2021 News

2021

2020 2022

Dec 17

Play a video game, learn cybersecurity skills

“Katalyst” will be featured in this year’s picoCTF, an annual cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students created and run by CyLab.

Dec 14

Eleanor Birrell wants to improve your experience with security and privacy

Gaining a better understanding of how to study users in security contexts is exactly what has brought Birrell to Carnegie Mellon. She began a 12-month sabbatical with CyLab this Fall.

Nov 23

Beyond one server: decentralizing secure group messaging

In a new study presented at last week’s ACM CCS conference, Ph.D. student Matthew Weidner defined a new security protocol that could bring this idea of decentralized secure group messaging to fruition.

Nov 19

Avoid a privacy nightmare with “Lean Privacy Review”

CyLab researchers have developed a fast, cheap, and easy-to-access method to catch privacy issues early in a system’s development process.

Nov 09

Are the recent Facebook revelations a “privacy Chernobyl?”

CyLab’s Alessandro Acquisti shares his thoughts around the privacy issues Facebook is facing today.

Nov 04

Cisco announces strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon CyLab

The mission of Cisco Research, the research arm of multinational tech leader Cisco Systems, is to foster research collaborations with “the best university researchers in the field.” Thus, the company has announced a new partnership with Carnegie Mellon University CyLab.

Oct 29

Visual AI company Oosto partners with CyLab Biometrics Center

The partnership will focus on early-stage research in object, body, and behavior recognition.

Oct 26

How does “normal” Internet browsing look today? Now we know.

A new CyLab study aims to capture what “normal” Internet browsing looks like to better understand how people are led to download malicious content, and to come up with ways to prevent that from happening.

Oct 21

Blair’s problem-solving vision created CMU’s Information Security Office

CyLab's Mary Ann Blair doesn’t wear a badge or a police uniform, but her mission is to protect and serve the Carnegie Mellon University community.

Oct 13

Collaboratory to share early research at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit

Next week, the Collaboratory Against Hate - Research and Action Center will be taking part in the inaugural Eradicate Hate Global Summit, a hybrid event focused on exchanging ideas around eradicating hate taking place at the David Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh.

Oct 07

Protect your security and privacy with these tips from CyLab faculty

In celebration of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a collection of CyLab faculty have shared some tips they recommend following to stay safe online.

Oct 06

CyLab’s Jan Hoffmann receives Amazon Research Award

Amazon Research Awards provide funding, access to Amazon public datasets, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning services and tools.

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Oct 04

CyLab releases 2020-2021 Year in Review

The publication highlights research, talks, papers, and other key events that have taken place within the CyLab community over the past 12 months.

Sep 30

CyLab’s Maria Apostolaki named a “Rising Star”

The N2Women’s Rising Stars recognizes junior researchers—those with less than 10 years’ experience after Ph.D. completion—in the networking and communications field who have displayed an exceptional start to their careers.

Sep 22

picoCTF impresses at the Women in Cybersecurity Conference

The team behind picoCTF, CyLab’s educational platform aiming to bring more people into the field of cybersecurity, made sure its platform was present at this year’s conference for Women in Cybersecurity.

Sep 15

CyLab’s Elahe Soltanaghai named a “Rising Star”

Sep 14

CyLab’s Giulia Fanti named a 2021 Intel “Rising Star”

The prestigious award recognizes 10 promising early-career academic researchers who lead some of the most important technology research of our time.

Aug 31

Yinglian Xie receives 2021 CyLab Distinguished Alumni Award

The co-founder and CEO of security company DataVisor has been selected to receive the 2021 CyLab Distinguished Alumni Award.

Aug 20

Undergrads around the nation partake in CyLab research

Roughly a dozen undergraduate students from as many colleges and universities around the country pursued security and/or privacy-focused research projects in this year’s REU program at CMU.

Aug 20

Keeping distributed systems secure Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon researchers are working to design networks that keep our ever-increasing numbers of connected devices safe and secure.

Research paper Opens in new window

Aug 19

Study further explores perceptions of video analytics

In general, people are somewhat aware of facial recognition technologies and tend to have mixed feelings about them, according to new research out of Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab.

