Securing Modern Systems by Preventing Information Leaks

Speaker:        Kangjie Lu
                Georgia Institute of Technology

Title:          "Securing Modern Systems by Preventing Information Leaks"

Date:           Monday, 10 April 2017

Time:           4:00pm - 5:00pm

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

Abstract:

Widely used systems such as operating systems and web servers are
implemented in unsafe programming languages for efficiency, and system
designers often prioritize performance over security. Hence, these
foundational systems inherently suffer from a variety of vulnerabilities
and insecure designs that have been exploited by adversaries to launch
critical system attacks. Two typical goals of these attacks are to leak
sensitive data and to control victim systems.

In this talk, I will first explain why, in modern systems, preventing
information leaks can be a general defense that not only stops data leaks
but also defeats control attacks. Then, I will present three ways to
prevent information leaks: eliminating information-leak vulnerabilities in
code, re-designing system mechanisms against information leaks, and
protecting certain sensitive data from information leaks. Correspondingly,
I have developed three tools, which impose negligible performance overhead
while automatically and reliably securing complex systems. In the end, I
will discuss how to secure both widely used and emerging systems in
various dimensions.


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Biography:

Kangjie Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the Georgia
Institute of Technology. His research interests include security and
privacy, programming languages, and operating systems. He is particularly
interested in automatically uncovering and addressing fundamental security
problems, and securing widely used systems while preserving their
reliability and efficiency. In addition to papers published in top-tier
security conferences (CCS, NDSS, and USENIX Security), his research has
resulted in many important updates in the Linux kernel, the Android OS,
and Apple's iOS. During his Ph.D. study, he worked as an intern at NEC
Labs America and Samsung Research America, and as a visiting scholar at
the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS).