Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Never again will students have to make the trek to the ITE building over the weekend to finish up that Matlab assignment. Thank UMBC’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) for developing a virtual desktop solution that allows students to connect to a standard UMBC computer lab image from their MAC, PC, or iPad.

The virtual desktop is based on a Dell solution named “Virtual Desktop Environment (VDE) and it allows remote access to software like SPSS, SAS, Matlab, Comsol, Mathematica, and more.  

To try out the VDE system, visit virtual.umbc.edu.

The Central Maryland Association of .NET Professionals (CMAP), a user’s group that focuses on learning and discussing Microsoft .NET technologies, will host its first event of the year next Tuesday, September 25 at 6:45 p.m. in ITE 459.

Wayne Loschen from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory—the technical lead for ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics)-will speak bout the technical aspects of public health disease surveillance, including the architecture and visualization aspects.

The talk is the first in the CMAP series that will continue every fourth Tuesday of the month through June 2013. The group gives students the chance to chat and network with professional Software Developers. Admission is free.

To learn more about CMAP, find them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit their website.

UMBC CSEE Colloquium

Local Thresholding for Structured and Unstructured Graphs

Dr. Ran Wolff, Haifa University, Israel

2:00pm Friday, 28 September 2012, ITE 325B
note unusual time and room

Local thresholding algorithms were first offered a decade ago as a communication thrifty alternative for computation in large distributed environments. Their disadvantage, however, has always been in their brittleness. A single cycle in the communication graph could mean the algorithm converges to the wrong value. This talk describes two advances in local thresholding algorithms which overcome the demand for cycle freedom. The first is a local tree induction protocol for structured peer-to-peer networks which seamlessly integrates with the local thresholding algorithm. The second are new local stopping and update rules which permit execution of the local thresholding algorithm on general graphs. The first solution vastly outperforms a gossip based algorithm on simple computation tasks in a Chord-like peer-to-peer network. The second may transform the way data is processed in wireless sensor networks, where gossip is mostly considered impermissibly costly.

UMBC Host: Hillol Kargupta,

More information and directions

From 6:00pm to 7:30pm on Wednesday, October 3, come explore UMBC's Cybersecurity Graduate Program options, and learn how a master’s degree or graduate certificate can help you advance in this exciting and critically important industry. Dr. Rick Forno, the graduate program director, will be available to answer questions and provide insight into courses, credit requirements, and prerequisites and admissions processes.

You can RSVP for the information session here.

Meet UMBC’s inaugural batch of NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) CyberCorps program scholars. These four B.S., M.P.S. and Ph.D. students  will be able to hone their interests in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity through generous full-ride scholarships and opportunities to intern at government organizations. 

Oliver Kubik

Major: B.S. Computer Science '14
Hometown: New Windsor, MD

Oliver Kubik knew that Computer Science was for him starting in the 7^th grade when he played with madlib style programs on his basement computer. Now a Junior working toward his B.S. in Computer Science at UMBC, Oliver has plans to one day pursue a Ph.D.

What Oliver likes about Information Assurance and Cybersecurity  is the problem solving and detective work. “Everything must be analyzed much more in depth than conventional software applications whose bugs typically have minor consequences,” he says. “I think that securing mobile devices will be very important in the future.”

A Meyerhoff Scholar, Oliver is part of UMBC’s Cyber Defense Team and Ultimate Frisbee team. In Summer 2012, he pursued undergraduate research at the University of Connecticut, comparing the strengths of Amazon’s EC2 and Windows’ Azure cloud computing systems. “My results didn’t show a clear superiority of one system over another, but I did learn a lot about academic research, especially in the importance of organizing the data that is collected.”

His Freshman year, Oliver interned at System’s Alliance in Hunt Valley, creating an automated testing framework for their web portal to speed up the logging of bugs. Here he learned about the complexities of web pages and the Selenium web automation tool. That summer he did similar work as an intern at Booz Allen Hamilton.

As part of the SFS program, Oliver hops to intern at the National Security Agency. His plans after graduating in May 2014 are to explore work in the governmental sphere before pursuing a Ph.D. in Cybersecurity.

Brandyn Schult

Major: B.A. Human Ecology, M.P.S. Cybersecurity ‘14

Lured by UMBC’s distinction as a CAE school and its prime location in the “Silicon Valley of Cyber”, Brandyn Schult joined UMBC’s Cybersecurity M.P.S. program in Fall 2012 to broaden his understanding of Cybersecurity. He is now part of UMBC’s Cyber Defense Lab (CDL).

