacturers connect their devices to their users. In the infrastructure, IoT protocols determine how IoT devices communicate with users and how they are access-controlled. However, IoT protocols come with fundamental security challenges, and can hardly guide the implementation of trusted IoT systems. In this talk, I will introduce the latest security analysis on IoT protocols in the context of real-world systems, and new insights and techniques to safeguard IoT systems.
Bio: Luyi Xing is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Before joining IU, he worked for three years in the industry, focusing on engineering large, distributed systems at AWS, Amazon. His primary research interest is security analysis on protocols and systems related to IoT, mobile, and cloud, and building trusted, verifiable systems and security tools. His research has been featured by large media agencies in the world, including CNN, Time, and Fox News. He received the third-place award in the National Security Innovation Competition (2014) of the Department of Homeland Security, and the CSAW Best Applied Research Paper Award (2016, 2015)
March 24th, 2021 | 11:00am – 12:15pm EDT | Register Sponsored by ETHIC Georgia Tech Ethics, Technology, and Human Interaction Center
Invited Panelists
Effy Vayena Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich) Joseph A Joseph Ali Johns Hopkins University
Moderators
Justin Biddle (GT Public Policy) and Nassim Parvin (GT LMC )
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to transformations in technologies for public health surveillance. These include the emergence of vaccine passports, which certify vaccination status and structure access to societal goods, and digital tools for tracking individuals who test positive for the virus or come in contact with someone who tests positive. Many discussions of the ethics of surveillance technologies focus on privacy issues — which are, indeed, important. However, public health surveillance tools raise a host of additional ethical and social justice issues including disparity in access to services, racial and economic discrimination, global inequality, governance and accountability, and individual and collective autonomy. This panel will explore these issues.
Ambrose Kam, Chief Engineer, Cyber Innovations at Lockheed Martin
Virtual Cybersecurity Lecture Series Co-sponsored by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy
Abstract:
Cybersecurity is inherently complicated due to the dynamic nature of the threats and ever-expanding attack surfaces. Ironically, this challenge is exacerbated by the rapid advancement of many new technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) devices, 5G infrastructure, cloud-based computing, etc. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques can be called into service, and provide potential solutions in terms of threat detection and mitigation responses in a rapidly changing environment. Contrarily humans are often limited by their innate inability to process information and fail to recognize/respond to attack patterns in the multi-dimensional, multi-faceted world. The recent DARPA AlphaDogFight has proven machines can defeat even the best human pilot in air-to-air combat. This prompted our engineers to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) that demonstrates the value of a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) architecture in a simulated cyber wargaming environment. By using our simulation framework, we essentially “trained” the machine to produce the optimum combination/permutation of cyber attack vectors in a given scenario. This cyber wargaming engine allows our analysts to examine tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) potentially employed by our adversaries.
SpeakerBio:
Ambrose Kam is a Lockheed Martin Fellow with over 25 years of experience in the Department of Defense (DoD) industry. He is one of the earliest pioneers at applying modeling, simulation, and operations analysis techniques to threat modeling and cyber resiliency assessment. He regularly gives lectures at MIT, Georgia Tech, and industry consortiums like the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) and National Defense Industry Association (NDIA). Ambrose has been quoted in major publications including Forbes, The Economist, etc, and has co-authored a book in Simulation and Wargames. As a subject matter expert, he represents Lockheed Martin in industry standards organizations like ISO, LOTAR, and INCITS. His most recent efforts in wargaming, Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Cyber Digital Twin, and Blockchain earned him patents and trade secret awards. In 2017, Ambrose won the prestigious Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY) award for his technical leadership and innovations. He holds several advanced degrees from MIT and Cornell University as well as a Bachelor of Science degree from the University at Buffalo.
