Welcome to URCAD “25”!
April 19-25, 2021

Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) is celebrating its 25th anniversary! Due to the COVID-related campus closure, URCAD XXV will be held online again this spring. You will be able to view presentations, watch films, see video of dance and music performances, view artwork, and interact with presenters during the asynchronous event.

How Do I View Presentations?
To access student presentations, use the dropdowns above to search by the student’s name, or, you can browse by department. Click the VoiceThread (VT) icon, then click the play button. Many presentations have narration, sound, or video, so make sure to turn your speakers on. The number of slides in the presentation is listed at the top. You can view presentations all week, April 19-25, 2021.

Have a Question? Want to Interact with Presenters?
You can give feedback, ask questions, etc. by leaving a text, voice,or video comment for the presenter (videos are preferred!) You should receive a response from the student within 24 hours, and you will be notified via email when the response is ready (keep notifications enabled). Make sure you are signed in to VT, and then simply Click on the + icon at the bottom of the slide to post a comment. Record your comment and click save. (Note: UMBC account holders can post a comment using their UMBC credentials. For visitors without a UMBC email account, in order to post a comment on a VoiceThread, you will first need to create a free non-UMBC VoiceThread account at https://voicethread.com.)

How can I see the Keynote Address? Can I ask Questions?
Just click the URCAD XXV Keynote Speaker bar on the right to view the video by Keynote Speaker Klaudine Wakasa. We will host a live Q&A on Wednesday, April 21st from 12-1pm. You can ask questions and Klaudine will answer them live!

What else is planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of URCAD?
Check out the fireside chat with URCAD founders Diane Lee, Kathy Sutphin, Bee Pennington, and Janet McGlynn, as they reminisce about the early days of URCAD and talk about the history of the event. And don’t forget to take a selfie and upload it to our Selfie Contest to win a gift card to the UMBC Bookstore! Top prize is $250 for the Best Selfie with the number “25” in it! 

How can faculty encourage students to attend URCAD?
Click the dropdown For Faculty above to see examples of past extra credit assignments given by UMBC faculty. Encourage students to attend and report back to your class about what they learned!

For more technical information and to troubleshoot, click the Event Information tab above.

Please email aprilh@umbc.edu with any questions.

URCAD.umbc.edu

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The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

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Thinking Like an Attacker:
Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking

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Prof. Peter A. H. Peterson
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota Duluth

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12:00–1:00 pm ET,  Friday, 30 April 2021
via WebEx

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“Adversarial thinking” (AT), sometimes called the “security mindset” or described as the ability to “think like an attacker,” is widely accepted in the computer security community as an essential ability for successful cybersecurity practice. Supported by intuition and anecdotes, many in the community stress the importance of AT, and multiple projects have produced interventions explicitly intended to strengthen individual AT skills to improve security in general. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of “adversarial thinking” or its components, and accordingly, no test for it. Because of this absence, it is impossible to meaningfully quantify AT in subjects, AT’s importance for cybersecurity practitioners, or the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve AT. Working towards the goal of a characterization of AT in cybersecurity and a non-technical test for AT that anyone can take, I will discuss existing conceptions of AT from the security community, as well as ideas about AT in other fields with adversarial aspects including war, politics, law, critical thinking, and games. I will also describe some of the unique difficulties of creating a non-technical test for AT, compare and contrast this effort to our work on the CATS and Security Misconceptions projects, and describe some potential solutions. I will explore potential uses for such an instrument, including measuring a student’s change in AT over time, measuring the effectiveness of interventions meant to improve AT, comparing AT in different populations (e.g., security professionals vs. software engineers), and identifying individuals from all walks of life with strong AT skills—people who might help meet our world’s pressing need for skilled and insightful security professionals and researchers. Along the way, I will give some sample non-technical adversarial thinking challenges and describe how they might be graded and validated.

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 Peter A. H. Peterson is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches and directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Systems (LARS), a group dedicated to research in operating systems and security, with a special focus on research and development to make security education more effective and accessible. He is an active member of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) project working to create and validate two concept inventories for cybersecurity, is working on an NSF-funded grant to identify and remediate commonsense misconceptions about cybersecurity, and is also the author of several hands-on security exercises for Deterlab that have been used at many institutions around the world. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles for work on “adaptive compression”—systems that make compression decisions dynamically to improve efficiency. He can be reached at *protected email*.

