The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Are your personal data at risk?
App analytics to the rescue

Prajit Kumar Das
Ebiquity, CSEE Department, UMBC

11:15am-12:30pm, Friday, 23 October 2015, ITE 231

According to the prominent virus and malware tool Virustotal, the Google Play Store has a few thousand apps from major malware families. Given such a revelation, access control systems for mobile data management have reached a state of critical importance. We propose developing a system that will help us detect pathways along which user data are being stolen from their mobile devices. We use a multi-layered approach including app meta data analysis, understanding code patterns, and detecting and eventually controlling dynamic data flow when such an app is installed on a mobile device. In this presentation we focus on the first part of our work and discuss the merits and flaws of our unsupervised learning mechanism to detect possible malicious behavior from apps in the Google Play Store.

Prajit Das is a PhD student in computer science at UMBC.

Host: Alan T. Sherman,

Computer Science Lecturer Positions
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

The Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) invites applications for up to three non-tenure track lecturer in computer science positions to begin in Spring 2016 (January 2016) or Fall 2016 (August 2016). Primary duties will include teaching computer science courses at the undergraduate level. Candidates with interest and experience in all areas of computer science will be considered. Applicants must have an MS or a PhD in computer science or a closely-related field. Ideal candidates will have evidence of strong teaching and administrative skills. Experience in academia, industry and government will be considered in the evaluation of the candidate.

The CSEE department is energetic, research-oriented and multi-disciplinary with programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity. Our faculty (34 tenure-track, six teaching and 15 research) enjoy collaboration, working across our specializations as well as with colleagues from other STEM, humanities and the arts departments and external partners. We have 1500 undergraduate CS and CE majors and 400 M.S. and Ph.D. students in our CS, CE, EE and Cybersecurity graduate programs. We have awarded 276 PhDs since our establishment in 1986. Our research supported by a growing and diverse portfolio from government and industrial sponsors with over $5M in yearly research expenditures. We work to help new colleagues be successful by providing startup packages, reduced teaching loads and active mentoring.

UMBC is a dynamic public research university integrating teaching, research and service. As an Honors University, the campus offers academically talented students a strong undergraduate liberal arts foundation that prepares them for graduate and professional study, entry into the workforce, and community service and leadership. UMBC emphasizes science, engineering, information technology, human services and public policy at the graduate level. We are dedicated to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility and lifelong learning. The 2015 US News and World Report Best Colleges report placed UMBC fourth in the Most Innovative National Universities category and sixth in Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education named UMBC as a Great College to Work For, a recognition given to only 86 universities. Our strategic location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor puts us close to many important federal laboratories and agencies and high-tech companies, facilitating interactions, collaboration, and opportunities for sabbaticals and visiting appointments.

UMBC’s campus is located on 500 acres just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington DC, and less than 10 minutes from the BWI airport and Amtrak station. The campus includes the bwtech@UMBC research and technology park, which has special programs for startups focused on cybersecurity, clean energy, life sciences and training. We are surrounded by one of the greatest concentrations of commercial, cultural and scientific activity in the nation. Located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore has all the advantages of modern, urban living, including professional sports, major art galleries, theaters and a symphony orchestra. The city’s famous Inner Harbor area is an exciting center for entertainment and commerce. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is a great tourist attraction with its historical monuments and museums. Just ten minutes from downtown Baltimore and 30 from the D.C. Beltway, UMBC offers easy access to the region’s resources by car or public transportation.

To apply. Submit a cover letter, a brief statement of teaching, academic, industrial or government experience, and complete CV on Interfolio. Only applications submitted via this site will be considered. Applicants should arrange for three letters of reference to be sent via the same website. Applications will be reviewed as they are received. For best consideration, apply by November 15, 2015. Applications will be accepted until the positions are filled.

UMBC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and is a recent recipient of a National Science Foundation ADVANCE award to promote hiring and advancement of women in science and engineering. We welcome applications from women, minorities, veterans and individuals with disabilities.

The UMBC CSEE Seminar Series Presents

Enhanced IP and OpenFlow Switching to
Provide Zero Touch Traffic Engineering

Dr. William Chimiak
Laboratory for Telecommunications Science (LTS)

12noon-1pm, Friday, 16 October, 2015, ITE 102

I propose a method using OpenFlow and Enhanced IP (64 bit IPv4) to provide an end-to-end method of creating traffic engineered flow paths for big data. With an SSL registered Northbound Application, a user with proper credentials requests an big data transfer. This is sent to a port with a hybrid Enhanced IP NAT. The Enhanced IP portion of the NAT is stateless making communication-set up faster, but allows the normal Carrier-grade NAT function, if necessary. With this system, there will be a mechanism to allow end-to-end awareness of the flow type to allow for an end-to-end traffic engineered path.

Hosts: Professors Fow-Sen Choa () and Alan T. Sherman ()

About the CSEE Seminar Series: The UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering presents technical talks on current significant research projects of broad interest to the Department and the research community. Each talk is free and open to the public. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future talks. Upcoming talks include the following.

