2018 News

2018

2017 2019

Dec 17

Forging a user-friendly blockchain

In May of 2016 a thief was able to steal over $50 million in broad daylight from a pool of over 11,000 investors using one simple tool—a single line of poorly written code.

Dec 11

Thwarting bias in AI systems Opens in new window

As machine learning systems are used more and more to make decisions about insurance, criminal justice, credit, and child welfare, we need to ensure that they are fair.

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Dec 06

Jonathan Cagan named interim dean of the College of Engineering Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon University has named Jonathan Cagan interim dean of the College of Engineering.

Dec 05

Preventing exposure to malicious websites Opens in new window

A team of CyLab researchers have developed a mechanism that detects when users may be about to visit a malicious website.

Nov 20

As advertised? Exposing lies about VPN locations Opens in new window

A strange observation led a CyLab researcher to figure out how to detect when VPN services are lying about their location.

Nov 01

Carnegie Mellon's hacking competition inspires thousands of kids to pursue a career in cybersecurity

Over 27,000 students participated in this year's picoCTF cybersecurity competition – which ended October 12 – shattering records from previous years. Of the 14,000 US-based student players eligible for prizes, nearly two-thirds of them claimed that they're "more interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity" as a result of playing picoCTF, according to a post-competition survey.

Oct 30

CyLab's Norman Sadeh speaks on plenary panel about data protection and privacy

Last week, CyLab's Norman Sadeh, a professor in the Institute for Software Research in the School of Computer Science and co-director of the Privacy Engineering program, spoke about privacy, artificial intelligence (AI), and the challenges at the intersection of the two at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC).

Oct 25

Advancing women in cybersecurity Opens in new window

At Carnegie Mellon University, the Information Networking Institute is closing the cybersecurity gender gap one student at a time.

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Oct 24

CyLab faculty win big at the IEEE Cybersecurity Development Conference

CyLab faculty members Alessandro Acquisti, Lujo Bauer, Nicolas Christin, and Lorrie Cranor were presented with IEEE Cybersecurity awards at the IEEE Cybersecurity Development Conference, Oct. 2 in Boston.

Oct 19

Dena Haritos Tsamitis secures $5 million NSF award for CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program

At a time when demand for cybersecurity expertise has never been higher, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has just been awarded a $5 million renewal of its National Science Foundation (NSF) CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program through 2023.

Oct 15

CyLab researchers win NSA's Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper competition

Two CyLab researchers led a study that has been named 2017's Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper by NSA's Science of Security initiative.

Oct 11

CMU to Co-Host Women in CyberSecurity Conference

The sixth annual Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Conference will be co-hosted by WiCyS and Carnegie Mellon University March 28-30, 2019, in Pittsburgh.

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Oct 03

15th annual CyLab Corporate Partners Conference kicks off

Machine learning, IoT security and privacy, and security education are just a few of a variety of hot topics that will be discussed this week at the 15th annual CyLab Corporate Partners Conference, held on campus October 3-5.

Oct 01

Celebrating NASA with a history of collaboration Opens in new window

As NASA turns 60, the College of Engineering celebrates its history of partnerships with NASA: from research and competitions, to the CMU-SV campus located at NASA’s Ames Research Park.

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Sep 28

CyLab's massive middle and high school hacking competition, picoCTF, launches its 2018 contest

Guidance counselors today are urging their students to consider becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, and … computer hackers? That's the goal with picoCTF, Carnegie Mellon University's free, online cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students, which launches today for the fourth time since its inception in 2013.

Sep 27

Reducing complexity to increase security Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon University team receives $7.5M ONR grant for software complexity reduction, or simplifying complex internet protocols to build greater security.

Sep 21

CyLab study finds users may be over-confident in protections of private browsing

A team of researchers from the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab analyzed 450 consenting users' browsing behaviors over a three-year period. Their study was presented at last month's Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security in Baltimore.

Sep 17

Carnegie Mellon's CyLab launches initiative on IoT security with Amazon Web Services, Infineon Technologies, and Nokia Bell Labs

The IoT@CyLab initiative will bring together faculty and student researchers across the university and leading corporations with a common vision of making IoT more secure and privacy-respecting.

Sep 07

CyLab study: Romantic couples are sharing online accounts in security-compromising ways

A CyLab research team surveyed 195 participants about their relationship status and account-sharing behavior across a multitude of popular websites. The survey revealed users engaging in unsafe security practices.

