CERIAS Weekly Security Seminar - Purdue University

 Students: This is a hybrid event. You are encouraged to attend in-person in STEW G-52As computing advances are making profound changes in our society, they also expose us to new security threats. While the impact of cyber attacks was often in our digital life in the past, our cyber world is increasingly intertwined with the physical world. Compromised safety-critical systems or critical infrastructures can have life and death implications. In this talk, I will highlight two research directions within my research group. First, on the system security front, I will discuss our efforts to ensure system availability on safety-critical embedded systems. Second, on the cyber-physical security front, I will present our recent work on IoT security. Finally, I will discuss our ongoing work and future directions. About the speaker: Dr. Ning Zhang leads the Computer Security and Privacy Laboratory (CSPL) at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Washington University, he was previously a principal cyber engineer/researcher and technical lead at Raytheon from 2007 to 2018. Ning's research focus is system security and cyber-physical security. Ning received his PhD degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and MS/BS from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst.

Differential Privacy has become a widely used tool to protect privacy in data science applications.  In this talk, I will present two use cases for differential privacy: a) in collection of key-value statistics and b) as a protection against membership inference attacks.  Key-value statistics are commonly used to gather information about the use of software products.  Yet, the collector may be untrusted, and the data of each user should be protected.  There exist a number of differentially private collection methods that perturb the data at the client's site.  However, these are very inaccurate.  In theory it would also be possible to collect these statistics using secure computations.  However, that is too inefficient to even test.  We show that a new combination of differentially privacy and secure computation achieves both high accuracy and high efficiency.  In the second application, we investigate the theoretical protection of differential privacy against membership inference attacks on neural network models.  There exist proofs of theoretical upper bounds that scale with the privacy parameter.  We show theoretically and empirically that those bounds do not hold against existing membership inference attacks in a natural deployment.  We show that when using existing data sets from different sources on the Internet (instead of the same data set as in lab experiments) and unmodified existing, even no longer state-of-the-art membership inference attacks, the bound does not hold.  We provide a theoretical explanation using a model that removes an unrealistic assumption about the training that, namely that it is iid.

Differential Privacy has become a widely used tool to protect privacy in data science applications.  In this talk, I will present two use cases for differential privacy: a) in collection of key-value statistics and b) as a protection against membership inference attacks.  Key-value statistics are commonly used to gather information about the use of software products.  Yet, the collector may be untrusted, and the data of each user should be protected.  There exist a number of differentially private collection methods that perturb the data at the client's site.  However, these are very inaccurate.  In theory it would also be possible to collect these statistics using secure computations.  However, that is too inefficient to even test.  We show that a new combination of differentially privacy and secure computation achieves both high accuracy and high efficiency.  In the second application, we investigate the theoretical protection of differential privacy against membership inference attacks on neural network models.  There exist proofs of theoretical upper bounds that scale with the privacy parameter.  We show theoretically and empirically that those bounds do not hold against existing membership inference attacks in a natural deployment.  We show that when using existing data sets from different sources on the Internet (instead of the same data set as in lab experiments) and unmodified existing, even no longer state-of-the-art membership inference attacks, the bound does not hold.  We provide a theoretical explanation using a model that removes an unrealistic assumption about the training that, namely that it is iid. About the speaker: Florian Kerschbaum is a professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (joined in 2017), a member of the CrySP group, and NSERC/RBC chair in data security (since 2019). Before he worked as chief research expert at SAP in Karlsruhe (2005 – 2016) and as a software architect at Arxan Technologies in San Francisco (2002 – 2004). He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2010) and a master's degree from Purdue University (2001). He served as the inaugural director of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (2018 – 2021). He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist (2019). He is interested in security and privacy in the entire data science lifecycle. He extends real-world systems with cryptographic security mechanisms to achieve (some) provable security guarantees. His work is used in several business applications.

Often, policy makers and cybersecurity professionals talk about cybersecurity as if cybersecurity is only important insofar as it benefits or protects other assets or values. For example, it is common to hear people argue that cybersecurity is important because of its role in economic growth, or potential damage military operations. Those arguments are not wrong, but they fail to understand national power, and consequently grossly understate cybersecurity's importance in international politics. Information is a component of national power all on its own, and cybersecurity is an important part of that component. Properly situating information as a component of national power, and cybersecurity in its appropriate place within information will better inform policy and practice. Informational considerations should hold equal weight in national policy, and not be subordinated military or economic concerns. As a component of information power, cybersecurity operates alongside other components of information power, and should cooperate with, and learn from those components of informational power.