Aug 13

“Capture” your IoT devices and improve their security

A team of CyLab researchers have created “Capture,” a software architecture to help protect IoT devices from using code from vulnerable software libraries.

Aug 11

CyLab names 2021 Presidential Fellows

Four high-achieving CyLab Ph.D. students pursuing security and/or privacy-related research have been awarded CyLab Presidential Fellowships.

Aug 09

Carnegie Mellon hacking team finishes 2nd at DefCon

Carnegie Mellon’s hacking team, the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), placed 2nd this weekend in the annual DefCon cybersecurity conference’s Capture the Flag competition, widely regarded as the “Olympics of Hacking.”

Jul 30

Do you hear what I hear? A cyberattack.

In a new study presented this week at the Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, Cai and two co-authors show how cybersecurity data can be heard in the form of music.

Jul 29

Two CyLab papers presented at the FTC’s PrivacyCon 2021

The FTC selected fewer than 20 papers to be presented at this year’s PrivacyCon, and two of them were written by CyLab researchers.

Jul 22

Study explores tensions between IoT device owners and “incidental users”

A team of CyLab researchers conducted a study exploring the tensions that may arise between device owners and incidental users, who may or may not be comfortable as incidental users.

Jul 19

One size does not fit all when managing data practices on the web

A new study by Carnegie Mellon University CyLab researchers aimed to learn about users' awareness of data practices, how they felt about them, and how much control they perceived to have over them.

Jul 15

Misconceptions plague security and privacy tools

According to a new study out of CyLab, people hold a myriad of misconceptions about the security and privacy tools out there meant to help protect our privacy and online security.

Jul 09

New tool automatically finds buffer overflow vulnerabilities

A team of CyLab researchers have designed a new tool that automatically checks for memory bugs—the types of bugs that can lead to buffer overflow exploits, a commonly deployed cyberattack.

Jun 18

CyLab researchers shine at PEPR 2021

More than 500 people gathered virtually at last week’s PEPR conference, perhaps the largest gathering of privacy engineers ever.

Jun 17

How to teach about privacy… using “potty talk”

Lorrie Cranor believes that bathrooms—these very intimate spaces for people of all ages—are surprisingly useful for conveying concepts related to both privacy and usability.

Jun 15

A big step towards cybersecurity’s holy grail

The trek towards the holy grail of cybersecurity—a user-friendly computing environment where the guarantee of security is as strong as a mathematical proof—is making big strides.

Jun 14

Interdisciplinary research for an intersectional student

Aurelia Augusta, co-advised by CyLab’s Lorrie Cranor, works to improve online experiences.

Jun 10

Internet performance during COVID not as great as many say, study shows

Internet performance suffered substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by researchers in Carnegie Mellon University published this week in the Journal of Information Policy.

Jun 07

CyLab researchers discover novel class of vehicle cyberattacks

The new class of vulnerabilities was disclosed in a new study presented at last month’s IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, held virtually.

May 28

CMU CyLab to co-host this year’s PEPR Conference

This year’s Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect (PEPR) Conference will be co-hosted by CyLab and the Future of Privacy Forum, and will be held virtually June 10-11.

May 26

CyLab’s IoT security and privacy label effectively conveys risk, study finds

The study, presented at this week’s IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, helps bridge the gap between experts’ knowledge and consumers’ understanding of privacy and security risks.

May 13

CyLab researchers develop new guidance for designing privacy choices

In a new study presented at this week’s ACM CHI conference, CyLab researchers outlined a set of standards and taxonomy to help alleviate the void in guidance that still leaves privacy choices muddied for users.

May 11

Study explores privacy of prison communications

The study, which explores people’s understandings, attitudes, and reactions to prison surveillance, received an Honorable Mention award at this week’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference.

Apr 23

picoCTF announces 2021 competition winners

Last month, picoCTF, which over the course of nearly a decade has become the world’s largest online hacking competition, held its 2021 competition.

Apr 22

Carnegie Mellon CyLab partners with Rolls-Royce and Purdue

As the world continues its trend toward digitization, Carnegie Mellon University has announced the launch of a new research partnership with Rolls-Royce and Purdue University to focus on enhancing the security of embedded system platforms.

