Orthogonality Catastrophe as a Consequence of the Quantum Speed Limit

Lockheed Martin Distinguished Speaker Series

Will Blockchain Change Everything?

Dr. John Mitchell
Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor
Departments of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering
Stanford University

1:00-2:00pm EST, Friday, 27 March 2020
Webex meeting hosted by Anupam Joshi
https://umbc.webex.com/meet/joshi

Far from serving only as a foundation for cryptocurrency, blockchain technology provides a general framework for trusted distributed ledgers. Over the past few years, their popularity has grown tremendously, as shown by the number of companies and efforts associated with the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project, for example. From a technical standpoint, a blockchain combines a storage layer, networking protocols, a consensus layer, and a programmable transaction layer, leveraging cryptographic operations. The distributed state machine paradigm provides atomicity and transaction rollback, while consensus supports distributed availability as well as certain forms of fair access. From an applications perspective, blockchains appeal to distributed networks of independent agents, as arise in supply chain, credentialing, and decentralized financial services. The talk will look at the potential for radical change as well as specific technical challenges associated with verifiable consensus protocols and trustworthy smart contracts.

John Mitchell is the Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor in the School of Engineering, Professor of Computer Science, co-director of the Stanford Computer Security Lab, and Professor (by courtesy) of Education. He was Vice Provost at Stanford University from 2012 to 2018. Mitchell’s research focusses on programming languages, computer, and network security, privacy, and education. He has published over 200 research papers, served as editor of eleven journals, including Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computer Security, and written two books. He has led research projects funded by numerous organizations and served as advisor and consultant to successful small and large companies. His first research project in online learning started in 2009 when he and six undergraduate students built Stanford CourseWare, an innovative platform that served as the foundation for initial flipped classroom experiments at Stanford and helped inspire the first massive open online courses (MOOCs) from Stanford. Professor Mitchell currently serves as Chair of the Stanford Department of Computer Science.

The post Webex talk: John Mitchell: Will Blockchain Change Everything? Fri 3/27 1-2pm appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Hard-Learned Lesson in Defense of a Network

Dan Yaroslaski
Former Operations Officer at Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, Colonel, USMC

12–1:00pm, Friday, 27 March 2020
WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

Often network defenders fail to take into account organizational culture when attempting to provide a secure, reliable, and usable enterprise network. Users and process leaders often fall victim to the false allure of the value of networked systems, without asking the question, “Should this be networked?” Collectively, organizations also forget that networks are a combination of the humans who use the network, the personas we all have to form to gain access to this manmade domain, and the interplay of logical and physical network architecture manifested in geographical locations. The value of some simple military principles—including defense-in-depth, mission focus, redundancy, and resiliency versus efficiency—can help a network defender better advise everyone from the “C Suite” decision-makers to the average network user, on how to have a secure network while accepting reasonable limitations.

Colonel Dan Yaroslaski is a career Marine with over 30 years of service to the nation. He started as an enlisted anti-armor missileman, who then became an Assault Amphibian Vehicle Officer (AAV’s are 27 Ton armored amphibious descendants of the WW II vehicles used from Tarawa to Iwo Jima). He has made a career of integrating technology and human beings to form cohesive combat organizations. Dan’s diverse career placed him at the forefront of high-end, top-secret compartmentalized planning and execution, to the extremely human act of advising an Afghan National Army Kandak (Battalion). During his five-year tenure at Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, he successfully architected new techniques that took advantage of boundary defenses, to new and innovative ways to integrate traditional warfare methods with cyberspace operations, as highlighted in a recent NPR story about USCYBERCOM’s Operation GLOWING SYMPHONY. Dan also spent time creating effective policy directing network operations and defense, to include an extremely frustrating year negotiating the interplay of network operations, operations in the information environment, and Marine Corps culture. Dan and his wife are now empty nesters, so they spend an enormous amount of time nurturing two dogs to fill the void left by their children. As the Rolling Stones point out, “What a drag it is getting old.”

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:

• Apr 10, Russ Fink (APL), ransomware
• Apr 24, Lance Hoffman (GWU), policy
• May 8, Jason Wells (UMBC SFS scholar), law enforcement
• May 22, Spring SFS Meeting at UMBC, 9:30am-2pm, ITE 456

The post Webex Talk: Hard-Learned Lesson in Defense of a Network, 12-1 Fri 3/27 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Hard-Learned Lesson in Defense of a Network

Dan Yaroslaski
Former Operations Officer at Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, Colonel, USMC

12–1:00pm, Friday, 27 March 2020
WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

Often network defenders fail to take into account organizational culture when attempting to provide a secure, reliable, and usable enterprise network. Users and process leaders often fall victim to the false allure of the value of networked systems, without asking the question, “Should this be networked?” Collectively, organizations also forget that networks are a combination of the humans who use the network, the personas we all have to form to gain access to this manmade domain, and the interplay of logical and physical network architecture manifested in geographical locations. The value of some simple military principles—including defense-in-depth, mission focus, redundancy, and resiliency versus efficiency—can help a network defender better advise everyone from the “C Suite” decision-makers to the average network user, on how to have a secure network while accepting reasonable limitations.

