March 2017 - talks - lists.cs.princeton.edu

Colloquium Speaker: Zakir Durumeric, Monday March 27, 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 21 Mar '17

21 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Zakir Durumeric, University of Michigan Monday, March 27- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Arvind Narayanan Data-Driven Security For too long, computer science has approached security in an ad hoc and reactionary manner. In order to make meaningful progress, we need to shift our defensive approach to be data-driven and epidemiological. Over the course of my Ph.D., I have built systems to facilitate a data-driven approach to security, and I have applied this methodology to tackle some of the most pressing real-world security problems. In this talk, I will first highlight two of these systems, ZMap and Censys. Second, I will show how Internet-wide scanning has enabled us to identify weaknesses in cryptographic keys, uncover real-world attacks against email delivery, and guide users in patching vulnerabilities. I will conclude by discussing how, in the future, I want to elevate data-driven security beyond individual systems and tools to make it a fundamental part of the Internet ecosystem. Zakir Durumeric is a Ph.D. Candidate and Google Research Fellow in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan where his research focuses on systems and network security. His work has received the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize and best paper awards from USENIX Security, ACM CCS, and ACM IMC.

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Colloquium Speaker: Ali José Mashtizadeh, Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm- reminder
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 21 Mar '17

21 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Ali José Mashtizadeh, Stanford University Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Michael Freedman Systems and Tools for Reliable Software: Replication, Reproducibility, and Security The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration in the development of new and transformative applications in many areas including transportation, medicine, ﬁnance, and communication. Most of these applications are made possible by the increasing diversity and scale of hardware and software systems. While this brings unprecedented opportunity, it also increases the probability of failures and the difﬁculty of diagnosing them. Increased scale and transience has also made management increasingly challenging. Devices can come and go for a variety of reasons including mobility, failure and recovery, and scaling capacity to meet demand. In this talk, I will be presenting several systems that I built to address the resulting challenges to reliability, management, and security. Ori is a reliable distributed ﬁle system for devices at the network edge. Ori automates many of the tasks of storage reliability and recovery through replication, taking advantage of fast LANs and low cost local storage in edge networks. Castor is record/replay system for multi-core applications with predictable and consistently low overheads. This makes it practical to leave record/replay on in production systems, to reproduce difficult bugs when they occur, and to support recovering from hardware failures through fault tolerance. Cryptographic CFI (CCFI) is a dynamic approach to control flow integrity. Unlike previous CFI systems that rely purely on static analysis, CCFI can classify pointers based on dynamic and runtime characteristics. This limits the attacks to only actively used code paths, resulting in a substantially smaller attack surface. Ali is currently completing his PhD at Stanford University where he is advised by Prof. David Mazières. His work focuses on improving reliability, ease of management and security in operating systems and distributed systems. Previously, he was a Staff Engineer at VMware, Inc. where he was the technical lead for the live migration products. Ali received an M.Eng. in electrical engineering and computer science and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Lecture by Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard): "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People" (4:30pm Apr 13, McCosh 50)
by Scott Karlin 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

BLINDSPOT: HIDDEN BIASES OF GOOD PEOPLE Introduction by DEBORAH A. PRENTICE Dean of the Faculty, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Keynote by MAHZARIN BANAJI Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University, Department of Psychology Mahzarin Banaji studies unconscious thinking and feeling as they unfold in social group contexts and influence decisions about people’s worth, goodness, and competence. She is the author of the best-selling book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People with Anthony Greenwald, published by Random House. This lecture is participatory, involving educational and even entertaining interactive exercises. It is geared toward providing insights into how our minds work, often in a surprising and even perplexing manner. Professor Banaji will speak to the question of how well-intentioned people behave in ways that deviate from their own values and principles, and how this state of affairs compromises decisions in the social context: decisions about a person’s worth and competence as it plays out in public settings whether it be schools, the workplace, or the street. The purpose of the lecture is to reveal mental blindspots that can compromise our professional and personal decisions if they are left unattended and to begin a conversation about what might be done to allow us to lead the examined life we aspire to. APRIL 13, 2017, 4:30PM, MCCOSH 50

