UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance

Computer-Assisted Reasoning In Digital Forensics

Dr. Eoghan Casey

Noon-1:00 Friday, 20 September 2013

Cyber Defense Lab, room 228 ITE, UMBC

The primary challenge in digital forensics today is uncovering not the right answer, but the right question. As in any scientific discipline, the formation of viable hypotheses that ultimately uncover meaning in available evidence is a central problem in digital forensics. Such hypothesis formation, based on intuition and experience, involves an underlying mental process that can be substantially aided by computers. This seminar delves into the cognitive science of investigative reasoning, and how research in artificial intelligence can help humans find the right questions in large quantities of data. The implications of this work for digital identity and privacy, as well as its potential uses in other areas, such as medical diagnosis and virtual learning environments, are also discussed.

Eoghan Casey is an internationally recognized expert in digital forensics and data breach investigations. For over a decade, he has dedicated himself to advancing the field of digital forensics. He wrote the foundational book Digital Evidence and Computer Crime, now in its third edition, and he created advanced smartphone forensics courses taught worldwide. He has also co-authored several advanced technical books including Malware Forensics, and is Editor-in-Chief of Digital Investigation: The International Journal of Digital Forensics and Incident Response. Dr. Casey received his Ph.D. from University College Dublin, and has taught digital forensics at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute.

Dr. Casey has worked as R&D Team Lead at the Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3) helping enhance their operational capabilities and develop new techniques and tools. He has also helped organizations handle security breaches and analyzes digital evidence in a wide range of investigations, including network intrusions with international scope. He has testified in civil and criminal cases, and has submitted expert reports and prepared trial exhibits for computer forensic and cyber-crime cases.

Host: Dr. Alan T. Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

The UMBC ACM student chapter is glad to announce the first meetup of Baltimore Software Craftsmanship User Group. This meetup is for the students and software developers in the Baltimore, MD area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

Please RSVP for the event by completing the form. More details can be read on the form or below.

Note: Registration for this initial meetup is limited to only twelve people from the UMBC community. If you are UMBC Student or Faculty please don't RSVP on the meetup site. Use the above form only.

Event Details

This is a HANDS-ON coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your LAPTOP equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don't have a laptop COME ANYWAY, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

The event is open to all UMBC students, however programming ability is REQUIRED. Interested Faculty members can join in too! This can also be a good opportunity to network with professionals from various companies and get yourself noticed for any job opportunities that exist.

Questions or Suggestions? Send email to Primal Pappachan (primal1 at umbc.edu) or Vladimir Korolev (vkorol1 at umbc.edu).

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. UMBC has an active ACM student chapter that is open to all UMBC undergraduate and graduate students of any major.

This year the chapter is planning to organize various events where faculty members, ACM distinguished speakers, and local tech companies will talk about various interesting topics. The first event of the year is the Welcome Back Picnic which be held from 11:30am to 1:30pm on September 18th in the Engineering Atrium. Other activities like Hi-Tea competitions, Code Craftsmanship, Reading groups and Peer mentorship are also in the works. Suggestions on speakers or other events are welcome and can be sent to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

Please stop by for these events for which we will send out detail as they get confirmed. Sign up for the UMBC ACM mailing list to become a part of the local chapter and receive updates and news of its activities and events. You can also follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to keep track of chapter’s events.

Professor Marie desJardins has created a new my.umbc.edu group for Computer Science Education for UMBC students, faculty, and staff who are interested in any or all aspects of computer science education and computing education generally, including information systems, computer engineering, cybersecurity, bioinformatics, etc.

She especially encourage students who are planning to or considering a career in teaching at the K-12 level to join — but anyone who is interested in educational issues in computing (e.g., teaching pedagogies, curriculum, access to CS classes in K-12 schools, teacher certification and training, and gender/minority underrepresentation in CS classes) is welcome.

In addition to sharing ideas, events, and information about computing education, the group will be used to plan events, which could include social gatherings, seminars on topics of interest (e.g., teacher certification, pedagogical innovations, MOOCs, etc.), round table discussions, and visits by invited speakers. The group will hold some initial breakfast or lunchtime meetings to meet one another and talk about what people would like to get out of such a group.