Aug 30

State Department selects CyLab's Skinner as senior policy adviser

CyLab fellow Kiron Skinner, the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, has been named senior policy adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Aug 24

Taking back the conversation: detecting malicious social media bots

Social media bots contribute nearly one-quarter of all tweets on Twitter, with malicious bots swaying the conversation in whatever direction their creators want. CyLab’s Kathleen Carley is working towards shutting them down.

Aug 14

CMU's Plaid Parliament of Pwning places 2nd at DefCon

Carnegie Mellon's competitive hacking team, the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), placed 2nd overall at the 26th annual DefCon security conference hacking competition, widely considered the "World Series of Hacking." The competition was held August 9 – 12 in Las Vegas.

Aug 09

Student by day, crocheter by evening, hacker by night

CyLab's Carolina Zarate to help PPP shatter records at this year's DefCon.

Aug 07

From high school hacker to DefCon champ

CyLab's Zach Wade to help PPP shatter records at this year's DefCon.

Aug 01

Study provides a glimpse into how people think about privacy

In 2014, Lorrie Cranor and her graduate students asked hundreds of people ranging from age 5 to 91 to draw their own illustration of privacy as part of her "Privacy Illustrated" project. CyLab's Maggie Oates has spent the last couple months analyzing what it all means.

Jul 27

Overcoming the human bottleneck with autonomy Opens in new window

On August 4, 2016, the mission of cyber autonomy was declared accomplished. Meanwhile, back in Pittsburgh, a CyLab graduate student quietly hacked away at her own research in cyber autonomy.

Jul 20

CMU, Bossa Nova to apply AI to retail analytics Opens in new window

CMU has announced a research partnership with Bossa Nova to develop and integrate artificial intelligence into service robots in retail stores nationwide.

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Jul 05

Indoor location, location, location Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon sweeps the competition at the 2018 Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition.

Jun 28

Africa's first university-level blockchain course helps spread trusted tech throughout continent

Blockchain technologies have been touted by many as a huge advancement in trust – something that can create trust where it didn't exist before. That's exactly why Carnegie Mellon made sure it would be the first to offer a university-level course on it in Africa.

May 30

Your smart home may soon have a smarter way to pair your devices

"Do you feel what I hear?" That’s a phrase that devices in smart homes may be asking each other in the future as a way to pair themselves without any assistance.

May 25

CMU hosts 11th Workshop on Security and Human Behavior

The eleventh Workshop on Security and Human Behavior kicked off this week on Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh campus, bringing together computer scientists, security engineers, economists, psychologists, and other scholars around the world interested in understanding the interplay between security and human behavior.

May 18

CMU student discovers website leaking locations of cell phone customers

Some cybersleuthing by Robert Xiao, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, uncovered a security vulnerability on the website of LocationSmart, a Carlsbad, Calif., company that provides a service for identifying the real-time location of mobile phones in the United States and Canada.

May 01

What happens when you deploy 2-factor authentication at a university?

“It’s not actually that horrible,” one survey respondent said about using a security feature called 2-factor authentication (2FA) to access their Carnegie Mellon account.

Apr 24

Understanding the cybersecurity grapevine

When people get word of an online data breach, men are far more likely to share that news with their colleagues and women are much more likely to share it with family and significant others, CyLab researchers report.

Apr 19

Fourteen years later, Pasareanu’s automated software-testing work awarded for retrospective impact

Fourteen years ago, CyLab associate research professor Corina Pasareanu and two of her colleagues published a paper outlining three automated techniques for checking software for bugs and vulnerabilities. This month, Pasareanu and her colleagues are receiving the 2018 Retrospective Impact Award from the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA).

Apr 12

CMU-Africa and Facebook co-host cybersecurity hackathon in Rwanda

Last week, Facebook and Carnegie Mellon University Africa hosted a cybersecurity-themed hackathon in Kigali, Rwanda, with the goal of engaging and inspiring students to become more involved in cybersecurity. During the 24-hour hackathon, students were challenged with identifying a security problem in any industry currently affecting Rwanda and/or other African countries and developing a solution.

Apr 02

Improving cybersecurity with machine learning Opens in new window

Mahmood Sharif has been named a 2018 Symantec Research Lab Graduate Fellow and will continue his research in machine learning and cybersecurity in collaboration with Symantec.

Mar 28

CyLab’s Lorrie Cranor receives the IAPP 2018 Leadership Award

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) has named Lorrie Cranor the recipient of the 2018 Leadership Award. Cranor, a professor in the Institute for Software Research and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, accepted the award at the IAPP’s Global Privacy Summit on March 27.

