CSE 707

Seminar: Security in Emerging Computing and Networking Systems

Spring 2021

General Information

Instructor

Dr. Hongxin Hu
E-mail: hongxinh@buffalo.edu
Homepage: https://cse.buffalo.edu/~hongxinh/
Office Hours: By Appointment
Time and Location: W 3:15 PM - 5:20 PM, this class will be taught fully online.

Overview

A computing and networking system is considered emerging if it recently started getting deployed in the real-world or is deemed promising for wide-scale deployment in the near future. The security issues surrounding such emerging systems, however, may prevent end-users from utilizing their full potential, or, even worse, may rule out the chances of their deployment in the future. Currently, these emerging systems range from Internet of Things (IoT) and deep-learning systems to edge and 5G/Next-G systems. In this seminar course, we will discuss some of the latest work in the area of securing emerging computing and networking systems, including emerging network technologies and security (NFV, SDN, Edge, 5G/Next-G, etc.), IoT security and privacy (smart home, voice assistant platforms - Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, etc.), and machine learning for security and privacy (adversarial attacks and defenses on deep learning, backdoor attacks and defenses on deep learning, etc.).

The main goal of the seminar is to help students understand the state of the art in a variety of security topics in emerging computing and networking systems. As a secondary goal, students will learn how to read research papers and how to communicate technical material effectively.

The seminar is suitable for students who have strong interest in network and system security and intent to pursue a career in the area, e.g., PhD students already working in cybersecurity or MS students interested in pursuing a PhD or doing research in the field (in the form of independent studies and/or MS Thesis). One of the goals of this seminar is to identify, by the end of the semester, a set of open research problems on which students can work during the next semester, e.g., in the form of independent studies.

Tentative Schedule

Week Date Topic Papers Notes
1 Feb 3 Class Overview N/A  
2 Feb 10 SDN/NFV Secuirty Overview N/A  
3 Feb 17 IoT Security Overview N/A
4 Feb 24 Mobile Platform Secuirty Overview N/A  
5 March 3 IoT System Security
  • WaveSpy: Remote and Through-wall Screen Attack via mmWave Sensing, Oakland 2020
  • ThermoWave: A New Paradigm of Wireless Passive Temperature Monitoring via mmWave Sensing, MobiCom 2020
Invited Talk from Zhengxiong Li
6 March 10 Network Security Function Virtualization
  • On the Safety and Efficiency of Virtual Firewall Elasticity Control, NDSS 2017
  • vNIDS: Towards Elastic Security with Safe and Efficient Virtualization of Network Intrusion Detection Systems, CCS 2018
Invited Talk from Hongda Li
7 March 17 Smart Home Physical Interaction Control
  • On the Safety of IoT Device Physical Interaction Control, CCS 2018
  • IoTSafe: Enforcing Safety and Security Policy with Real IoT Physical Interaction Discovery, NDSS 2021
Invited Talk from Wenbo Ding
8 March 24 Image Privacy Control
  • Towards PII-based Multiparty Access Control for Photo Sharing in Online Social Networks
  • Towards Understanding and Detecting Cyberbullying in Real-world Images, NDSS 2021
Invited Talk from Nishant Vishwamitra
9 March 31 Smart Home Security Md Armanuzzaman
10 April 7 Security in Voice Assistant Platforms

Yunnan Yu

Reviews #1 and #2 Due

11 April 14 Adversarial Attacks and Defenses in Deep Neural Networks Nishant Vishwamitra
12 April 21 Backdoor Attacks and Defenses in Deep Neural Networks

Shashank Priya

13 April 28 Deep Learning-based Network Intrusion Detection

Xi Tan

Review #3 Due

14 May 5 Web Security Shiyu Lu
15 May 12 Project Demo N/A  

Seminar Structure and Assignments

I will present material during the first 4 classes, followed by 4 invited talks. Students then present selected papers during the remaining classes. A list of papers from top security and networking conferences (IEEE S&P - Oakland, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS, SIGCOMM, NSDI, etc.) will be provided for each topic. One of the papers for each topic will be listed as mandatory paper and the remaining ones as related papers. All students are encouraged to read the mandatory papers, submit reviews for a subset of them, and participate in discussions in class.

The course includes the following assignments:

All dicussions through Piazza: http://piazza.com/buffalo/spring2021/cse707

Course Cridits

Tentative Grading

1 Credit 3 Credits Note that the class will be (and is required to be) graded pass/fail. To receive pass, you need to score 70% or more.

Resources

Google Scholar

ACM's Computing Research Repository

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy

ACM CCS

USENIX Security

NDSS

ACM SIGCOMM