Members of the UMBC community can join the group by visiting http://my.umbc.edu/groups/cs-ed/.

Research Assistantship Available

Smart Plug-based Appliance Energy Profiling and

Prediction Portal for Green Buildings

New emerging “smart plugs” embed a micro-controller and low-power communication device that allows you to monitor the power consumption of individual devices (e.g., microwave, coffee machine, laptop) plugged into power sockets, and communicate such power consumption information over a wireless network to a central monitoring station. Such devices could lead to substantial savings of energy and money by enabling Internet-based monitoring and real-time control of the behavior of individual appliances. This project will use real-life microcontroller kits (ACME Plugs from Moteware) and real-life building measurement data to explore whether such measurement-based monitoring can be used to:

• Develop Smart Circuit Breaker — i.e., to lessen the burden of the user of plugging each and every appliance/device in the building with a smart plug; we will investigate connecting multiple devices together with an individual smart plug/smart circuit breaker and design a smart circuit breaker using energy metering chip (ADE7753), AC/DC power supply, Microcontroller with radio (TI MSP430F16 and CC2420 radio supported by TinyOS) and solid state AC relay (Sharp S216SE1) etc.
• Profile individual devices — i.e., use NILM (non-intrusive load monitoring) data analytics algorithm on the time-series of power consumption traces to infer the type of plugged-in device (e.g., distinguish between a laptop & a coffeemaker), thereby building a dynamic catalog of the types & number of devices connected by a consumer.
• Predict the power consumption of individual rooms — i.e., using the past history of the power consumption of individual devices to create predictive inferences of the usage patterns for individual devices (e.g., learn that the individual switches on a dehumidifier for ~3 hrs every Thursday).

Expertise: Technical knowledge of standard time-series & statistical mining techniques (e.g., regression, support vector machines) is needed. Significant programming knowledge of Java & ability to create simple Web Applications is a must. Knowledge of TinyOS, Embedded System and Networking protocols is a plus, although not essential. The project will utilize real ACME plugs, which are programmed using TinyOS & which communicate using a ZigBee radio.

Please contact Dr. Nirmalya Roy at Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. for research assistantship for this project.

Research Assistantship Available

Smart Plug-based Appliance Energy Profiling and

Prediction Portal for Green Buildings

New emerging “smart plugs” embed a micro-controller and low-power communication device that allows you to monitor the power consumption of individual devices (e.g., microwave, coffee machine, laptop) plugged into power sockets, and communicate such power consumption information over a wireless network to a central monitoring station. Such devices could lead to substantial savings of energy and money by enabling Internet-based monitoring and real-time control of the behavior of individual appliances. This project will use real-life microcontroller kits (ACME Plugs from Moteware) and real-life building measurement data to explore whether such measurement-based monitoring can be used to:

• Develop Smart Circuit Breaker — i.e., to lessen the burden of the user of plugging each and every appliance/device in the building with a smart plug; we will investigate connecting multiple devices together with an individual smart plug/smart circuit breaker and design a smart circuit breaker using energy metering chip (ADE7753), AC/DC power supply, Microcontroller with radio (TI MSP430F16 and CC2420 radio supported by TinyOS) and solid state AC relay (Sharp S216SE1) etc.
• Profile individual devices — i.e., use NILM (non-intrusive load monitoring) data analytics algorithm on the time-series of power consumption traces to infer the type of plugged-in device (e.g., distinguish between a laptop & a coffeemaker), thereby building a dynamic catalog of the types & number of devices connected by a consumer.
• Predict the power consumption of individual rooms — i.e., using the past history of the power consumption of individual devices to create predictive inferences of the usage patterns for individual devices (e.g., learn that the individual switches on a dehumidifier for ~3 hrs every Thursday).