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CS Colloquium Speaker: Ali José Mashtizadeh, Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

Heather, Prof. Freedman has asked if this talk announcement could be forwarded to your department. Thanks, Nicole Colloquium Speaker Ali José Mashtizadeh, Stanford University Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Michael Freedman Systems and Tools for Reliable Software: Replication, Reproducibility, and Security The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration in the development of new and transformative applications in many areas including transportation, medicine, ﬁnance, and communication. Most of these applications are made possible by the increasing diversity and scale of hardware and software systems. While this brings unprecedented opportunity, it also increases the probability of failures and the difﬁculty of diagnosing them. Increased scale and transience has also made management increasingly challenging. Devices can come and go for a variety of reasons including mobility, failure and recovery, and scaling capacity to meet demand. In this talk, I will be presenting several systems that I built to address the resulting challenges to reliability, management, and security. Ori is a reliable distributed ﬁle system for devices at the network edge. Ori automates many of the tasks of storage reliability and recovery through replication, taking advantage of fast LANs and low cost local storage in edge networks. Castor is record/replay system for multi-core applications with predictable and consistently low overheads. This makes it practical to leave record/replay on in production systems, to reproduce difficult bugs when they occur, and to support recovering from hardware failures through fault tolerance. Cryptographic CFI (CCFI) is a dynamic approach to control flow integrity. Unlike previous CFI systems that rely purely on static analysis, CCFI can classify pointers based on dynamic and runtime characteristics. This limits the attacks to only actively used code paths, resulting in a substantially smaller attack surface. Ali is currently completing his PhD at Stanford University where he is advised by Prof. David Mazières. His work focuses on improving reliability, ease of management and security in operating systems and distributed systems. Previously, he was a Staff Engineer at VMware, Inc. where he was the technical lead for the live migration products. Ali received an M.Eng. in electrical engineering and computer science and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Colloquium Speaker: Ali José Mashtizadeh, Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Ali José Mashtizadeh, Stanford University Tuesday, March 28- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Michael Freedman Systems and Tools for Reliable Software: Replication, Reproducibility, and Security The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration in the development of new and transformative applications in many areas including transportation, medicine, ﬁnance, and communication. Most of these applications are made possible by the increasing diversity and scale of hardware and software systems. While this brings unprecedented opportunity, it also increases the probability of failures and the difﬁculty of diagnosing them. Increased scale and transience has also made management increasingly challenging. Devices can come and go for a variety of reasons including mobility, failure and recovery, and scaling capacity to meet demand. In this talk, I will be presenting several systems that I built to address the resulting challenges to reliability, management, and security. Ori is a reliable distributed ﬁle system for devices at the network edge. Ori automates many of the tasks of storage reliability and recovery through replication, taking advantage of fast LANs and low cost local storage in edge networks. Castor is record/replay system for multi-core applications with predictable and consistently low overheads. This makes it practical to leave record/replay on in production systems, to reproduce difficult bugs when they occur, and to support recovering from hardware failures through fault tolerance. Cryptographic CFI (CCFI) is a dynamic approach to control flow integrity. Unlike previous CFI systems that rely purely on static analysis, CCFI can classify pointers based on dynamic and runtime characteristics. This limits the attacks to only actively used code paths, resulting in a substantially smaller attack surface. Ali is currently completing his PhD at Stanford University where he is advised by Prof. David Mazières. His work focuses on improving reliability, ease of management and security in operating systems and distributed systems. Previously, he was a Staff Engineer at VMware, Inc. where he was the technical lead for the live migration products. Ali received an M.Eng. in electrical engineering and computer science and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Colloquium Speaker: Zakir Durumeric, Monday, March 27- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Zakir Durumeric, University of Michigan Monday , March 27- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Arvind Narayanan Data-Driven Security For too long, computer science has approached security in an ad hoc and reactionary manner. In order to make meaningful progress, we need to shift our defensive approach to be data-driven and epidemiological. Over the course of my Ph.D., I have built systems to facilitate a data-driven approach to security, and I have applied this methodology to tackle some of the most pressing real-world security problems. In this talk, I will first highlight two of these systems, ZMap and Censys. Second, I will show how Internet-wide scanning has enabled us to identify weaknesses in cryptographic keys, uncover real-world attacks against email delivery, and guide users in patching vulnerabilities. I will conclude by discussing how, in the future, I want to elevate data-driven security beyond individual systems and tools to make it a fundamental part of the Internet ecosystem. Zakir Durumeric is a Ph.D. Candidate and Google Research Fellow in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan where his research focuses on systems and network security. His work has received the IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize and best paper awards from USENIX Security, ACM CCS, and ACM IMC.