Apr 21

Former federal CISO Touhill named new director of CMU SEI CERT Division

Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute today announced the appointment of Gregory J. Touhill as director of the SEI’s CERT Division.

Apr 19

Cryptocurrency derivatives markets are booming

On a busy day, over $100 billion in these derivatives are traded, rivaling the daily volume traded in the New York Stock Exchange, according to a new study authored by Carnegie Mellon University CyLab researchers.

Apr 05

Inferring what we share by how we share Opens in new window

A new study by Conrad Tucker shows that patterns in which information is shared online may indicate the information’s authenticity.

Mar 31

Corina Pasareanu receives ETAPS’ Test of Time Award

Corina Pasareanu, a researcher in CyLab, has received a Test of Time Award from the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS).

Mar 22

CyLab research impacts new privacy law

A groundbreaking law that gives consumers more agency over the sale of their private information was updated in California this week, and it reflects the work of two university teams.

Mar 17

CMU and Pitt launch center dedicated to combating extremist hate

Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are jointly launching a new center to study extremist hate. Scholars at both universities will partner through the Collaboratory Against Hate—Research and Action Center to develop effective tools that inhibit hate’s creation, growth, and destructive consequences.

Mar 09

The world’s largest online hacking competition launches next week

picoCTF 2021 begins March 16 at 12 p.m. and concludes March 30 at 3 p.m. ET. Participation is free, and all one needs to participate is a computer with basic Internet access.

Mar 08

CyLab researchers awarded MURI grant to study human-bot teams

Lujo Bauer, Matt Fredrikson, and Cleotilde Gonzalez are part of a team of researchers that was named a winner of a prestigious US Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Award.

Feb 26

Third round of Secure and Private IoT Initiative funded projects announced

Carnegie Mellon CyLab’s Secure and Private IoT Initiative (IoT@CyLab) has announced its third round of funding, which will support 12 Internet of Things (IoT)-related projects for one year.

Feb 25

CMU-Africa and CyLab aim to improve financial inclusion in emerging economies

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) CyLab and CMU-Africa have established the CyLab-Africa initiative, which aims to improve the cybersecurity of financial systems in Africa and other emerging economies.

Feb 22

Celebrating Engineers’ Week Opens in new window

Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering is excited to celebrate Engineers’ Week 2021.

Feb 19

Phishing, fairness, and more: CyLab’s 2021 seed funding awardees

Over $350K in seed funding has been awarded to 14 different faculty and staff in seven different departments across three colleges at CMU.

Jan 25

How CyLab researchers are safeguarding digital transactions

A new programming language developed by CyLab Ph.D. student Ankush Das aims to reduce the number of errors made in smart contracts.

Jan 12

What if opting out of data collection were easy?

Recent work by researchers in Carnegie Mellon University CyLab has shown that it is possible to use machine learning techniques to automatically extract and classify some of these opt-out choices, and introduces a new, handy browser extension.

Jan 07

Gonzalez named 2021 Fellow of Cognitive Science Society

The Cognitive Science Society announced seven research scientists, including CyLab’s Cleotilde Gonzalez, as 2021 Fellows. Gonzalez joins a selected group of 120 researchers, who have been recognized for their sustained excellence and impact on the cognitive science community.

Media Mentions

Dark Reading

Cranor discusses Gmail cybersecurity

CyLab Director Lorrie Cranor spoke with Dark Reading about the importance of securing one’s devices and accounts, regardless of encryption protections companies like Gmail install in their software.

POLITICO

Cranor quoted on the importance of appropriate security of government communications

CyLab Director Lorrie Cranor was quoted in POLITICO regarding the recent “Signalgate” controversies generated by national security advisors, as she spoke about the importance of government communications being secured against attackers.

The Wall Street Journal

Cranor quoted on Signal group chat

CyLab Director Lorrie Cranor was quoted in The Wall Street Journal about how employees often prioritize convenience over security at work.

CNN

Scheffler quoted on data protection and access

CyLab/EPP’s Sarah Scheffler was quoted by CNN about data protection, in response to Apple users losing access to Advanced Data Protection. “One of the very few ways to make sure that your data can’t be leaked if a company is breached is to make sure that the company (itself) doesn’t have it,” Scheffler explains.

More Mentions

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