Georgia Tech’s College of Computing is home to a thriving startup culture that embraces those not content with just having a good idea. This entrepreneurial spirit is embodied in the College’s students, alumni, and faculty who have turned scores of good ideas into successful business ventures.To highlight these entrepreneurs and inspire those that follow, GT Computing has established the John P. Imlay Jr. Series on Entrepreneurship. This series began in 2019 with profiles of GT Computing students, alumni, and faculty that are shaping the College’s entrepreneurial culture. In fall 2020, we expanded the initiative to include a monthly speaker series.We invite you to join us on Thursday, March 18 at 7pm EST for a fireside chat with Georgia Tech alumni Mark Buffington (BS MGT ’93) and Paul Judge (PhD CS ’02) of Panoramic Ventures. Paul has been part of several cybersecurity companies. In addition to his involvement in Pindrop, he co-founded Purewire (acquired by Barracuda) and was CTO at Cyphertrust which was acquired eventually by McAfee.The evening will begin with a conversation between Mark, Paul, and Dr. Charles Isbell, Dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair, about how they plan to change the entrepreneurship landscape in Atlanta and why it is important to them to focus on underserved regions and overlooked founders. We will conclude the event with questions from the audience.
REGISTER NOW Registration will remain open until noon on March 18. All registrants will be emailed information on how to join the live stream directly from the BlueJeans virtual event platform.
SCP Seminal Talk Presented by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy
Title: Bridging the Theory and Practice of Cryptography
Abstract: Cryptography is deployed at scale to protect data, both in transit and at rest. However, protocols are often designed or even deployed aiming for security that extends beyond what is formally understood. This talk will cover my efforts to narrow this gap and to provide protocols that are both practical and provably secure.
In my talk I will showcase examples of this from my recent and ongoing research, including how the use of cryptography at scale (e.g. in encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp) required new models to address unique threats and how a better understanding of the power of computational resources used by attackers (e.g. computation time and memory usage) enabled me to prove stronger security guarantees for important protocols like TLS.
Bio: Joseph Jaeger is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Washington. He previously received his PhD from UC San Diego. His research interests span a wide range of topics across cryptography and its applications. His work received the Early-Career Best Paper Award at Crypto 2020.
Please join us for Building a Strategic Blueprint for Cybersecurity and Privacy Education Workshop, the first of a series of workshops hosted by the Georgia Cybersecurity and Privacy Roadmap Taskforce (GCRT).
The Georgia Cybersecurity and Privacy Roadmap Taskforce (GCRT) is a statewide initiative to address Georgia’s challenge to produce enough qualified cyber-science and privacy professionals to fill the growing number of critical cybersecurity jobs within the state and close the workforce gap. The GCRT was set up to create and execute a strategic action plan that can inform and be implemented collaboratively across public and private education systems, including K-12, technical colleges, and university programs.
Building a Strategic Blueprint for Cybersecurity and Privacy Education Workshop
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2021 Time: 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Hosted by: Richard DeMillo, Chair, Georgia Cybersecurity and Privacy Roadmap Taskforce (GCRT); Professor and Interim Chair, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Distinguished guests are from K-12 STEM, the University System of Georgia, Georgia DoE, and Technical College System of Georgia.
PROGRAM
Panelists will present:
Assets and tools effective in knowledge development
Overview of the current footprint in cybersecurity and privacy
Building blocks required to scale programs across education and training
Sample models / programs and barriers for success
PANELISTS
K-12 Caitlin Dooley, Deputy Superintendent, Georgia Department of Education Bryan Cox, Computer Science Specialist, Georgia Department of Education John Pritchett, Research, Technology and Innovation Specialist, Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE), Georgia Department of Education
Higher Education Stuart Rayfield, Vice Chancellor for Leadership and Institutional Development, University System of Georgia Art Recesso, Chief Innovation Officer, University System of Georgia Eric Toler, Executive Director, Georgia Cyber Center, Augusta University Roy George, Chair, Cyber-Physical Sytems, Clark Atlanta University
Technical College System Roy Perren, Deputy Commissionerfor Technical Education, Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG)
Professional Education Mustaque Ahamad, Professor, Faculty Research Director, School of Computer Science; School of Cybersecurity and Privacy; Georgia Institute of Technology
The workshop offers the education and cybersecurity community a chance to collaborate and share perspectives on development and scaling education programs to meet the growing demand for cybersecurity talent. This event will help the community gain a better understand areas of our education system in Georgia that impact GCRT’s recommendations for scaling Cybersecurity and Privacy Education across the state.
We look forward to your attendance and participation.
