smart living

That is a Wrap On Computing 2020

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As a follow-up to my previous blog post, I can say that it was an honor to participate yesterday and on Thursday at the Computing Conference 2020.  It was very well organized, professionally executed, and fun!

There was a wide range of presenters coming from different research areas covering computing, AI, security, IoT, and much more. It was also cool to have a Mindfulness and Yoga general session at the conference. This was something unique!

Here, is a screenshot of my presentation with feedback received. Also, I got private messages for collaboration work and I truly appreciate those!

My Presentation

My presentation with feedback received.

Once again thanks for the thumbs up and already looking forward to next year’s edition!

Talking about DoS Attacks at the Computing Conference

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On Friday, 17 July 2020, I will be talking at the Computing Conference 2020. This conference going was going to be held in London but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now going to be held fully online. I am especially excited to listen to the keynote of Vinton G. Cerf. He is widely known as a “father of the Internet”. Cerf is also the vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.  During the conference, I will be talking about Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and how commercial devices are prone to severe forms of this attack.

DoS is a widely used attack vector by various malicious threat agents from hackers to nation-states. Its consequences range from a nuisance to loss of revenues to even loss of life. Think about for instance the effects of disabling medical devices such as pacemakers, drones and weapon systems, connected alarm systems, and so on. In the case of smart homes, DoS may be the first attack to remove a component from a network to exploit a vulnerability.  In our study, we found devices manufactured by established commercial players prone especially to HTTP GET DoS attacks. This can result in the complete shutdown of the device, possibly remotely, by using a simple exploit with code available over the Internet.

DoS attacks targeting the smart connected home.

Take a look at the conference agenda and have a read of my conference paper. I will be uploading my presentation slides after the conference is held under my Presentations tab.

Feel free to drop me a message or get in touch if you want to know more about this topic or in case you are interested in information security.

Interesting Book Showed Up In My Mailbox

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Today, I am happy to have received a hardcopy of the book – Privacy and Identity Management. Data for Better Living: AI and Privacy. There is a chapter in this book, which I have authored together with my academic advisor titled: “On the Design of a Privacy-Centered Data Lifecycle for Smart Living Spaces.” In that article, I have identified how the software development process can be enhanced to manage privacy threats, amongst other things.

Privacy and Identity Management

Hardcopy of the book “Privacy and Identity Management. Data for Better Living: AI and Privacy”

All the articles included in the book are certainly worth a read covering various aspects of privacy ranging from a technical, compliance, and law perspective.

My Presentation at FHNW

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This week, between August 19-23 2019, I was in Switzerland attending the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Summer School at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) in Brugg/Windisch.  Attending this school is of great benefit to strengthen your network of professional and academic contacts, especially for those working on Information Privacy.  Topics covered in the jam-packed schedule included:  the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, sensors and biometrics, privacy by design (PbD), identity management, users and usability, and more.

On Tuesday 20, I presented my paper therein titled: “On the Design of a Privacy-Preserving Data Lifecycle for Smart Living Spaces” in the “Privacy by Design” track. I had a 30 mins presentation slot and following that a 10 mins critical review from two pre-assigned paper discussants including questions from the attendees. I have to say that I have received very positive and constructive feedback. Hereunder, is a photo of myself presenting some of the related work in PbD, threat analysis, and threat modeling.

Explaining the related research work before positioning my contribution.

Overall, I can say that there were some fantastic keynotes and excellent presentations from diverse Phd students.  Especially, I liked the keynote “Privacy as Innovation opportunity” by Marc van Lieshout from Radboud University.  In particular, I enjoyed his mentioning of Alan Westin’s privacy dimensions: reserve, intimacy, anonymity, and solitude; and how these are to different extents being hampered by privacy-evasive technologies, affecting the physical, individual, collective, and virtual dimensions of human beings. At the same time, I like his take on the increasing market of privacy, in particular with privacy service features such as activity monitoring, assessment manager, data mapping, etc.

My advice, if you are a doctoral student or interested in learning information privacy from a computer science or informatics standpoint, then I highly recommend you to attend the IFIP school at some point. Typically, there are ECTS credits for this course, (possibly 1.5 HP – 3 HP) if you attend and/or present your paper. In the meantime, check out my presentation (redacted version). The full version will be uploaded after the paper gets published.