Signature Track (Fridays, 12noon-1pm, in ITE 102):

• Oct. 30, Rong Chen, SOM Faculty, computational neuroscience
• Nov.13, John Kloetzli (Firaxis), computer graphics

Weekly Track (Thursday 12noon-1pm, or Friday 1-2pm, in ITE 325):

• Nov. 20 Hamed Pirsiavash (UMBC), computer vision
• Nov. 6 Nilanjan Banerjee (UMBC), Internet of Things
• Dec. 4 Ting Zhu (UMBC), energy system and big data

Other UMBC CSEE Seminar Series: The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab (CDL) meets biweekly Fridays 11:15am-12:30pm in ITE 231, for research talks about cybersecurity. Next talk is 10-23.

Got Linux? If you’ve ever wanted to try Linux but didn’t know where to start, bring your computer to the Linux Installfest this Friday, October 16 between noon and 5:00pm at the UMBC Commons Mainstreet.  Having Linux on your own computer will give you more control and is a great learning experience.  You can also replicate the environment found on UMBC’s servers (e.g., gl.umbc.edu) which will make doing your homework on them easier.

Members of the UMBC Linux Users Group (LUG)  will help students, staff, and faculty install Linux on their laptops. LUG will mainly be providing the popular Linux flavors Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Whether you want a VirtualBox image, a dual-boot install, a fresh install, or just don’t know what you want, they want to help; drop by on Main Street, Friday, October 16, between noon and 6pm, no appointment necessary!

See the LUG site for more information. You might also want to join UMBC’s LUG — join the LUG mailing list to get news and reminders of their regular meetings

Contact the LUG faculty adviser, Jon Squire (squire at www.csee.umbc.edu) with burning questions.

Kaizen CTF is this Thursday 10/15/15 in the Commons Skylight Room on Main Campus. The challenges will start at 7:00PM but folks are encouraged to show up as early as 6:30PM to setup your laptop. You will need your laptop and a virtual machine with Kali Linux and don’t forget your power cords because this event will run until 11PM.

If this is the first time you are hearing about this here is a blurb about the event —

“Booz Allen (BAH) is excited to announce Kaizen, a Capture the Flag event designed to build the skills of information security professionals through hands-on, interactive hacking challenges. The challenges represent real world scenarios which cover a wide range of hacking skills, including: web/binary exploitation, forensics, network capture analysis, and ad-hoc scripting. Previously played at Blackhat and ShmooCon, Kaizen was built to challenge participants of all skill levels; so, if you’re experienced and want to sharpen your skills or if you’re new to information security and want a healthy environment to learn then come check out Kaizen. Participants are immersed into an educational and competitive environment where continuous/on-the-fly learning is rewarded.

Kaizen: Japanese word/philosophy for Continuous Learning/Improvement of skills and self, which we feel accurately describes our participants and our mindset.”

To give an accurate head count BAH has asked us to use their website to register — please use your UMBC email to sign up. This website will also be how you view the challenges and submit flags so it is vital to sign up.

If you have any questions at all email Anh Ho () or Julio Valcarcel () with any questions you may have. Also feel free to join us on our Slack (https://umbccd.slack.com).

The UMBC CSEE Seminar Series Presents

Grounded Language Acquisition: A Physical Agent Approach

Dr. Cynthia Matuszek

Interactive Robotics and Language Lab
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, UMBC

12:00-1:00pm Friday, 9 Oct. 2015, ITE 325b

A critical component of understanding human language is the ability to map words and ideas in that language to aspects of the external world. This mapping, called the symbol grounding problem, has been studied since the early days of artificial intelligence; however, advances in language processing, sensory, and motor systems have only recently made it possible to directly interact with tangibly grounded concepts. In this talk, I describe how we combine robotics and natural language processing to acquire and use physically grounded language specifically, how robots can learn to follow instructions, understand descriptions of objects, and build models of language and the physical world from interactions with users. I will describe our work on building a learning system that can ground English commands and descriptions from examples, making it possible for robots to learn from untrained end-users in an intuitive, natural way, and describe applications of our work in following directions and learning about objects. Finally, I will discuss how robots with these learning capabilities address a number of near-term challenges.

Cynthia Matuszek is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2014, where she was a member of both the Robotics and State Estimation lab and the Language, Interaction, and Learning group. She is published in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, ubiquitous computing, and human-robot interaction. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, natural language processing, and machine learning.