Cecilia Testart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
SCP Seminal Talk Presented by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: Towards data-driven Internet infrastructure security
Abstract: The Internet infrastructure is critical for online daily life. However, key Internet protocols were not designed to cope with untrustworthy parties, making them vulnerable to misconfigurations and attacks from anywhere in the network. Despite the many proposals by the research community and standardization organizations (IETF) to increase security, little has changed in operational environments. We lack sufficient empirical evidence and the problem space is complex: it involves multiple stakeholders, with different interests and resources, as well as geopolitical challenges. In this talk, I will focus on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the Internet global routing protocol. I will present an evidence-based, data-driven approach that advances our understanding of harms linked to BGP design flaws and of the effectiveness of routing security practices. Performing longitudinal analysis of network-level and Internet-wide routing behavior over time, I characterized the routing behavior of serial hijackers, networks that persistently hijack IP address blocks in BGP. Then, using machine learning, I identified over 800 networks in the Internet with similar suspicious behavior. Using a similar approach, I tracked and quantified the impact of operational security practices in BGP, finding that, even if only partially deployed, these practices are able to bring benefits. These studies have revealed malicious behavior occurring in BGP and identified barriers to adoption of security measures. Such insights are crucial for designing effective security protocols and policies that encourage their deployment. The results of this research have been used by industry and researchers for evaluating networks’ reputations and routing practices.
Bio: Cecilia Testart is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is part of the Advanced Network Architecture group and the Internet Policy Research Initiative, working with David D. Clark. Her doctoral research focuses on securing the Internet’s core protocols, leveraging empirical data-driven approaches to understand the impact of protocol design in security and taking a comprehensive perspective, considering both technical and policy challenges, to improve the current state of the art. Cecilia holds engineering degrees from Universidad de Chile and Ecole Centrale Paris. She also holds a dual-master’s degree in Technology and Policy and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. Prior to joining MIT, she helped set up the Chilean office of INRIA (the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) and worked for the research lab of the .CL, the Chilean top-level domain. She has interned at Akamai, Microsoft Research, and the OECD. Cecilia’s work on persistent misbehavior in Internet routing received a Distinguished Paper award at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference in 2019, and she was recently selected as a Rising Star in EECS (2020) and a Rising Star in Data Science (2021).
► VIDEO |Friday, March 12th, 2021 | 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Hany Farid Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Cybersecurity Lecture Series Presented by the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy
Abstract:
The past few years have seen a startling and troubling rise in the fake-news phenomena in which everyone from individuals to nation-sponsored entities can produce and distribute misinformation. The implications of fake news range from a misinformed public to an existential threat to democracy, and horrific violence. At the same time, recent and rapid advances in machine learning are making it easier than ever to create sophisticated and compelling fake images. videos, and audio recordings, making the fake-news phenomena even more powerful and dangerous. I will provide an overview of the creation of these so-called deep-fakes, and I will describe emerging techniques for detecting them.
Speaker Bio:
Hany Farid is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information. His research focuses on digital forensics, forensic science, misinformation, image analysis, and human perception. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Following a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1999 where he remained until 2019. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of a book project in progress entitled, Age of Deception. The book attempts to synthesize a decade of cyber research by arguing that cyber conflict is helpfully understood as intelligence by other means. I will unpack this claim by building on the information practice framework presented in my previous book, Information Technology and Military Power. Intelligence practice is distinguished from other forms of information practice by its reliance on deception and exploitation of common institutions and infrastructures to gain a competitive advantage. Cyberspace is the most complex sociotechnical information system ever built, and cyber conflict is essentially just intelligence competition within it. Yet intelligence as such has become digitized, supersized, and civilianized. I argue that intelligence in any era has a distinct strategic logic that differentiates it from more familiar concepts of peace, war, and coercion. Tradeoffs across these concepts can be used to visualize the evolution of empirical cyber conflict involving the United States, China, Iran, and Russia. I conclude with some counterintuitive strategic implications of an intelligence framework for cybersecurity.
Bio: Jon R. Lindsay is Assistant Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research explores the impact of emerging technology on global security. He is the author of Information Technology and Military Power (Cornell University Press, 2020), co-editor of Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2019) and China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain(Oxford University Press, 2015), and has published widely in international relations, technology policy, and science studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. He has also served in the U.S. Navy with operational assignments in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