“What I like about Information Assurance and Cybersecurity is that they are not bound by many technical limitations and new practices are constantly being developed,” explains Brandyn, who graduated from the College of the Atlantic, Maine with a B.A. in Human Ecology. “What we have as students is a chance to help shape a new discipline and that is exciting.”

Brandyn speculates that the biggest cyber threat we face today isn’t from outside sources, like viruses or hackers, but from “the legacy infrastructure that the cyber domain is built on and the users’ interaction with it.” He cites IPv4 and SCADA systems at a fundamental problem. “It’s 2012, yet we are still using technology from the 70’s and 80’s as the foundation for the technology today and tomorrow.”

Brendan Masiar

Major: B.A. Philosophy '11, M.P.S. Cybersecurity '13
Hometown: East Islip, NY

After graduating from UMBC a year ago with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, Brendan Masiar came right back to pursue his passion for Computer Science. He chose UMBC’s graduate program in Cybersecurity because he saw it as “a perfect blend of [his] humanities and technical background.”

“I love that the field is constantly developing and evolving,” says Brendan of Cybersecurity. “There is no definitive end point to cybersecurity, ” he says, “some new attack vector will always be out there.” Brendan thinks cell phones and mobile devices that enable us to do things like online baking, check mail, and other private tasks, are our biggest cyber threat. “The risk for data loss and identity fraud is going to be more and more rampant.”

Right now Brendan is interning at Tresys Technology in Columbia, where he works on testing and developing software. After finishing up school, he will be looking for a job within Maryland’s IT industry. “My dream job is one that will be setting precedents, whether it be through policy or through methods used,” he explains.  His role model is Dr. Steven Yalowitz of UMBC’s Philosophy Department, who got Brendan hooked on the subject. “I hope one day to instill that same curiosity into others.”

Lisa Mathews

Major: M.S. Computer Engineering, Ph.D. Computer Science '15

What is it about Cybersecurity and Information Assurance that appeals to Ph.D. student Lisa Matthews? “They are challenging fields that provide many opportunities to apply one’s knowledge and skill set to tackle various security issues or vulnerabilities,” explains Lisa. “Protecting computers and information from various threats is an important function, especially given the number of security attacks that have happened and are likely to occur.”

Lisa thinks that a new wave of “low-and-slow” attacks—ones that surreptitiously strike in different phases and can spend days, weeks, or even months weakening a system’s defenses–are a big threat. “These are difficult to detect, hard to contain, and can do considerable damage before they are stopped.” In fact, Lisa is working towards a solution to these types of attacks with her thesis research. “My current research is focused on taking a semantic approach to intrusion detection by combining data from various sources, integrating data, and performing additional analysis using a knowledge base that would enable the detection of a threat or attack. This method should prove to be useful in stopping attacks that follow a low-and-sow intrusion pattern.”

After graduating, Lisa hopes to work for one of the Department of Defense agencies. “My dream job is one where I can continue research on the constantly evolving fields of information assurance and cybersecurity,” she says. “This scholarship is providing me a great opportunity to attain this job.”

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. UMBC has an active ACM student chapter that is open to all UMBC undergraduate and graduate students of any major.

While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

This year the chapter is planning to have monthly meetings where faculty members, ACM distinguished speakers, and local tech companies will talk about various interesting topics. These meetings are tentatively planned for the third Wednesday of every month starting in October. Other activities like board game nights or our Welcome Back Picnic are also in the works. Suggestions on speakers or other events are welcome and can be sent to .

Please stop by for these events for which we will send out detail as they get confirmed. Sign up for the UMBC ACM mailing list to become a part of the local chapter and receive updates and news of its activities and events.

Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal

Virtual Circuit Provisioning in Challenged Sensor Internetworks,
with Application to the Solar System Internet

Ed Birrane

9:00am Friday, 21 September 2012, ITE 325b, UMBC

As sensing devices are applied to increasingly diverse tasks the network architectures that connect them must handle increasingly complex sets of operational constraints. One dimension in which these networks must scale is in their spatial footprint: there is a desire to distribute sensing devices over areas from miles to hundreds of miles to millions of miles. A second dimension in which these networks scale is in their media access heterogeneity: to gradually cover larger distances, existing networks (that may not otherwise communicate amongst themselves) must be stitched together. Examples of such networks include the Solar System Internet (SSI), Autonomous Underwater Surveillance (ASU), National Border Protection (NBP) and Intelligent Highway Initiatives (IHI).

