For the fifth consecutive year, Times Higher Education (THE) has recognized UMBC as one of the world’s leading young universities. UMBC is one of just five U.S. universities to make the 2016 list, all in the top 100 of the “150 Under 50” ranking.

The “150 Under 50″ ranking system uses the same 13 performance indicators as the flagship World University Rankings, weighted through a formula that is designed with young universities in mind.

Those indicators are grouped into five categories: teaching (learning environment), research (volume, income, and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students, and research), and industry income (innovation). UMBC particularly excelled in research citations.

“So many universities in this ranking have shown they can match the ancient global elite and have proven that with the right drive, what others have developed over centuries can be achieved in a matter of decades,” Phil Baty, editor of THE, has said. “They are a truly exciting and dynamic group of institutions which should serve as a lesson to the rest of the world – that the traditional global world order is not unassailable and visionary young universities can break through.”

This past fall, THE also recognized UMBC as one of the top universities worldwide of any age. That larger list included 147 U.S. universities among the world’s top 800. Three were Maryland universities, including UMBC, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland, College Park.

See UMBC’s entry in the THE “150 Under 50.”

Image: UMBC Library. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Firmware Instruction Identification
using Side-Channel Power Analysis

Deepak Krishnankutty
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

11:15am-12:30pm, Friday, April 8, 2016, ITE 237

Power supply transients of encryption devices have been analyzed from the perspective of performing attacks to extract secret key or confidential information. Such attacks are based on exploiting the correlation between the power consumption of the device under attack and its underlying logic operations. However, side channel leakage through the power supply of instruction level events occurring on soft/hard core processors has not been extensively studied. Power traces of firmware running on general purpose processing units observed at low frequencies tend to reveal not just the variations in current consumption during individual clock cycles, but also information related to the sequence of instruction executions. In this talk, we present results from Side-Channel Analysis performed over multiple power supply pins and demonstrate the relationship between the power transients and machine-level instructions on an instance of the openMSP430 processor on an FPGA. This process is also applicable to standalone ASIC instances. Our approach is based on templates constructed from principal components representing instructions identified from the power profiles of different instruction sequences. The templates are then utilized for determining the order of clock cycles per instruction. This technique can be used to predict the sequence of clock cycles per instruction from the observed power profiles and identify anomalies caused by modification of code on a tightly constrained embedded system.

Deepak Krishnankutty is a PhD student in computer engineering at UMBC, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

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

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays. (April 22, Brian Kelley, Securing the cloud. May 8, Enis Enis Golaszewski, Hash bit sequences).

Hello Everyone!

It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted, I apologize for the hiatus! I hope everyone has been doing well and that everyone had a wonderful Spring Break.

If you are an admitted student, you may be wondering what comes next?

Answer:

ORIENTATION!

Registration for Orientation is up and running! You can register by visiting orientation.umbc.edu or through your myUMBC account.

Orientation will include a variety of information for both our new students and their families. You will also select your courses at Orientation for the Fall 2016 semester!

There will be multiple programs throughout the summer so you can sign up for the one that best fits with your summer plans. We also recommend that you take your Placement Tests prior to attending Orientation. Any questions regarding Placement Tests can be directed to placement@umbc.edu.

As always, be sure to continue sharing your excitement about UMBC on our social media accounts using the hashtag #UMBCadmit!

Until next time,

Gaby

Applications for both tutors and Learning Assistants for CHEM 101, 102, 351 and 352 are due to the department by close of business April 18th.  E-mailed applications will not be accepted. Please fill out the appropriate application for the position you are interested in.

Hard copies of the application should be turned in to Dr. Carpenter for CHEM 101 and 102 positions and to Dr. Gierasch for CHEM 351 or tutoring.  Mailboxes are located in Fine Arts 010.