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Colloquium Speaker: Sauvik Das, Today- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 16 Mar '17

16 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Sauvik Das, Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, March 16- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Nick Feamster Social Cybersecurity: Reshaping Security Through An Empirical Understanding of Human Social Behavior Entering an era of pervasive, connected smart things, our cybersecurity decisions increasingly interfere with our social lives. Yet, little is known of the complex social consequences of our security behaviors, and vice versa. Absent this knowledge, it is difficult to develop better, more socially intelligent security systems that are intuitive for the layperson. My work on social cybersecurity bridges this gap. First, I will highlight some data science work on how social factors affect security behaviors through two empirical analyses: (i) an exploratory analysis of how optional-use security tools diffused through the social networks of 1.5 million Facebook users and (ii) a randomized, controlled experiment with 50,000 people. I will then discuss Thumprint, an inclusive authentication system I created based on the results of the prior empirical analyses. Using techniques from both supervised and unsupervised machine learning, Thumprint authenticates and identifies individual members of small, local groups (e.g., families or small work teams) through the acoustic and acceleration profiles of a single, shared secret knock. Taken together, my work points towards a future of socially intelligent security systems that understand and accommodate basic human behaviors, desires and capabilities. Sauvik Das is a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. His research, which intersects HCI, data science and cybersecurity, aims to empower people with novel security systems that mitigate costs of time, effort and social capital. His work has won three best paper or honorable mention awards at premier venues (UbiComp 2013, CHI 2016 and 2017) as well as an Honorable Mention for the NSA’s Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award in 2014. His work has also been covered by the popular press, including features on the Financial Times, Slate, Ars Technica and The Atlantic. In addition, he is a NDSEG Fellow, a Qualcomm Innovation Fellow, a Stu Card Graduate Fellow, and a NSF EAPSI Fellow. Prior to CMU, Sauvik earned a Bachelor’s in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

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Colloquium Speaker: Sauvik Das, Thursday, March 16- 12:30pm- reminder
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 15 Mar '17

15 Mar '17

Colloquium Speaker Sauvik Das, Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, March 16- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Nick Feamster Social Cybersecurity: Reshaping Security Through An Empirical Understanding of Human Social Behavior Entering an era of pervasive, connected smart things, our cybersecurity decisions increasingly interfere with our social lives. Yet, little is known of the complex social consequences of our security behaviors, and vice versa. Absent this knowledge, it is difficult to develop better, more socially intelligent security systems that are intuitive for the layperson. My work on social cybersecurity bridges this gap. First, I will highlight some data science work on how social factors affect security behaviors through two empirical analyses: (i) an exploratory analysis of how optional-use security tools diffused through the social networks of 1.5 million Facebook users and (ii) a randomized, controlled experiment with 50,000 people. I will then discuss Thumprint, an inclusive authentication system I created based on the results of the prior empirical analyses. Using techniques from both supervised and unsupervised machine learning, Thumprint authenticates and identifies individual members of small, local groups (e.g., families or small work teams) through the acoustic and acceleration profiles of a single, shared secret knock. Taken together, my work points towards a future of socially intelligent security systems that understand and accommodate basic human behaviors, desires and capabilities. Sauvik Das is a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. His research, which intersects HCI, data science and cybersecurity, aims to empower people with novel security systems that mitigate costs of time, effort and social capital. His work has won three best paper or honorable mention awards at premier venues (UbiComp 2013, CHI 2016 and 2017) as well as an Honorable Mention for the NSA’s Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award in 2014. His work has also been covered by the popular press, including features on the Financial Times, Slate, Ars Technica and The Atlantic. In addition, he is a NDSEG Fellow, a Qualcomm Innovation Fellow, a Stu Card Graduate Fellow, and a NSF EAPSI Fellow. Prior to CMU, Sauvik earned a Bachelor’s in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

