Building “Incorruptible” Systems in Cloud Environments

Dr. Haibin Zhang
University of Connecticut

12:00pm Friday, 17 February 2017, ITE 325b, UMBC

In this talk, I will discuss how to design and implement efficient distributed systems in untrusted cloud environments that simultaneously achieve the three most important security goals — integrity, availability, and confidentiality.

Haibin Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Connecticut advised by Prof. Marten van Dijk. He is working on the MACS project, a cross-institutional collaboration among BU, MIT, Northeastern, and UConn. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, advised by Prof. Michael Reiter, working on Project Silver. He received his Ph.D. from University of California at Davis (with Prof. Matthew Franklin), his M.S. from Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his B.S. from Shandong University. He is interested in cloud computing, cryptography, security, privacy, and distributed systems. He received the best paper candidate award at 33rd IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, proved the security of a NIST standard on ciphertext stealing, and was one of the main inventors of Norton Zone, Symantec’s scalable cloud storage.

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She is an a Biological Sciences major with a minor in Statistics. She was also a presenter at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in 2016. Her project focused on measuring the binding interaction between small molecule ligands and the Core Encapsidation Signal of HIV-1 RNA as a potential drug target. Her future goal will to include obtaining her MD/PhD. She would like to open her own research lab, or have a teaching position at a university or be a clinical researcher. In her free time she is a member of the UMBC gospel choir and Learning Assistant for Biology 141.

Ugonna's research will focus on understanding how and in which orientation certain classes of ligands bind to the recently determined CES structure. Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) has become a worldwide epidemic with a high rate of infection. HIV attacks and destroys the infection-fighting CD4 cells of the immune system. Without treatment, HIV can gradually destroy the immune system and advance to AIDS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. The purpose of this project is to develop therapeutics that target functional RNA elements within the highly-conserved 5′-untranslated region (UTR). The core encapsidation signal (CES) was identified as a minimal region within the 5’- UTR that is independently capable of directing the packaging of the virus’s unspliced dimeric genome.

Read more about her research here…

Undergraduate Research Awards provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. 

UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they will remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work.

This is an award for all majors!  Visual artists, filmmakers, photographers-- we want your projects!

Apply Now!

Instructions to Faculty

UMBC Cybersecurity Program Cyber Talk

Cybersecurity and Cellular Technology

Joshua Franklin

6:00-8:00pm Thursday, 23 February 2017

The Universities at Shady Grove
Building III (Camille Kendall Academic Center) Room 3241
9636 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD 20850

​​The UMBC Cybersecurity Program is proud to bring you Cyber Talk, a new speaker series that highlights special topics in Cybersecurity. ​Join us at The Universities at Shady Grove (USG) for an informative and engaging discussion on the operation of cellular networks and the threats posed to mobile technology. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and hear about the latest trends in industry.

Cellular technology plays an increasingly large role in society as it has become the primary portal to the internet for a large segment of the population. One of the main drivers making this change possible is the deployment of modern 4G LTE cellular technologies. This talk serves as a guide to the fundamentals of how cellular networks operate and explores the evolution of 2G GSM, 3G UMTS and 4G cellular security architectures. This is followed by an analysis of the threats posed to cellular networks and supporting mitigations. Although the talk discusses older GSM and UMTS technologies – it is heavily focused on LTE.

Joshua Franklin is a Security Engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) focusing on cellular security, electronic voting, and public safety. Prior to NIST, Joshua worked at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission gathering extensive experience with voting technologies. After graduating from Kennesaw State University with a Bachelors of Science in Information Systems, he received a Masters of Science in Information Security and Assurance from George Mason University.

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 a short reflection by Shira Devorah, Women’s Center student staff member

This semester has only just begun, and I’m already feeling pretty anxious. Granted, I’m usually pretty anxious – but this feels different.

If you’ve been following the news recently, you may understand. For many marginalized groups, it’s hard to feel stable right now. While I’m privileged in many ways, integral parts of my identity are under attack right now.  I’m proud of being a queer Jewish woman, but these parts of who I am feel very vulnerable and exposed at the moment. My uncertainty is manifesting as physical sensations. There’s a constant tightness in the pit of my stomach, and it’s hard to focus on things outside of the instability surrounding me. This is a difficult moment in time, and I want to be doing something about it, but my mental illness flare-ups make me question my ability to do so. I want to help, but  I also have to take care of my anxiety.

Amidst the current chaos, it is also my last semester at UMBC. If I know myself at all, this means I may be more susceptible to anxiety attacks during this life change. School work is a balancing act for me, and while I’ve had a few shaky semesters, I care a lot about my education. Most of my anxiety is tied up in how well I do, and this is my last chance to (literally) make the grade. UMBC students are held to a high standard of excellence, and I want my last semester to reflect this. To meet my personal achievement goals, I have to put a lot of energy into my studies. This can be draining and difficult to juggle with clinical anxiety.

