Welcome to Spring 2018 tutoring!

Please stop by the Writing Center and Math Lab on the first floor of the Library and meet our tutors.

Our spring hours:

Mon: 10-8

Tues-Thurs: 10-7

Fri: 10-3

Online Writing Center hours:

Tues-Sun: 7-10pm

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Results from the January 2018 SFS Research Study at UMBC

Enis Golaszewski
Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

12:00–1:00pm, Friday, 9 February 2018, ITE 228 (or nearby)

January 22-26, 2018, UMBC SFS scholars worked collaboratively to analyze the security of a targeted aspect of the UMBC computer system.  The focus of this year’s study was the WebAdmin module that enables users to perform various functions on their accounts, including changing the password.  Students identified vulnerabilities involving failure to sanitize user input properly and suggested mitigations.  Participants comprised BS, MS, MPS, and PhD students studying computer science, computer engineering, information systems, and cybersecurity, including SFS scholars who transferred from Montgomery College and Prince George’s Community College to complete their four-year degrees at UMBC. We hope that other universities can benefit from our motivational and educational strategy of cooperating with the university’s IT staff to engage students in active project-based learning centering on focused questions about the university computer system.

This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant 1241576.

Enis Golaszewski (*protected email*) is a PhD student and SFS scholar in computer science working with Dr. Sherman on blockchain, protocol analysis, and the security of software-defined networks.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email*

The post talk: Results of the 2018 SFS Research Study at UMBC, 12pm Fri 2/9, ITE228 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Results from the January 2018 SFS Research Study at UMBC

Enis Golaszewski
Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

12:00–1:00pm, Friday, 9 February 2018, ITE 228 (or nearby)

January 22-26, 2018, UMBC SFS scholars worked collaboratively to analyze the security of a targeted aspect of the UMBC computer system.  The focus of this year’s study was the WebAdmin module that enables users to perform various functions on their accounts, including changing the password.  Students identified vulnerabilities involving failure to sanitize user input properly and suggested mitigations.  Participants comprised BS, MS, MPS, and PhD students studying computer science, computer engineering, information systems, and cybersecurity, including SFS scholars who transferred from Montgomery College and Prince George’s Community College to complete their four-year degrees at UMBC. We hope that other universities can benefit from our motivational and educational strategy of cooperating with the university’s IT staff to engage students in active project-based learning centering on focused questions about the university computer system.

This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant 1241576.

Enis Golaszewski (*protected email*) is a PhD student and SFS scholar in computer science working with Dr. Sherman on blockchain, protocol analysis, and the security of software-defined networks.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email*

The post talk: Results of the 2018 SFS Research Study at UMBC, 12pm Fri 2/9, ITE228 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Towards Hardware Cybersecurity

Professor Houman Homayoun
George Mason University

11:00am-12:00pm Tuesday, 20 Febuary 2018, ITE 325, UMBC

Electronic system security, trust and reliability has become an increasingly critical area of concern for modern society. Secure hardware systems, platforms, as well as supply chains are critical to industry and government sectors such as national defense, healthcare, transportation, and finance.

Traditionally, authenticity and integrity of data has been protected with various security protocol at the software level with the underlying hardware assumed to be secure, and reliable. This assumption however is no longer true with an increasing number of attacks reported on the hardware. Counterfeiting electronic components, inserting hardware trojans, and cloning integrated circuits are just few out of many malicious byproducts of hardware vulnerabilities, which need to be urgently addressed.

In the first part of this talk I will address the security and vulnerability challenges in the horizontal integrated hardware development process. I will then present the concept of hybrid spin-transfer torque CMOS look up table based design which is our latest effort on developing a cost-effective solution to prevent physical reverse engineering attacks.

In the second part of my talk I will present how information at the hardware level can be used to address some of the major challenges of software security vulnerabilities monitoring and detection methods. I will first discuss these challenges and will then show how the use of data at the hardware architecture level in combination with an effective machine learning based predictor helps protecting systems against various classes of hardware vulnerability attacks.

I will conclude the talk by emphasizing the importance of this emerging area and proposing a research agenda for the future.

Dr. Houman Homayoun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University. He also holds a courtesy appointment with the Department of Computer Science as well as Information Science and Technology Department. He is the director of GMU’s Accelerated, Secure, and Energy-Efficient Computing Laboratory (ASEEC).  Prior to joining GMU, Houman spent two years at the University of California, San Diego, as NSF Computing Innovation (CI) Fellow awarded by the CRA-CCC. Houman graduated in 2010 from University of California, Irvine with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He was a recipient of the four-year University of California, Irvine Computer Science Department chair fellowship. Houman received the MS degree in computer engineering in 2005 from University of Victoria and BS degree in electrical engineering in 2003 from Sharif University of Technology. Houman conducts research in hardware security and trust, big data computing, and heterogeneous computing, where he has published more than 80 technical papers in the prestigious conferences and journals on the subject. Since 2012 he leads ten research projects, a total of $7.2 million in funding, supported by DARPA, AFRL, NSF, NIST, and GM on the topics of hardware security and trust, big data computing, heterogeneous architectures, and biomedical computing. Houman received the 2016 GLSVLSI conference best paper award for developing a manycore accelerator for wearable biomedical computing. Since 2017 he has been serving as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on VLSI. He is currently serving as technical program co-chair of 2018 GLSVLSI conference.

