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Pixabay // jonmdyson
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ISI Researchers Devise Strategy to Decrypt Ciphers
Ciphers have always been used to relay hidden or secretive information that can only be read by the intended recipient or an expert. Despite the occasional genius decipherer and improvements in technology, countless un-deciphered historical documents still exist. To tackle this, Jonathan May, research team leader at ISI and research assistant professor of computer science at USC Viterbi, teamed up with Nada Aldarrab, graduate student and research assistant at ISI, to devise an extremely efficient strategy for solving ciphers. Building upon existing methods, May and Aldarrab are improving the accuracy and efficiency of deciphering hidden messages.
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Art/iStock
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Protecting Our Identity and Location, While Staying Connected
To receive service, our phones reveal personal identifiers to cell towers owned by major network operators, even when we turn off location tracking. This has led to vast and largely unregulated data-harvesting industries based around selling cell phone customers' location data to third parties without consent. For the first time, researchers at the Viterbi School of Engineering and Princeton University have found a way to stop this privacy breach using existing cellular networks. The new system, presented at the USENIX Security conference on August 11, protects individuals’ mobile privacy while providing normal mobile connectivity. Study co-authors Paul Schmitt—who recently joined ISI from Princeton—and Viterbi's Barath Raghavan found a way: they decoupled authentication, that is, your identifier, from your phone connectivity.
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Detecting Mass Internet Outages Around the World
Although we individuals have likely experienced occasional Internet outages, mass outages can result from environmental disasters and from political events, such as the shutdowns enacted by the military in Myanmar. Detecting these outages quickly is a step toward understanding these events better and responding to them. ISI's John Heidemann, principal scientist at ISI and research professor of computer science at USC Viterbi, and Guillermo Baltra, graduate research assistant, sought to devise a system to monitor internet outages. Building on a scanning system by Yuri Pradkin, systems programmer at ISI, researchers at the Analysis of Network Traffic Lab (the ANT Lab) were able to create Trinocular, a complex system that detects Internet outages around the world.
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iStock
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NSF Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence
The National Science Foundation operates major scientific facilities—including unique instruments and data collection infrastructures—for research in astronomy, physics, seismology, climate science, earthquakes, and other scientific domains. These facilities rely on cyberinfrastructure to transform raw data into interoperable and integration-ready products that scientists can use, visualize, and share. After a 3-year pilot, the NSF funded Ewa Deelman of ISI and collaborators from five universities $8 million for the center CI Compass: An NSF CI Center of Excellence for Navigating the Major Facilities Data Lifecycle.
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TALKING POINTS
“The values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to an organization’s success and wellbeing. Diversity broadens perspective; equity fosters opportunity; inclusion builds community.
Whether as a collective or as individuals, we can effect meaningful change by our actions, attitudes, and behaviors towards one another. ”
— Terry Benzel, director of the Networking and Cybersecurity Division, chairs the institute's DEI Committee. |
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The Testbed Facility Security Workshop will be held virtually on Monday, October 18, from 10 am - 2 pm PT/1 - 5 pm ET. The workshop – part of the 2021 NSF Cybersecurity Summit – will explore the unique cybersecurity challenges of testbed facilities.
To attend the workshop, please register for the Summit. There is no registration fee and it is open to all. Attendees should ideally have an interest or experience with experimental cloud-based testbeds.
The workshop is organized by: ISI's DETERLab, Fabric, PAWR, Chameleon, Colosseum, and Trusted CI.
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The CheckMATE workshop will be collocated with the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2021 on November 19, 2021. MATE (Man-At-The-End) is an attack model where an adversary has access to the target software and/or hardware environment of its victim.
The focus of this workshop is on new models and techniques to defend against software tampering, reverse engineering and piracy, to also include attack strategies that highlight the need for more comprehensive defenses. ISI's Christophe Hauser is the workshop's General Chair.
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