Location Information Scrambler: for Protection of Smartphone Users' Privacy

Speaker:	Professor Kang G. SHIN
		The University of Michigan

Title:		"Location Information Scrambler: for Protection
		 of Smartphone Users' Privacy"

Date:		Monday, 22 February 2010

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theater F (near lifts 25/26) HKUST

Abstract:

As use of location-based services (LBSs) is becoming increasingly
prevalent, mobile users are more and more enticed to reveal their
location, which may be exploited by attackers to infer the points of
interest (POIs) the users visit, then compromise their privacy.  To
protect a user's location privacy, we have been developing a new approach
based on unobservability, preventing the attackers from associating any
particular POI to the user's location.  Specifically, we designed,
implemented, and evaluated a privacy- protection system, called the
Location Information ScrAmbler (LISA), that adjusts the location noise
level in order to remove or significantly weaken the distinguishability of
POIs the user may visit. By protecting location privacy locally on each
mobile user's device, LISA eliminates the reliance on trusted third-party
servers required by most previous approaches, avoiding the vulnerability
of a single point of failure and facilitating the deployment of LBSs.
Moreover, since energy-efficiency is the most critical requirement for
battery-powered mobile devices, LISA explores the trade-off between
location noise/privacy and energy consumption to achieve both privacy-
protection and energy-efficiency.

This is joint work with two of Prof. Shin's graduate students, Jerry Chen
and Xin Hu.

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Biography:

Kang G. Shin is the Kevin and Nancy O'Connor Professor of Computer Science
and Founding Director of the Real-Time Computing Laboratory in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

His current research focuses on QoS-sensitive networking and computing as
well as on embedded real-time OS, middleware and applications, all with
emphasis on timeliness and dependability. He has supervised the completion
of 63 PhD theses, and authored/coauthored about 700 technical papers and
numerous book chapters in the areas of distributed real-time computing and
control, computer networking, fault-tolerant computing, and intelligent
manufacturing.

He has received a number of best paper awards, including the IEEE
Communications Society William R. Bennett Prize Paper Award in 2003, the
Best Paper Award from the IWQoS'03 in 2003, and an Outstanding IEEE
Transactions of Automatic Control Paper Award in 1987. He has also
coauthored papers with his students which received the Best Student Paper
Awards from the 1996 IEEE Real-Time Technology and Application Symposium,
and the 2000 UNSENIX Technical Conference. He has also received several
institutional awards, including the Research Excellence Award in 1989,
Outstanding Achievement Award in 1999, Service Excellence Award in 2000,
Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 2001, and Stephen Attwood Award
in 2004 from The University of Michigan; a Distinguished Alumni Award of
the College of Engineering, Seoul National University in 2002; 2003 IEEE
RTC Technical Achievement Award; and 2006 Ho-Am Prize in Engineering.

He received the B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from Seoul National
University, Seoul, Korea in 1970, and both the M.S. and Ph.D degrees in
Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York in 1976
and 1978, respectively. From 1978 to 1982 he was on the faculty of
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He has held visiting
positions at the U.S. Airforce Flight Dynamics Laboratory, AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Computer Science Division within the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, and
International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA, IBM T. J.Watson
Research Center, Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon
University, and HP Research Laboratories. He also chaired the Computer
Science and Engineering Division, EECS Department, The University of
Michigan for three years beginning January 1991.

He is Fellow of IEEE and ACM, and member of the Korean Academy of
Engineering, was the General Co-Chair for 2009 ACM Annual International
Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'09), was the
General Chair for 2008 IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor,
Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON'08), the 3rd ACM/USENIX
International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
(MobiSys'05) and 2000 IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium
(RTAS'00), the Program Chair of the 1986 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium
(RTSS), the General Chair of the 1987 RTSS, the Guest Editor of the 1987
August special issue of IEEE Transactions on Computers on Real-Time
Systems, a Program Co-Chair for the 1992 International Conference on
Parallel Processing, and served numerous technical program committees. He
also chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems during
1991-93, was a Distinguished Visitor of the Computer Society of the IEEE,
an Editor of IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Computing, and an
Area Editor of International Journal of Time-Critical Computing Systems,
Computer Networks, and ACM Transactions on Embedded Systems.