Fall 2021 CS Cyber Security Reading Group

 

Members: Shubham Ayachit, Yashwanth Bandala, Dominika Bobik, Ethan Brinks, Yu Cai, Bo Chen (co-advisor), Niusen Chen, Tejaswi Chintapalli, Shashank Reddy Danda, Thomas Grifka, Xinyu Lei, Justin Martin, Jean Mayo (co-advisor), Joe Muhle, Jagi Rinchin, Sai Venkateswaran, Sankalp Shastry, Shuo Sun, Yuchen Wang, Gary Watson, Wen Xie, Xiaoyong Yuan

 

Detailed schedule:

Time: 4:00 – 5:00pm Friday, September 24, 2021

Location: Zoom

Presenter:  Shashank Reddy Danda

Title: Towards Stealing Deep Neural Networks on Mobile Devices

Abstract: Recently, deep neural networks (DNN) are increasingly deployed on mobile computing devices. Compared to the traditional cloud based DNN services, the on-device DNN provides immediate responses without relying on network availability or bandwidth and can boost security and privacy by preventing users' data from transferring over the untrusted communication channels or cloud servers. However, deploying DNN models on the mobile devices introduces new attack vectors on the models. Previous studies have shown that the DNN models are prone to model stealing attacks in the cloud setting, by which the attackers can steal the DNN models accurately. In this work, for the first time, we study the model stealing attacks on the deep neural networks running in the mobile devices, by interacting with mobile applications. Our experimental results on various datasets confirm the feasibility of stealing DNN models in mobile devices with high accuracy and small overhead.

 

 

Time: 4:00 – 5:00pm Friday, October 8, 2021

Location: Zoom

Presenter:  Jinghui Liao (Wayne State)

Title: Speedster: A TEE-assisted State Channel System

Abstract: State channel network is the most popular layer-2 solution to the issues of scalability, high transaction fees, and low transaction throughput of public Blockchain networks. However, the existing works have limitations that curb the wide adoption of the technology, such as the expensive creation and closure of channels, strict synchronization between the main chain and off-chain channels, frozen deposits, and inability to execute multi-party smart contracts. In this work, we present Speedster, an account-based state-channel system that aims to address the above issues. To this end, Speedster leverages the latest development of secure hardware to create dispute-free certified channels that can be operated efficiently off the Blockchain. Speedster is fully decentralized and provides better privacy protection. It supports fast native multi-party contract execution, which is missing in prior TEE-enabled channel networks. Compared to the Lightning Network, Speedster improves the throughput by about 10,000X and generates 97% less on-chain data with a comparable network scale.

 

Time: 4:00 – 5:00pm Friday, October 22, 2021

Location: Zoom

Presenter:  Xinyu Lei

Title: A Routing-free Protocol for Fast Payment in Bitcoin Network

Abstract: Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency which supports payment services via the Bitcoin peer- to-peer network. However, Bitcoin suffers from a fundamental problem. In practice, a secure Bitcoin transaction requires the payee to wait for at least 6 block confirmations (one hour) to be validated. Such a long waiting time thwarts the wide deployment of the Bitcoin payment services because many usage scenarios require a much shorter waiting time. In this paper, we propose BFastPay to accelerate the Bitcoin payment validation. BFastPay employs a smart contract called BFPayArbitrator to host the payer’s security deposit and fulfills the role of a trusted payment arbitrator which guarantees that a payee always receives the payment even if attacks occur. BFastPay is a routing-free solution that eliminates the requirement for payment routing in the traditional payment routing network (e.g., Lightning Network). The theoretical and experimental results show that BFastPay is able to significantly reduce the Bitcoin payment waiting time (e.g., from 60 mins to less than 1 second) with nearly no extra operation cost.

 

Time: 4:00 – 5:00pm Friday, November 5, 2021

Location: Zoom

Presenter:  Niusen Chen

Title: Ensuring Data Confidentiality in Mobile Computing Devices via Plausibly Deniable Encryption and Secure Deletion

Abstract: To be added.

 

 

Time: 4:00 – 5:00pm Friday, December 3, 2021

Location: Zoom

Presenter:  Thomas Grifka

Title: Image Steganography: Hidden in Plain Sight

Abstract: Steganography is a new way to hide information such that the communication itself is hidden, unlike Cryptography which hides the content of the communication. With this, Image Steganography has the potential to transmit great amounts of information with relative ease, while remaining undetectable to the human eye. As technology has advanced, the cat and mouse game of Steganography and Steganography Detection has advanced as well. With this, there are countless ways to hide information in images alone, not including other types of information. However, the number of potential ways to detect Steganography is also growing rapidly. As such, it is important to consider how powerful Image Steganography is.