Colonel Dan Yaroslaski is a career Marine with over 30 years of service to the nation. He started as an enlisted anti-armor missileman, who then became an Assault Amphibian Vehicle Officer (AAV’s are 27 Ton armored amphibious descendants of the WW II vehicles used from Tarawa to Iwo Jima). He has made a career of integrating technology and human beings to form cohesive combat organizations. Dan’s diverse career placed him at the forefront of high-end, top-secret compartmentalized planning and execution, to the extremely human act of advising an Afghan National Army Kandak (Battalion). During his five-year tenure at Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, he successfully architected new techniques that took advantage of boundary defenses, to new and innovative ways to integrate traditional warfare methods with cyberspace operations, as highlighted in a recent NPR story about USCYBERCOM’s Operation GLOWING SYMPHONY. Dan also spent time creating effective policy directing network operations and defense, to include an extremely frustrating year negotiating the interplay of network operations, operations in the information environment, and Marine Corps culture. Dan and his wife are now empty nesters, so they spend an enormous amount of time nurturing two dogs to fill the void left by their children. As the Rolling Stones point out, “What a drag it is getting old.”

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:

• Apr 10, Russ Fink (APL), ransomware
• Apr 24, Lance Hoffman (GWU), policy
• May 8, Jason Wells (UMBC SFS scholar), law enforcement
• May 22, Spring SFS Meeting at UMBC, 9:30am-2pm, ITE 456

The post Webex Talk: Hard-Learned Lesson in Defense of a Network, 12-1 Fri 3/27 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Congratulations to Prof. Denise Meringolo for receiving this year's USM Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Mentoring. All of you who know Prof. Meringolo know that no one deserves this more!

USM Board of Regents Announces Winners of Annual Faculty Awards
Recipients to be Acknowledged at Annual Ceremony May 1

March 12, 4:25 p.m.: Emails, text messages and Snapchat stories, all alerting me of the shocking news that I watched roll across the bottom of the screen as Governor Larry Hogan announced that all Maryland public schools would be closed for two weeks. 

It wasn’t that it was shocking in a scary way – that part hasn’t hit me yet — it was that one of the years that I’m supposed to remember forever, my high school graduation year, was in question. There was, and still is, so much that is up in the air. Although we are set to return in two weeks, I, as well as my classmates, and even our teachers, wonder if it will actually happen.

It wasn’t too long after the news broke that the Twitter memes began. They were funny at first —one saying the class of 2020 would graduate via Google Classroom — but then concerns started to hit home. 

What will happen if the “break” lasts for longer? Will the end of the quarter be moved? Will spring break be taken away? For my senior friends and I, the possible cancellation of major functions like graduation and prom is truly the main question lingering.

Ever since I knew what high school graduation was, I’ve had an idea of how that day would be: sunny, 70 degrees. Moving the tassel from one side to the other is one of those events I’ve always envisioned. But what if I never get this moment? The daunting reality that graduation could be unconventional because public gatherings of 250 people or more must be postponed or canceled, and without a clear end of the coronavirus in sight, life is, in a sense, at a standstill. 

In my world, this standstill is at all levels. I cannot go to school, I cannot go to my internship, nor can I attend my dual-enrolled classes. What can I do? For any student — college or high school — school is all that we know; it embodies our entire lives. Even though this is a temporary break, it feels as though I’m losing so much. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely understand why this has to occur, it’s just that there are so many unknowns. 

For me, these unknowns really only exist in the “what will happen” arena; for others, these unknowns are more in the “how will I eat?” and “how will I complete assignments if schools move to online?” realm. I live in Howard County and go to a school that has a sizable portion of students in the Free and Reduced Lunch program. These students live under a certain income level and receive meals, and other things like SAT and AP prices, at a lesser price than others. Although schools are providing lunches on weekdays, and this closure does not include online classes, various students could be jeopardized in a situation of longer closures. 

And if these closures do end after the two week time period, how will it affect spring break? How would a cancellation affect students like me who already have plans? My plans are fairly simple, visiting my family in Ohio, but what about my friends who had flights booked and hotels reserved? 

These unknowns are amplified even further as I ask my parents if they’ve ever experienced something such as this. A simple response follows: “never.” The world is in utter chaos and there’s so much anxiety streaming through people’s veins. It can be difficult to remain level-headed as it seems as though everyone else is falling victim to the anxiety all around me. 

The school board doesn’t have answers, the state doesn’t have answers and the country definitely doesn’t have answers. But there is one answer that we all do have, and that is to wash our hands.

Jessica Bates is currently an intern with The Retriever. She is a senior at Long Reach High School in Howard County.