Expertise: Technical knowledge of standard time-series & statistical mining techniques (e.g., regression, support vector machines) is needed. Significant programming knowledge of Java & ability to create simple Web Applications is a must. Knowledge of TinyOS, Embedded System and Networking protocols is a plus, although not essential. The project will utilize real ACME plugs, which are programmed using TinyOS & which communicate using a ZigBee radio.

Please contact Dr. Nirmalya Roy at Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. for research assistantship for this project.

Agnik is looking for highly skilled web developers proficient in C# and Javascript at the intern level.

Agnik is a data analytics company located in Columbia, Maryland for distributed, mobile, and embedded environments. Agnik's products are powered by a collection of powerful technologies, including distributed data mining, private and secure multi-party data mining, and mobile and embedded data stream management and mining. Agnik is a leader in the field of data stream mining for distributed environments with a long history in research and development by its co-founders, who include UMBC PRofessor Hillol Kargupta.

Experienced Smart phone App developers for Android and iPhone are also welcome to apply. Familiarity with database management systems will be a strong plus. You need to be eligible to work off-campus.

The position starts immediately. We need to be able to work at least 20 hrs/week and should be able to commute to Columbia, MD. Payment is commensurate with experience. If you are interested then send your resume to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

Agnik is looking for highly skilled web developers proficient in C# and Javascript at the intern level.

Agnik is a data analytics company located in Columbia, Maryland for distributed, mobile, and embedded environments. Agnik's products are powered by a collection of powerful technologies, including distributed data mining, private and secure multi-party data mining, and mobile and embedded data stream management and mining. Agnik is a leader in the field of data stream mining for distributed environments with a long history in research and development by its co-founders, who include UMBC PRofessor Hillol Kargupta.

Experienced Smart phone App developers for Android and iPhone are also welcome to apply. Familiarity with database management systems will be a strong plus. You need to be eligible to work off-campus.

The position starts immediately. We need to be able to work at least 20 hrs/week and should be able to commute to Columbia, MD. Payment is commensurate with experience. If you are interested then send your resume to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

Natalie Morningstar, a junior majoring in Computer Engineering, has been awarded a Charlotte Newcombe Foundation Scholarship. The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation is an independent foundation begun in 1979 by the estate of Mrs. Newcombe, a Philadelphia philanthropist.  Since 1981, the Foundation has provided scholarship funding for mature women students at UMBC.

This fall, Natalie will participate in the "Returning Women Mentor Program," which is a peer mentoring initiative that the Women’s Center at UMBC is introducing to better facilitate productive and ongoing connections among the scholars in their programs.

Natalie is also a CWIT Affiliate and part of the first cohort of Transfer Scholars in IT and Engineering (T-SITE). T-SITE is funded by an NSF-funded S-STEM grant and will serve 30 transfer students as part of the larger CWIT Scholar and Affiliates community through 2017.

When asked how she came to choose computer engineering as a major, Natalie said "Before transferring to UMBC I studied a mix of motion picture film, digital multimedia production and computer science. Both classroom and work experiences helped to expose me to a number of theories and applications, which ultimately lead me to my interest in computer engineering."

With such a broad range of interests, she will have many options for what to do after finishing her computer engineering degree. "Right now I have a broad interest", she reports, "and have not decided which specific field I want to pursue. I really enjoyed my work in signal processing at my summer computer engineering internship at Ventura Solutions, Inc. and I hope to gain exposure to other fields as well so I can narrow my focus."

CSEE's Dr. Richard Forno, Cybersecurity GPD and Assistant Director of UMBC's Center for Cybersecurity, talked with the Baltimore Sun's Scott Dance about international hacktivism following the defacement of a local area website and the recent attack on the New York Times website.

This week the website of the Canton Kayak Club was hacked and the landing page changed to show the image of a man on a horse with a spear and the messages "NO WAR!" and "All Hail the Islamic world, we're here!".

"We have no idea who did it nor why someone would hack our site," club Vice President Cliff Charland said. "It is obviously something we’re not happy about."

The website had been restored to normal as of 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Charland said the club's webmaster was looking to determine how the hack occurred and how it could be prevented in the future. The club has about 500 members, many of whom use the site frequently for information on club events, he said." source