Hosts: Professors Fow-Sen Choa () and Alan T. Sherman ()

· directions and more information ·

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Hack, Play, Win: Lessons Learned Running
The Maryland Cyber Challenge

Richard Forno, UMBC

11:15am-12:30pm, Friday, 9 Oct 2015, ITE 231

An oft-cited and prominent concern facing the Internet security community is the need to identify and hire qualified cybersecurity practitioners able to fill critical technical, analytical, and managerial positions within the global technology workforce. A 2014 report from the Education Advisory Board discusses the “exploding” demand for qualified cybersecurity practitioners, noting that cybersecurity jobs grew by 73% between 2007-2012 compared to 6% in all other industry sectors. Similarly, Burning Glass, a national employment research firm, notes that there are nearly 23,000 available cybersecurity positions in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Nowhere is this need more evident, or discussed more frequently, than in Maryland, a region some dub the ‘epicenter of cybersecurity’ education, research, and industry.

In response to this concern, events in the cybersecurity discipline, known as cyber competitions” or “cyber challenges” seek to motivate and encourage high school and college students toward careers in cybersecurity by developing their technical and teamwork skills while also allowing more experienced cybersecurity professionals an opportunity to practice their expertise in a challenging venue for professional recognition. The popularity and number of these events as a form of intellectual competition at industry security conferences like the DEFCON CTF or Department of Defense DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge and those within educational communities such as the National Cyber League (NCL), CyberPatriot, or the Collegiate CyberDefense Competition (CCDC) are but a few examples of prominent cyber challenges drawing worldwide participation. Other competitions, both large and small, are under continual development, as is a National Science Foundation-backed effort to create a national federation to support and standardize the rules, activities, and conduct of cyber competitions.

Given the popularity of these events, and the ongoing global desire to launch new ones, this talk will draw upon the experiences of organizing and coordinating the Maryland Cyber Challenge (MDC3) from 2011-2014 in offering advice to current and future cyber competition planners. What lessons from current competitions can help future competition organizers run successful challenges of their own? And are such events enough to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professional? While no event will ever run perfectly, organizers must always strive to “get it right” – or as close to “right” as possible!

(This talk previews a paper accepted for publication in the December 2015 USENIX ;login;)

Dr. Richard Forno directs the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Graduate Cybersecurity Program, serves as the Assistant Director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, and is a Junior Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS). His twenty-year career spans the government, military, and private sector, including helping build a formal cybersecurity program for the US House of Representatives, serving as the first Chief Security Officer for the InterNIC, and co-founding the Maryland Cyber Challenge. Richard was also one of the early researchers on the subject of “information warfare” and he remains a longtime commentator on the influence of Internet technology upon society.

Host: Alan T. Sherman,

CSEE Professor Nilanjan Banerjee and collaborators at UMass Amherst, Microsoft Research, Williams College, and the Holyoke Gas and Electric have been awarded a $1M dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The award is part of the National Smart Cities Initiative launched by the White House last month. The the three year project, Utility-driven Smart Energy Services, will help design web service based analytics for energy management in residential homes.

The project will focus on developing a utility-driven energy service platform. Since buildings consume a large fraction of society’s total energy usage, even modest improvements in building energy efficiency have the potential to yield significant benefits. In recent years, utilities have deployed tens of millions of smart electric meters that record building energy usage over short intervals (e.g., every few minutes). While the original purpose of smart meters was to support basic utility operations (e.g., automated meter reading), this project uses them as the foundation for developing a new class of smart energy service systems.

The project will analyze the vast amount of data available from utility smart meters and other networked sensors to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and the electric grid. The research is utility-driven, since utilities have (i) access to massive amounts of customer energy data, (ii) a way to deliver the results of analytics to customers, and (iii) strong incentives to improve customer energy efficiency (e.g., by reducing peak demand to reduce their own operational costs). The approach is scalable, since it leverages already available building smart meter data, rather than requiring the installation of new smart devices and control systems.

UMBC Professors Nirmalya Roy (IS), Nilanjan Banerjee (CSEE), and Ryan Robucci (CSEE) have been awarded a $500K National Science Foundation Cyber-physical Systems Grant to develop sensing systems that can automate energy consumption and wastage estimation in low income homes in Baltimore.

Electricity usage of buildings, including offices, malls and residential apartments, represents a significant portion of a nation’s energy expenditure and carbon footprint. Buildings are estimated to consume 72% of the total electricity production in the US. Unfortunately, however, 30% of this energy consumption is wasted. Energy assessment is an approach that can optimize building energy efficiency and minimize waste at a low cost with minimal expert intervention. A virtual energy assessment includes a thorough and near real time analysis of different sources of building energy usage, individualized energy footprints of load appliances and devices, and proactive identification of energy holes.

The three-year project, Low-cost Continuous Virtual Energy Audits in Cyber-Physical Building Envelope, will build a low cost solution that combines the use of non-intrusive single point energy monitoring and low cost sensors to provide continuous energy assessment reports to residential users or landlords. The system will be deployed in low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, where poor insulation problems are assumed to be a problem and low cost solutions to determining these issues is important for the landlords.

The award was part of a highly competative Breakthrough solicitation from the NSF Cyber-Physical Systems program in which only 5%-8% of the grant proposals were recommended for awards this year.