Often, policy makers and cybersecurity professionals talk about cybersecurity as if cybersecurity is only important insofar as it benefits or protects other assets or values. For example, it is common to hear people argue that cybersecurity is important because of its role in economic growth, or potential damage military operations. Those arguments are not wrong, but they fail to understand national power, and consequently grossly understate cybersecurity's importance in international politics. Information is a component of national power all on its own, and cybersecurity is an important part of that component. Properly situating information as a component of national power, and cybersecurity in its appropriate place within information will better inform policy and practice. Informational considerations should hold equal weight in national policy, and not be subordinated military or economic concerns. As a component of information power, cybersecurity operates alongside other components of information power, and should cooperate with, and learn from those components of informational power. About the speaker: David Benson is currently a Professor of Security and Strategic Studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) at Air University, Montgomery, AL. His research and instruction focuses on international relations and information, especially how the internet and information technology affects great power politics. His publications include "Why the Internet is not Increasing Terrorism," "Cyber-balancing not Cyber-War," and "Mahan and Corbett will not Inform War with China." David graduated from the University of Chicago, and held a post-doctoral appointment at Southern Methodist University. David served six years in the US Army, first as a Chinese-Mandarin linguist and then as an infantry officer. After completing a tour in Iraq, David worked with JIEDDO-COIC to develop and teach counter-insurgency strategy.

Use of Ransomware as a class of malware has exploded in recent years, causing millions in damages to organizations across the world. The damage isn’t slowing down. On the contrary, ransomware as a tool is being adopted by a wide array of perpetrators. This includes nation-states, for cash, and to use the demand for cash to obfuscate activities like espionage and sabotage. Ransomware has become a powerful tool of asset seizure and extortion, being used by criminals, activists, and even sanctioned governments for multiple purposes including use as a weapon of war. The use of ransomware and its close cousin, wiperware, is only accelerating. In this talk, we will examine how the proliferation of ransomware brought us to this point, what it means for current global conflicts, and for the future of cyberwarfare.

Use of Ransomware as a class of malware has exploded in recent years, causing millions in damages to organizations across the world. The damage isn't slowing down. On the contrary, ransomware as a tool is being adopted by a wide array of perpetrators. This includes nation-states, for cash, and to use the demand for cash to obfuscate activities like espionage and sabotage. Ransomware has become a powerful tool of asset seizure and extortion, being used by criminals, activists, and even sanctioned governments for multiple purposes including use as a weapon of war. The use of ransomware and its close cousin, wiperware, is only accelerating. In this talk, we will examine how the proliferation of ransomware brought us to this point, what it means for current global conflicts, and for the future of cyberwarfare. About the speaker: Maggie MacAlpine is the Cyber Engagement Lead for MITRE's Center for Threat Informed Defense. Prior to this appointment she served as a security strategist for Cybereason and, during her decade-long career focused on cybersecurity, Ms. MacAlpine also co-founded the DEF CON Voting Village, served as a contributing researcher on the "Security Analysis of the Estonian Internet Voting System" (in partnership with the University of Michigan), and appeared in the HBO documentary, "Kill Chain". She has discussed cybersecurity threats at numerous conferences including DEF CON, the Diana Initiative, ShmooCon Hacker Conference, PacSec Tokyo, as well as in presentations to Capitol Hill and the US Naval War College.

Authentication is a critical part to ensure the identity of a legitimate user. During authentication, an individual’s credential is validated with a specific computational technique to determine the association of the user with his/her claimed identity. In this talk, I will discuss an adaptive multi-factor authentication (A-MFA) framework which uses adaptive selection of multiple modalities at different operating environment so to make authentication strategy unpredictable to hackers. This methodology incorporates a novel approach of calculating trustworthy values of different authentication factors while the computing device being used under different environmental settings. Accordingly, a subset of authentication factors is determined (at triggering events) on the fly thereby leaving no exploitable a priori pattern or clue for adversaries. Such a methodology of adaptive authentication selection can provide legitimacy to user transactions with an added layer of access protection that is not rely on a fixed set of authentication modalities. Robustness of the system is assured by designing the framework in such a way that if any modality data get compromised, the system can still perform flawlessly using other non-compromised modalities. Scalability can also be achieved by adding new and/or improved modalities with existing set of modalities and integrating the operating/configuration parameters for the added modality. I will highlight what type of evaluation be required for such identity management software to detect possible deep fakes and other forms of faking biometrics. Other attacks on current means of identity validation may become possible. What would be what good figures of merit to be used as response variables? What are good factors over which we would need to test for next-generation identity eco-systems. References: · Advances in User Authentication. Dipankar Dasgupta,Arunava Roy, Abhijit Nag. Publisher: Springer-Verlag, Inc., August 2017. · US Patent #9,912,657: Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication, Dasgupta, et al., March6, 2018.