Mar 15

CyLab's Nicolas Christin to testify before Congress on cybercrime

CyLab’s Nicolas Christin, an associate research professor in the Institute for Software Research and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, will be delivering a testimony before Congress today at 2 p.m., March 15, 2018, in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

Mar 09

Proofpoint Acquires CMU Spinoff Wombat Security for $225 Million

Proofpoint Inc., a leading cybersecurity company, has completed its acquisition of a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff, Wombat Security Technologies Inc., for $225 million. The deal was announced by Proofpoint last month.

Mar 06

INI Director to Appear on March 9 WQED Cyber-Safety Webcast

Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis, director of the Information Networking Institute (INI), will appear on a live webcast of WQED's nationally-distributed television program iQ: smartparent on March 9, 2018 at 11:30 a.m. EST. The episode - "Cyber-Safety: Privacy, Protection, and the Latest Laws Affecting Children and Families" - will be available at www.iqsmartparent.org/webcasts beginning at 11:30 a.m. EST on March 9.

Mar 01

Carnegie Mellon researchers create an AI to help us make sense of privacy policies

If you’re anything like the average Internet user, you probably didn’t spend the estimated 244 hours it would take to read every privacy policy for every website you visited last year. That’s exactly why a team led by Carnegie Mellon University just launched an interactive website aimed at helping users make sense of their privacy on the web.

Feb 23

CyLab’s Lorrie Cranor and her student Blase Ur win top SIGCHI awards

Lorrie Cranor, a professor in the Institute for Software Research and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, is this year’s recipient of the Social Impact Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI). Cranor’s former Societal Computing Ph.D. student Blase Ur won the group’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.

Feb 21

CyLab team develops promising tool to help prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks

Right now, go to Google.com, search for something (anything) and then look at the search results’ URL. It’s a jumbled mess of numbers, letters, and characters, right? That mess of characters is coordinating the creation of the webpage, displaying a customized list of results based on what you searched for.

Feb 20

Marculescu is Kavčić-Moura Professor Opens in new window

Radu Marculescu is one of four Carnegie Mellon University faculty members that have been appointed to new Kavčić-Moura Professorships.

Feb 15

CyLab’s Bryan Parno receives 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship

CyLab’s Bryan Parno is one of five Carnegie Mellon recipients of the 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship.

Feb 08

CMU students help build BitClave’s blockchain network Opens in new window

CMU students worked with blockchain start-up BitClave to drive the company’s development in new directions.

Jan 31

CyLab’s Jessica Colnago named 2018 Emerging Scholar

CyLab’s Jessica Colnago and School of Computer Science student Xiaolong Wang are among 23 Ph.D. students named Facebook Fellows and Emerging Scholar award winners for 2018. Three additional SCS students were finalists.

Jan 26

Former presiding FISA court judge discusses security and privacy at CMU

Last week, former presiding judge at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court Reggie B. Walton spoke to an auditorium full of eager security and privacy researchers. Walton’s talk, titled “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: Myth Versus Reality,” touched on a number of themes around the court, including privacy and national security.

Jan 23

Carnegie Mellon hosts fifth International Data Privacy Day celebration

As information about our ourselves and our daily lives continues to become increasingly digitized, Carnegie Mellon University will host its fifth celebration of International Data Privacy Day on Friday, January 26th.

Jan 15

Smarter networks to connect the edge to the cloud Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon University will lead a $27.5 million Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) initiative to build more intelligence into computer networks.

Media Mentions

Associated Press

Carley discusses how misinformation can spread

CyLab’s Kathleen Carley was quoted by the Associated Press about the dangers of misinformation, particularly pertaining to false claims of election fraud and how that may impact overseas voters. “Laying the groundwork for a conspiracy theory means that you need to weave many claims together,” Carley explained.

Time

Brumley discusses social security number breach and cybersecurity

ECE’s David Brumley spoke with Time about the hack in April that resulted in SSN data from the NPD being leaked. “We are not talking about a startup here,” Brumley said. “Looking forward, we have to have higher standards for the custodians of our data.”

Atlantic Council

Fanti and Sowon suggest improving the way governments regulate technology

Giulia Fanti and Karen Sowon were among the co-authors of an article in Atlantic Council suggesting ways in which governments could more effectively regulate new technologies while avoiding setbacks.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Carley discusses new tools designed to curb the spread of disinformation online

CyLab/EPP’s Kathleen Carley spoke with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the need to improve detection of inaccurate or misleading content online.

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