I’m sure I’m not alone – Many people, especially women, deal with anxiety.  I’ve talked to a bunch of friends who live with similar anxiety conditions. We’re all struggling to figure out how to contribute, how to be present for people and speak up. It can be really, really difficult- but I know it isn’t impossible.

I’m aware that I haven’t been as active as I would like to be. My form of anxiety feels like being blocked up, like all of these things are happening at once. Everything becomes muddled and difficult to parse. I’ve been mostly absent from social media as of late, because it’s been difficult to come up with the words for what I’m feeling. I have not attended any protests, as I get very overwhelmed in large crowds. Sometimes I feel like I have to remove myself from political conversations and go hide away. I know I’m just trying to consider my mental health, yet I have this nagging sense that I’m not doing enough. I want to be a more  prepared and available activist, but my identities as a student and mentally ill person have a habit of getting in my way. When I’m not exhausted from a full load of classes, I’m immobilized by my anxious mind. Things can get overwhelming very easily.

Even though it’s hard to be fully present at the moment, it has been possible for me to do some really small things without exacerbating myself. While I’ve more or less stayed off of Facebook, I’ve been able to use other platforms like Twitter and Tumblr to spread information and support. With Facebook, I feel pressured to add my two-cents to everything I share or to write something from scratch. This can be very anxiety provoking for me. So instead, I’ve stuck to the classic ‘read and re-tweet’. This way, I get to stay informed and promote the work of activists without having to author anything personally.

Here’s an example of a doodle I made for this blog post

While I can’t really go to protests, I follow them diligently. If there is a live stream, you can bet I’m watching it. I have a hard time making phone calls, but I can sign a petition or send an email like a champ. I’ve been coming up with ideas for art that I can make, which is usually a therapeutic process for me. Mainstream forms of protesting are not the only way to contribute to a movement. I know my strengths lie in my artistic capabilities, So I can maneuver around my anxieties and continue to create and share activist art. I know that I am far more than my mental illness, and anyone going through a similar time can use their own strengths in similar ways. Working at the Women’s Center makes me feel like I have the capability to do good things and give support to people. So even though I know I’m limited in the activist work that I can do right now, this doesn’t mean I have to stand still.

If you’re going through something similar, I just want you to know that you aren’t alone, and there are valuable contributions that you can make in this difficult time. Just because your form of activism might not look the same as others, the work you do isn’t any less valid. Everyone has the capability to help in different ways. What is important is finding a way accessible to you, while taking care of your own needs. I know I’m not always going to be able to write the right words or yell in a crowd, but I can do something, and that something can make a difference.

*****

If you’re interested in more resources on how to get involved if you have anxiety, check out the following resources!

Bustle wrote about protesting while socially anxious

Everyday Feminism on how marching isn’t the only way to be an activist

How to call your reps when you have social anxiety

four tech tools to help you get involved

Check out the Counseling Center- they are hosting a variety of  mindfulness workshops this semester

Towards End-to-End Security and Privacy: Accountability
and Data Privacy in the Life Cycle of Big Data

Taeho Jung
Department of Computer Science
Illinois Institute of Technology

11:00am Tuesday, 14 February 2017, ITE 325b, UMBC

The advent of big data has given birth to numerous innovative life-enhancing applications, but the big data is often called as a double-edged sword due to the increased privacy and security threats. Such threats, if unaddressed, will become deadly barriers to the achievement of big opportunities and success anticipated in the big data industry because they may arise at any part of the life cycle of the big data.

In this talk, I will describe my research which addressed various privacy and security issues in the big data life cycle: acquisition, storage, provisioning, and consumption. More specifically, I will briefly present how various types of data can be protected in their acquisition and consumption phases of the life cycle, and subsequently, I will introduce the theoretic foundations of the presented research. Finally, I will present how to make large-scale data trading accountable against dishonest users for the provisioning phase of big data, and this talk will be concluded with my future research agenda briefing.

Taeho Jung is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Illinois Institute of Technology. His research area, in general, includes privacy and security issues in data mining and provisioning in the big data life cycle. His paper has won a best paper award (IEEE IPCCC 2014), and two of his papers were selected as best paper candidate (ACM MobiHoc 2014) and best paper award runner up (BigCom 2015) respectively. He has served many international conferences as a TPC member, including IEEE DCOSS 2016, IEEE MSN 2016, IEEE IPCCC 2016, and BigCom 2016. He received his B.E. in Computer Software in Tsinghua University in 2011, and he will receive his Ph.D. in May 2017.

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