Location
CS2311
Event Description

SPEAKER

Long Lu Georgia Tech School of Computer Science http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/l/long/

DATE/TIME

3/21, 2:30pm, CSE2311 (YES IT IS DURING SPRING BREAK)

TITLE

Securing Systems and Software Against Attacks Targeting Unwary Users

ABSTRACT

Unwary computer users are often blamed as the weakest link in the security chain because they often unknowingly facilitate incoming cyber attacks and jeopardize efforts to secure systems and networks.

In my thesis research, I developed several approaches to detect and prevent the security issues in software that allow users to unintentionally enable external exploits and attacks. In this talk, I will describe two systems that I built: BLADE and CHEX. They represent two complementary strategies that guide my research: (i) building runtime monitors to identify and interrupt the user actions that trigger security compromises; (ii) designing offline detectors for the software vulnerabilities that allow for such user actions.

Specifically, as an OS kernel extension, BLADE infers user intent through OS-level events, prevents the execution of downloaded files that cannot be attributed to user intent, and consequently stops drive-by download attacks in a robust and attack-agnostic way. CHEX detects the general vulnerability class of component hijacking in Android apps, overcoming program analysis challenges imposed by the new programming paradigms of mobile apps and meeting the requirements to efficiently vet large volumes of apps.

BIO


Long Lu is a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, advised by Prof. Wenke Lee. His work has addresses a broad range of security threats that exploit unwary users of widely deployed software and systems, such as commodity operating systems, web browsers, and recently, mobile apps. His research have been published in the top tier security conferences [CCS'09, CCS'10, CCS'11, and CCS'12] and made practical impacts. In particular, his work has been incorporated into several products at Microsoft.