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Colloquium Speaker: Alexis Hiniker- Today- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 15 Mar '17

15 Mar '17

Please note the new date! Colloquium Speaker Alexis Hiniker, University of Washington Wednesday, March 15- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Host: Prof. Arvind Narayanan Beyond "User Engagement": Designing for Intentional Technology Use Have you ever found yourself checking your phone at an inappropriate moment? Or looking up from a casual game and wondering where the time went? If so, you’re not alone, as people report widespread feelings of dissatisfaction with the way they engage with technology and a lack of control over their own behaviors. “User engagement” is a fundamental design goal for many consumer-facing products, and the resulting technologies are often irresistibly engaging. Though modern technology offers enormous value and convenience, many people report a desire to disengage and an inability to change their habits. In this talk, I will describe a series of studies to understand people’s feelings about their engagement patterns and new systems and tools for both children and adults to support intentional engagement. Based on findings from this work, I will discuss what individuals, developers, and policy-makers can do to tackle this problem and improve our collective self-efficacy. Alexis Hiniker is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering where she studies the relationship between technology design and human well-being. She holds a master’s degree in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Harvard. She is the technical co-founder of Go Go Games Studios, a startup company that builds educational games for children on the autism spectrum. Her research has been covered by The New York Times, TIME Magazine, NPR and many other prominent national media outlets. And she has been the recipient of numerous accolades for her industry work, including the Parents’ Choice Gold award, the “academy award” of children’s media. Her past and current research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Sesame Workshop, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, the Facebook Fellowship Program, the Duca Fund, and more. Before returning to graduate school, Hiniker spent six years as a software engineer and engineering manager at Microsoft working on Windows and the .NET Framework.

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EE speaker: Luca Carlone, Today, 4:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 13 Mar '17

13 Mar '17

>From hummingbirds to honeybees: algorithms for agile micro aerial vehicles with on-board perception Speaker: Luca Carlone, MIT Series: EE Departmental Seminars Location: E-Quad, B205 Date/Time: Monday, March 13, 2017 - 4:30pm Abstract: Agile micro aerial vehicles will have a massive societal impact over the next decades, creating novel opportunities for large-scale precision agriculture, fast delivery of medical supplies, and disaster response, and providing new perspectives on environmental monitoring and artificial pollination. This future requires the design of lightweight and robust perception algorithms, which interpret sensor data into a coherent world representation, in the face of measurement noise and outliers, and enable on-board situational awareness and decision-making. In this talk, I present my work on lightweight and robust robot perception. I start by discussing an algorithm for fast visual-inertial navigation, which estimates the motion of the robot from visual and inertial cues, and demonstrate its use for agile flight of micro aerial vehicles. Then, I focus on robustness and show that fundamental insights from optimization and Riemannian geometry lead to the design of estimation techniques that are provably robust to large noise, providing the first certifiably correct algorithm for localization and mapping. I also discuss the challenges connected to scaling down perception to nano and pico aerial vehicles, where sensing and computation are subject to strict payload and power constraints. I argue that enabling autonomy on miniaturized platforms requires a paradigm shift in perception, sensing, and communication, and discuss how we can draw inspiration from nature in designing the next generation of flying robots. Bio: Luca Carlone is a research scientist in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining MIT, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech (2013-2015), and a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara (2011). He got his Ph.D. from the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, in 2012. His research interests include nonlinear estimation, numerical and distributed optimization, computer vision and probabilistic inference applied to sensing, perception, and control of single and multi robot systems. He published more than 60 papers on international journals and conferences, including a best paper award finalist at RSS 2015 and a best paper award winner at WAFR 2016.

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