CS Research Talk: Securing Modern and Emerging Computing Platforms

Dr. Yuan Tian
University of Virginia
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Wednesday, October 27, 2021 |11:30a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Join via Zoom
or 
In Person @
800 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC, 20052
SEH Lehman Auditorium (B1270)

Securing Modern and Emerging Computing Platforms

Abstract

Computing is undergoing a significant shift. First, the explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) enables users to interact with computing systems and physical environments in novel ways through perceptual interfaces (e.g., microphones and cameras). Second, machine learning algorithms collect vast amounts of data and make critical decisions on new computing systems. These trends bring more functionality and drastically increase the number of untrusted algorithms, implementations, interfaces, and the amount of private data processed by them. As a result, attacks on modern computing systems (e.g., ransomware attacks and data breaches) are becoming more and more prevalent. To resolve these problems, I change how platform designers think about designing secure systems, assist the developers with secure system implementations, and create technologies to facilitate better security decision-making. This talk will present how my group designs principled solutions to ensure modern and emerging computing platforms' security and privacy. In particular, I will use two platforms as examples to demonstrate how we advance the state-of-arts for enhancing security and privacy. First, I will talk about how we detect security and privacy issues in AI-based voice-controlled devices. Second, I will show our work to continuously improve the security of OAuth protocol implementations (a popular complex three-party authentication protocol).

Bio

Yuan Tian is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Before joining UVA, she obtained her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017 and interned at Microsoft Research, Facebook, and Samsung Research. Her research interests involve security and privacy and its interactions with computer systems, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Her current research focuses on developing new computing platforms with strong security and privacy features, particularly in mobile systems and the Internet of Things. Her work has generated real-world impact as countermeasures and design changes have been integrated into platforms (such as Android, Chrome, SmartThings, Azure, and iOS), and also impacted the security recommendations of standard organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). She is a recipient of Google Research Scholar Award 2021, Facebook Research Award 2021, NSF CAREER award 2020, NSF CRII award 2019, Amazon AI Faculty Fellowship 2019, CSAW Best Security Paper Award 2019, Rising Stars in EECS 2016, and Black Hat Future Female Leaders in Cyber Security 2015. Her research has appeared in top-tier venues in security, machine learning, and systems. Her projects have been covered by media outlets such as IEEE Spectrum, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Telegraph. She is currently serving as a Program Officer in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate at NSF.