I propose that the non-random sensing performed in these networks supports the establishment of virtual circuits that communicate information more efficiently than in broadcast mesh networks. Specifically, virtual circuits may be pre-negotiated using data-link-agnostic overlay techniques based on directed, weighted, time-variant graphs. The construction and maintenance of these circuits is feasible in non-random networks and may be accomplished through proposed protocols and stochastic processes. My first contribution will define an emerging, useful special case of networks. I label this architecture the "Challenged Sensor Internetwork" (CSI) and provide models relating to data motion and path selection. My second contribution will provide algorithms and associated analysis for path selection and synchronization. The network topology created by a CSI is graphically modeled as a multi-hypergraph. Since transmission in a CSI is wireless, a single transmission may be received by multiple nodes in the network, hence a hypergraph. However, as a challenged network, link opportunities amongst nodes will change as a function of time, hence a multigraph. I will show that the multi-cast problem, as formulated for CSIs, is NP-Complete, propose an approximation algorithm for the generation of paths in such a multi-hypergraph, and provide an analysis of the performance of this algorithm. My third contribution will provide heuristic algorithms and performance measurements. Each node in the CSI must store its own copy of the network graph so as to make local routing decisions. Synchronization of these network graphs across the network is often impossible. I propose two heuristic mechanisms, based on my proposed principle of path locality, to synchronize preferred path information in the network: exchanging relevant sub-graphs along paths as part of nominal messaging and altering local graphs based on predicted congestion based on observed traffic. Finally, I propose a method for inferring overlay-level contact opportunities from routing information available to local nodes via existing physical and data link layer mechanisms. My final contribution will demonstrate this work in the context of a real-world CSI deployment. I will provide a case study demonstrating how the SSI networking concept exemplifies the definition and characteristics of a CSI and showing how my proposed algorithms are mission enabling to existing, published SSI scenarios.

Several portions of the proposed dissertation work have been completed and validated through simulation and peer-reviewed publication. To complete the dissertation, I plan to finalize the problem statements, proofs, and algorithm analysis supporting achieved heuristic results. I will also apply these algorithms to scaled simulations and emulations of increasingly complex CSIs.

Committee: Drs. Dr. Mohammed Younis (Chair), Alan Sherman (Co-Advisor) Dhananjay Phatak, Vinton Cerf, Keith Scott, Hans Kruse

More information and directions

UMBC and our Cyber Incubator@bwtech are founding sponsors of the new National Cyber Security Hall of Fame that will induct its first 11 honorees on October 17 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baltimore.

“The Cyber Security Hall of Fame will represent the mission: “Respect the Past – Protect the Future” and will honor the innovative individuals and organizations which had the vision and leadership to create the foundational building blocks for the Cyber Security Industry,” explains the website.

Out of 200 nominations, the Hall of Fame’s board of advisors chose 11 inductees–individuals who “collectively invented the technologies, created awareness, promoted and delivered education, developed and influenced policy and created businesses to begin addressing the cybersecurity problem,” says a press release.

The inductees include: Dorothy Denning, Professor, Department of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School; Carl Landwehr, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine; Peter Neumann, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, SRI International; Roger Schell, President, ÆSec; Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle, Inventors, Public Key Cryptograph; and, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adelman, Inventors, RSA Algorithm. F. Lynn McNulty, a Federal Information Systems Security Pioneer was named to the 2012 class posthumously.              

Photo: UMBC Magazine

CSEE Professor Marie desJardins' success at the 2012 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament last March was highlighted in the latest issue of UMBC Magazine:

"I didn't realize I could be this good at crossword puzzles," says desJardins. She adds that her development as a crossword competitor also highlights the hurdles to bringing more women into the sciences.

"A lot of girls think that they must not be intrinsically good at that stuff," argures desJardins, who adds that the biggest impediments are "the psychological blocks we put up for ourselves."

Check out the full write-up on UMBC Magazine's website.

Do you want to build a killer Windows8 application? Then head to the Microsoft Win8 App Challenge kickoff tomorrow, Friday September 14, 2012 in ITE 459 from 12-1 p.m.

At this information session, you'll learn more about Microsoft's Win8 App Challenge and how from now until October 26th, you can submit up to three Windows 8 applications for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate. Students are required to work with a Microsoft Student Partner () to envision, build, and submit an app to the Windows store. All majors are welcome. All that's required is an interest in learning to make apps on your own or in a team.