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Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email* Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings: May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer

The post talk: Thinking Like an Attacker: Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking, 12-1pm ET 4/30 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Thinking Like an Attacker:
Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking

Prof. Peter A. H. Peterson
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota Duluth

12:00–1:00 pm ET,  Friday, 30 April 2021
via WebEx

“Adversarial thinking” (AT), sometimes called the “security mindset” or described as the ability to “think like an attacker,” is widely accepted in the computer security community as an essential ability for successful cybersecurity practice. Supported by intuition and anecdotes, many in the community stress the importance of AT, and multiple projects have produced interventions explicitly intended to strengthen individual AT skills to improve security in general. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of “adversarial thinking” or its components, and accordingly, no test for it. Because of this absence, it is impossible to meaningfully quantify AT in subjects, AT’s importance for cybersecurity practitioners, or the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve AT. Working towards the goal of a characterization of AT in cybersecurity and a non-technical test for AT that anyone can take, I will discuss existing conceptions of AT from the security community, as well as ideas about AT in other fields with adversarial aspects including war, politics, law, critical thinking, and games. I will also describe some of the unique difficulties of creating a non-technical test for AT, compare and contrast this effort to our work on the CATS and Security Misconceptions projects, and describe some potential solutions. I will explore potential uses for such an instrument, including measuring a student’s change in AT over time, measuring the effectiveness of interventions meant to improve AT, comparing AT in different populations (e.g., security professionals vs. software engineers), and identifying individuals from all walks of life with strong AT skills—people who might help meet our world’s pressing need for skilled and insightful security professionals and researchers. Along the way, I will give some sample non-technical adversarial thinking challenges and describe how they might be graded and validated.

 Peter A. H. Peterson is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches and directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Systems (LARS), a group dedicated to research in operating systems and security, with a special focus on research and development to make security education more effective and accessible. He is an active member of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) project working to create and validate two concept inventories for cybersecurity, is working on an NSF-funded grant to identify and remediate commonsense misconceptions about cybersecurity, and is also the author of several hands-on security exercises for Deterlab that have been used at many institutions around the world. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles for work on “adaptive compression”—systems that make compression decisions dynamically to improve efficiency. He can be reached at *protected email*.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email* Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings: May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer

The post talk: Thinking Like an Attacker: Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking, 12-1pm ET 4/30 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

---

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

---

Thinking Like an Attacker:
Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking

---

Prof. Peter A. H. Peterson
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota Duluth

---

12:00–1:00 pm ET,  Friday, 30 April 2021
via WebEx

---

“Adversarial thinking” (AT), sometimes called the “security mindset” or described as the ability to “think like an attacker,” is widely accepted in the computer security community as an essential ability for successful cybersecurity practice. Supported by intuition and anecdotes, many in the community stress the importance of AT, and multiple projects have produced interventions explicitly intended to strengthen individual AT skills to improve security in general. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of “adversarial thinking” or its components, and accordingly, no test for it. Because of this absence, it is impossible to meaningfully quantify AT in subjects, AT’s importance for cybersecurity practitioners, or the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve AT. Working towards the goal of a characterization of AT in cybersecurity and a non-technical test for AT that anyone can take, I will discuss existing conceptions of AT from the security community, as well as ideas about AT in other fields with adversarial aspects including war, politics, law, critical thinking, and games. I will also describe some of the unique difficulties of creating a non-technical test for AT, compare and contrast this effort to our work on the CATS and Security Misconceptions projects, and describe some potential solutions. I will explore potential uses for such an instrument, including measuring a student’s change in AT over time, measuring the effectiveness of interventions meant to improve AT, comparing AT in different populations (e.g., security professionals vs. software engineers), and identifying individuals from all walks of life with strong AT skills—people who might help meet our world’s pressing need for skilled and insightful security professionals and researchers. Along the way, I will give some sample non-technical adversarial thinking challenges and describe how they might be graded and validated.

---

 Peter A. H. Peterson is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches and directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Systems (LARS), a group dedicated to research in operating systems and security, with a special focus on research and development to make security education more effective and accessible. He is an active member of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) project working to create and validate two concept inventories for cybersecurity, is working on an NSF-funded grant to identify and remediate commonsense misconceptions about cybersecurity, and is also the author of several hands-on security exercises for Deterlab that have been used at many institutions around the world. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles for work on “adaptive compression”—systems that make compression decisions dynamically to improve efficiency. He can be reached at pahp@d.umn.edu.

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Host: Alan T. Sherman, sherman@umbc.edu. Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings: May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer

The post talk: Thinking Like an Attacker: Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking, 12-1pm ET 4/30 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.