Authentication is a critical part to ensure the identity of a legitimate user. During authentication, an individual's credential is validated with a specific computational technique to determine the association of the user with his/her claimed identity. In this talk, I will discuss an adaptive multi-factor authentication (A-MFA) framework which uses adaptive selection of multiple modalities at different operating environment so to make authentication strategy unpredictable to hackers. This methodology incorporates a novel approach of calculating trustworthy values of different authentication factors while the computing device being used under different environmental settings. Accordingly, a subset of authentication factors is determined (at triggering events) on the fly thereby leaving no exploitable a priori pattern or clue for adversaries. Such a methodology of adaptive authentication selection can provide legitimacy to user transactions with an added layer of access protection that is not rely on a fixed set of authentication modalities. Robustness of the system is assured by designing the framework in such a way that if any modality data get compromised, the system can still perform flawlessly using other non-compromised modalities. Scalability can also be achieved by adding new and/or improved modalities with existing set of modalities and integrating the operating/configuration parameters for the added modality.I will highlight what type of evaluation be required for such identity management software to detect possible deep fakes and other forms of faking biometrics. Other attacks on current means of identity validation may become possible. What would be what good figures of merit to be used as response variables? What are good factors over which we would need to test for next-generation identity eco-systems.References:· Advances in User Authentication. Dipankar Dasgupta,Arunava Roy, Abhijit Nag. Publisher: Springer-Verlag, Inc., August 2017.· US Patent #9,912,657: Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication, Dasgupta, et al., March6, 2018. About the speaker: Dipankar Dasgupta is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Memphis and has been in different faculty positions since 1997. He is at the forefront in applying bio-inspired approaches to cyber defense, served as a program co-chair at the National Cyber Leap Year Summit organized at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Directorate (2009). Some of his groundbreaking works, like digital immunity, negative authentication, and cloud insurance model, put his name in Computer World Magazine and other News media.Dr. Dasgupta received external funding from different federal agencies including NSF, DARPA, IARPA, NSA, NAVY, ONR DoD and DHS/FEMA. Dr. Dasgupta has more than 300 publications with about 20,000 citations and having h-index of 62 as per Google scholar. Prof. Dasgupta received the 2014ACM SIGEVO Impact Award, became Fellow of IEEE in 2015, ACM Distinguished Speaker from 2015-2020, and currently IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. In addition to Prof. Dasgupta's research and creative activities, he also spearheads the University of Memphis's education, training and outreach activities on Information Assurance (IA). He is the founding Director of the Center for Information Assurance (CfIA) which is a National Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE-IAE) and in Research(CAE-R). Because of the center's wide range of activities, the University of Memphis is in the forefront of information security research, education, and outreach in the state as well as in the region.

There is no one bigger game changer in the world than technology and its uptake in every aspect of our lives including our collective future. Cybersecurity has become the top priority across the board. There is need for informed cybersecurity investments that consider sustainability, responsible data usage, being prepared for any crisis and being resilient. We have to enable a culture of responsible innovation that takes holistic considerations for the people, process and technologies and drive a responsible mindset. We will talk about boundary considerations when it comes to data use, adversary threats, impact on environment, user behaviors and how we can help as cybersecurity professionals. The goal is to build the highways for the future with a holistic approach and principles that enables fearless harnessing of the global compute platform, enabling profound technological growth for the next generation.

There is no one bigger game changer in the world than technology and its uptake in every aspect of our lives including our collective future. Cybersecurity has become the top priority across the board. There is need for informed cybersecurity investments that consider sustainability, responsible data usage, being prepared for any crisis and being resilient. We have to enable a culture of responsible innovation that takes holistic considerations for the people, process and technologies and drive a responsible mindset. We will talk about boundary considerations when it comes to data use, adversary threats, impact on environment, user behaviors and how we can help as cybersecurity professionals. The goal is to build the highways for the future with a holistic approach and principles that enables fearless harnessing of the global compute platform, enabling profound technological growth for the next generation. About the speaker: Abhilasha Bhargav-Spantzel is a Partner Security Architect at Microsoft. She is responsible for monitoring and coverage architecture for Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). MSRC is the front-line defense for millions of customers around the world who use Microsoft platforms and products. Previously she was at Intel for 14 years, focusing on hardware-based security product architecture. She completed her doctorate from Purdue University, which focused on identity and privacy protection using cryptography and biometrics. Abhilasha drives thought leadership and the future evolution of cybersecurity platforms through innovation, architecture, and education. She has given numerous talks at conferences and universities as part of distinguished lecture series and workshops. She has written 5 book chapters and 30+ ACM and IEEE articles and has 35+ patents. Abhilasha leads multiple D&I and actively drives the retention and development of women in technology. She is passionate about STEM K-12 cybersecurity education initiatives, as well as co-organizes regular camps and workshops for the same. Sonnie Ebikwo is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft where he works on strategies to deliver a high bar of security capabilities and productivity for Microsoft and Stakeholders. He is a highly knowledgeable professional, credited with over 27-years of progressive experiences in both the private and public sectors where he developed strong functional background in various industries ranging from Cybersecurity, Telecom, US Government, Real Estate, Transportation and the Service Industry. Prior to joining Microsoft, he served as a Senior Technical Program Manager and Availability Zone Owner of the largest cluster of Data Centers with the largest customer base within the AWS Data Center Supply Delivery Infrastructure. In this role, he led complex cross functional teams to deliver data center supply through shell, room and infill opportunities including direct responsibility for overall short- and longer-term health of the AZ. Sonnie holds a distinguished formal and extensive education with a master's in planning from the University of Texas at Arlington and completed the senior executive leadership development training at the UChicago Booth School of Business in 2013. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP-2003), Certified Scrum Master and a Certified Scrum Product Owner.

