Voting security video interview with Hovav Shacham

Above is a four minute video on voting machine security from Hovav Shacham, a UC San Diego computer science professor. Shacham and colleagues presented this work on Monday August 10, 2009 at the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop / Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE 2009), the premier academic forum for voting security research.

The same video is also up on YouTube:

Images: Computer Scientists Take Over Electronic Voting Machine with New Programming Technique

Above are the three images from the pape“Can DREs Provide Everlasting Security? The Case of Return-Oriented Programming and the AVC Advantage” by Stephen Checkoway,University of California, San Diego; Ariel J. Feldman, Princeton University; Brian Kantor, University of California, San Diego; J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan; Edward W. Felten, Princeton University; Hovav Shacham, University of California, San Diego.

The computer scientists presented this work on August 10, 2009 at the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop / Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE 2009), the premier academic forum for voting security research.

Digital Dandelions Set in Stone...Literally

"Digital dandelions" popped up all across the Internet almost exactly two years ago, when computer science researchers from UC San Diego presented a paper at 2007 SIGCOMM called,
“Orbis: Rescaling Degree Correlations to Generate Annotated Internet Topologies.”

The big idea: What looks like the head of a digital dandelion is a map of the Internet generated by new algorithms from computer scientists at UC San Diego. This map features Internet nodes – the red dots – and linkages – the green lines. But it is no ordinary map. It is a (mostly) randomly generated graph that retains the essential characteristics of a specific corner of the Internet but doubles the number of nodes.

Now, the digital dandelions have been set in stone...literally. The Computer Science Department at University College London liked the depictions of Internet topology and their resemblance to “digital dandelions” so much that they commissioned artist Hannah Griffiths to create a mosaic based on these depictions and have it on display in their new building.

The Department Head of CS at UCL, Anthony Finkelstein, forwarded the images to AminVahdat, the computer science professor at UC San Diego who led the research. Vahdat posted the images on his "Idle Process" blog. One of the images is above...but check out Idle Process for the rest.

The authors on the 2007 SIGCOMM paper about the digital dandelions are: Priya Mahadevan, Calvin Hubble and Amin Vahdat from UCSD’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and Bradley Huffaker and Dimitri Krioukov from CAIDA, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis which is based at the University of California’s San Diego Supercomputer Center.

One of the images from the original UC San Diego press release, and a quote from the first author, are below.

Defending against denial of service attacks and large-scale worm outbreaks depends on network topology. Our work allows computer scientists to experiment with a range of random graphs that match Internet characteristics. This work is also useful for determining the sensitivity of particular techniques – like routing protocols and congestion controls – to network topology and to variations in network topology,” said Priya Mahadevan, the first author on the SIGCOMM 2007 paper. Mahadevan completed her computer science Ph.D. at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering in 2007 and joined Hewlett Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA.

TowerMadness Developers

Iman Mostafavi (above) is a computer science Ph.D. student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. He is one of three developers of the hot iPhone game, TowerMadness. It is one of the most cheat-resistant iPhone games around.




Arash Keshmirian (left) is a UC San Diego computer science BS/MS alumnus who is now a Silicon-Valley based entrepreneur and consultant. Arash is a developer of TowerMadness.




Volker Schönefeld is a former visiting graduate student to UC San Diego’s computer science department who is completing his doctoral degree at RWTH Aachen University, in Aachen Germany. Volker is a developer of TowerMadness. The game's cheat resistance features grew out of replay technology Schönefeld pioneered in 2003 for Waaagh!TV, his e-Sports broadcasting company. Waaagh!TV develops software that allows thousands of users to simultaneously watch live online matches of the popular computer game Warcraft III.

iPhone game that is tough on cheaters

I just posted a story about TowerMadness, an iPhone game created by three computer scientists with ties to UC San Diego's computer science department. If you are a gamer, you'll love the 3D graphics and the sophistication of the aliens in TowerMadness...they are much smarter than your average iPhone "bad guys".

But there is much more to this game. The press release focuses on how computer science PhD student Iman Mostafavi, computer science alumnus (BS/MS) Arash Keshmirian, and former computer science visiting student Volker Schönefeld created one of the most cheat-resistant iPhone games. Their strategies is tied to technologies Volker Schönefeld developed for his e-Sports broadcasting company Waaagh!TV.

Computer Science Educator/Researcher Leads Associated Press Story

Beth Simon teaches computer science at UC San Diego. But that is just the beginning. She is also pioneering new ways to use technology to engage students during computer science lectures. Some of her work was profiled this week in an Associated Press article by Megan Scott entitled "Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students."

Read more about her cutting-edge technology-meets-education research in Pulse, the alumni magazine of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

The AP article also quoted UC San Diego student Karen Tamayo. I'm trying to track her down now...to take her picture and find about a bit more about what kind of research she is doing with Beth Simon.

UC San Diego Research and National Security

Future military missions will depend on large, networked groups of sensor-equipped vehicles, which can be deployed in extreme conditions with little to no human intervention.

“Inspiration can be taken from biological groups like schools of fish, flocks of birds. These will be multi-robot networks, where each individual senses its environment, communicates with others, processes information gathered and takes local action in response, said Sonia Martinez, an assistant professor the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

Martinez outlined her ideas at The La Jolla Conference on Innovation Support for National Security, held last month at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UC San Diego. (Read the Jacobs School story here, which was adapted from the Calit2 story by Tiffany Fox)

(Watch webcasts of the conference here.)

The conference brought together thought leaders from the U.S. military, the defense industry and local research institutions to identify challenges, threats and solutions in the areas of advanced autonomous robotics and cybersecurity.