On the Attack

Colloquium | November 18 | 4-5 p.m. | Soda Hall, HP Auditorium (306)

Speaker: Alex Halderman, Assistant Professor, EECS, University of Michigan

Sponsor: Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)

Discovering new attacks can be fun and exciting, combining the cat-and-mouse intrigue of a spy movie with practical implications for millions of users. Done right, it can also be serious research, teaching us to build stronger systems, inspiring new kinds of defenses, and producing important real-world change. In this talk I will describe my work attacking voting machines, copy protection techniques, censorship software, and other systems, and show how studying security through the lens of security failures helps close the gap between research and reality. In contrast to “hacking,” this work requires careful science, often incorporating techniques from other kinds of failure investigations, case studies, user studies, and measurement studies. To anticipate attacks and mount strong defenses, I will argue, we need to understand technology at all levels--from silicon to social impacts.

Event Contact: miyoko@eecs.berkeley.edu, 510-643-6685