Students: This is a hybrid event. You are encouraged to attend in person in STEW 050B (G52) Common IT based Cyber techniques do not apply to many parts of the aviation industry. The aviation industry has to meet a number of Federal Aviation Regulations and using Industry provided standards show compliance to those regulations, perhaps for the life of the airplane after initial certification. Most all updates to airplanes require a certification activity, thus it takes considerable time to make any system changes. This certification process has been time tested and proved to have the right rigor leading to continued improved safety as the number of flights per day worldwide increases each year. Cyber security being an evolving threat must be considered in all system designs.

Students: This is a hybrid event. You are encouraged to attend in person in STEW 050B (G52)Common IT based Cyber techniques do not apply to many parts of the aviation industry. The aviation industry has to meet a number of Federal Aviation Regulations and using Industry provided standards show compliance to those regulations, perhaps for the life of the airplane after initial certification. Most all updates to airplanes require a certification activity, thus it takes considerable time to make any system changes. This certification process has been time tested and proved to have the right rigor leading to continued improved safety as the number of flights per day worldwide increases each year. Cyber security being an evolving threat must be considered in all system designs. About the speaker: Jim Huffaker is a Senior Manager with Boeing Commercial Airplanes. A 30+ year veteran of Boeing,he leads a team that installs the Onboard Network Server (ONS) and/or Airplane Interface Device (AID) used by flight, maintenance, and cabin crews in all phases of flight. In addition, this team is working to offer a safe and secure wired and/or wireless connection to portable Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) from the airplane installed server for real time data and off-board communications. His management experiences include leader of the Electromagnetic Effects design team on the 787, and leader of a team of engineers responsible for Electrical and Environmental Controls systems and Avionics systems in the Customer Aviation Services Organization for the 737, 747, 767, and 777 models. His work experience also includes leader of Avionics design for the 747-400 Onboard Maintenance System (OMS) Central Maintenance Computer (CMC) and the 777 OMS Central Maintenance Computing Function (CMCF), a component of the Airplane Information Management System(AIMS). Additionally, he remains an industry focal, and has served as the Boeing representative on the FAA Flight Data Recording (FDR) Aviation Rule making Advisory Committee (ARAC), as the Company's representative for Loadable Software and other AEEC/ARINC document creation teams, and as the Boeing Customer Services representative for Y2K.Mr. Huffaker is a graduate of Purdue University with a BSEE,and was a Commissioned Officer in the USAF. In addition to his Space Systems Defense assignments while in the military, his responsibilities included Avionics design on the B-2, prior to joining Boeing.

Visual misinformation, including fake, manipulated or out-of-context images and videos, is increasingly common on the Internet and social media platforms. Because of visuals’ superior impression, retention, virality and persuasiveness, visual misinformation poses a significant threat to national security, social cohesion, and public health. Yet, we know very little about how users process and judge the authenticity of visuals, and the ways in which platforms and fact-checking agencies could effectively detect and fight against visual misinformation. In this talk, I will report findings from several recent experiments that reveal the characteristics of users most susceptible to visual misinformation, and a few effective technical and social interventions to counter visual misinformation.

Visual misinformation, including fake, manipulated or out-of-context images and videos, is increasingly common on the Internet and social media platforms. Because of visuals' superior impression, retention, virality and persuasiveness, visual misinformation poses a significant threat to national security, social cohesion, and public health. Yet, we know very little about how users process and judge the authenticity of visuals, and the ways in which platforms and fact-checking agencies could effectively detect and fight against visual misinformation. In this talk, I will report findings from several recent experiments that reveal the characteristics of users most susceptible to visual misinformation, and a few effective technical and social interventions to counter visual misinformation. About the speaker: Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a professor of communication at UC Davis and the co-director of the Computational Communication Research lab. Her research focuses on understanding visual misinformation and designing effective interventions. From 2017 to 2022, she served as the chair of the Computational Methods Division of the International Communication Association. She is also the founding associate editor of the journal Computational Communication Research, as well as the associate editor of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.