The post talk: Towards Hardware Cybersecurity, 11am Tue 2/20, ITE325, UMBC appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Towards Hardware Cybersecurity

Professor Houman Homayoun
George Mason University

11:00am-12:00pm Tuesday, 20 Febuary 2018, ITE 325, UMBC

Electronic system security, trust and reliability has become an increasingly critical area of concern for modern society. Secure hardware systems, platforms, as well as supply chains are critical to industry and government sectors such as national defense, healthcare, transportation, and finance.

Traditionally, authenticity and integrity of data has been protected with various security protocol at the software level with the underlying hardware assumed to be secure, and reliable. This assumption however is no longer true with an increasing number of attacks reported on the hardware. Counterfeiting electronic components, inserting hardware trojans, and cloning integrated circuits are just few out of many malicious byproducts of hardware vulnerabilities, which need to be urgently addressed.

In the first part of this talk I will address the security and vulnerability challenges in the horizontal integrated hardware development process. I will then present the concept of hybrid spin-transfer torque CMOS look up table based design which is our latest effort on developing a cost-effective solution to prevent physical reverse engineering attacks.

In the second part of my talk I will present how information at the hardware level can be used to address some of the major challenges of software security vulnerabilities monitoring and detection methods. I will first discuss these challenges and will then show how the use of data at the hardware architecture level in combination with an effective machine learning based predictor helps protecting systems against various classes of hardware vulnerability attacks.

I will conclude the talk by emphasizing the importance of this emerging area and proposing a research agenda for the future.

Dr. Houman Homayoun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University. He also holds a courtesy appointment with the Department of Computer Science as well as Information Science and Technology Department. He is the director of GMU’s Accelerated, Secure, and Energy-Efficient Computing Laboratory (ASEEC).  Prior to joining GMU, Houman spent two years at the University of California, San Diego, as NSF Computing Innovation (CI) Fellow awarded by the CRA-CCC. Houman graduated in 2010 from University of California, Irvine with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He was a recipient of the four-year University of California, Irvine Computer Science Department chair fellowship. Houman received the MS degree in computer engineering in 2005 from University of Victoria and BS degree in electrical engineering in 2003 from Sharif University of Technology. Houman conducts research in hardware security and trust, big data computing, and heterogeneous computing, where he has published more than 80 technical papers in the prestigious conferences and journals on the subject. Since 2012 he leads ten research projects, a total of $7.2 million in funding, supported by DARPA, AFRL, NSF, NIST, and GM on the topics of hardware security and trust, big data computing, heterogeneous architectures, and biomedical computing. Houman received the 2016 GLSVLSI conference best paper award for developing a manycore accelerator for wearable biomedical computing. Since 2017 he has been serving as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on VLSI. He is currently serving as technical program co-chair of 2018 GLSVLSI conference.

The post talk: Towards Hardware Cybersecurity, 11am Tue 2/20, ITE325, UMBC appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

This story was first published  here and was written by Tom Moore.

Timothy Nohe, director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) and professor of visual arts, is featured in a one-person exhibition at the Kohl Gallery on the campus of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. The show, which opened Thursday, November 9, and continues through Friday, December 15, is entitled Voltage is Signal: Analog Video Works by Timothy Nohe and features works that explore analog video technology in innovative ways.

A 2015 residency at Signal Culture (Owego, New York) inspired Nohe’s work with analog modular video synthesis, and since then he has gone on to exhibit and screen video and interactive works at major public festivals such as Light City Baltimore 2017 and Artscape. His interactive exhibits, autonomous video generating circuits, installations and prints simultaneously look back and forward to technologies that slip between obsolescence and contemporary “glitch” culture. Nohe’s show at the Kohl Gallery in many ways marks a new direction, as he departs from a typically more image-based practice to consider the ways that voltages might produce abstractions. The resulting works are resonant of past traditions, from color field to Pop, even as they emerge from an interrogation of various media. A number of the works on display call for audience interaction, long a characteristic of Nohe’s work.

Professor Nohe will return to Washington College for a public talk on his work on Thursday, November 16 at 4:30 p.m. He will also participate in a production of the modern dance LightForest by Baltimore Dance Project, directed and choreographed by Carol Hess, chair of UMBC’s department of dance, at Washington College on November 17 and 18. Nohe composed the score for LightForest for mobile devices and dancer-worn Bluetooth speakers. During the residency stay he will conduct workshops with Washington College music majors.

Nohe was the recipient of a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission and an Australian-American Fulbright Commission Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant in 2011. Five Maryland State Arts Council awards have supported his work, and he has also been recognized with a Creative Baltimore Award. In 2015 the Warnock Foundation recognized his interdisciplinary work in urban forests with a Social Innovator award.

Additional information about Voltage is Signal is available here.