Sean Peisert

Photograph of me lecturing at the blackboard (credit: R. Benjamin Shapiro, 2002).

Upcoming events that I'm involved with:

IEEE S&P ("Oakland") 2010 (Submit! Paper deadline 11/18/09)

IEEE/SADFE 2010 (Submit! Paper deadline 1/16/2010)

NSPW 2010 (Submit! Paper deadline in early/mid 2010)

Research

My focus is currently in several primary areas, including computer forensics, electronic voting, the insider threat, security policy modeling, security metrics, experiments, and empirical studies. This page lists a number of the research projects that I am or have recently been working on.

Computer Forensics

This project is looking at establishing a rigorous, scientific model of forensic logging and analysis that is both efficient and effective at establishing the data that is necessary to record in order to understand past events. Additional applications include e-voting and forensic evidence in the courtroom.

Past sponsor: Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) (Fellowship/Co-PI)

Electronic Voting and E-Voting Forensics

This project is looking at the process of an election, and establishing conditions that an electronic voting system must meet in order not to add new vulnerabilities to an election. We work closely with the Yolo County Clerk-Recorder's office.

Current sponsor: National Science Foundation (Senior Personnel)

Insider Threat

This project is looking at defining, analyzing, and seeking methods of ameliorating the insider threat.

No sponsors yet.

Intrusion Detection for High-Performance Computing

This project is looking at a mathematical and data-based approach to protecting the major HPC resources of DOE. It seeks to extend the state of the art in intrusion detection by developing new mathematical-statistical techniques for the problem of intrusion detection, and to handle the difficult practical problem of safely "sanitizing" HPC system activity data for use by other researchers and other HPC sites without compromising user privacy and security.

Current sponsor: Department of Energy Office of Science (PI)

Recommendation Systems Security

This project is looking at evaluating vulnerabilities in recommendation systems, in which recommendations are based on a model that relates ratings on one item to ratings on other items. Recommendation systems are a means of reducing "information overload" by filtering a potentially overwhelming number of options (such as all the products available from a seller) to identify those calculated to be of greatest interest.

Current sponsor: National Science Foundation

Security Metrics, Experiments, and Empirical Studies

This project is looking at longitudinal studies server-side vulnerabilities in network systems and the efficacy of security measures.

Current sponsor: National Science Foundation (Co-PI)

Security Policy Modeling

This project is looking at establishing means of defining, modeling security policy on computer systems as well as automated reverse-engineering and enforcement.

Past sponsor: Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) (Fellowship/Co-PI)

Sensor Networks for GENI

This project seeks to to define and prototype a security layer underlying GENI that will allow providers of the system to collaboratively defend against attacks and misuse of GENI resources. Specifically, it seeks to investigate the reporting requirements that GENI will need to provide to support certain forms of networking and security experiments. To do this, they will use decentralized security algorithms (in the form of "agents," "sentinels," and "supervisors") that communicate between sensors, in some sense simulating the function of an ant hive. The result of this will enable GENI to support experiments where there is communication between internal nodes (sensors or routers). In the context of networking, such experiments might be used to test if bandwidth usage can be improved through the communication of capacity and usage information between routers. In the context of security, such experiments might be used to test the tradeoffs among different approaches to exchanging security information between sensors, and where that information might affect firewall rules or pro-active, forensic logging efforts.

Current sponsor: National Science Foundation and BBN/GENI Projects Office (PI)

Last modified: Friday, 02-Oct-2009 13:28:46 PDT