December 2021 - Gradstudents - mailman.cs.vt.edu

Dr. Shaffer's Office Hours
by Cliff Shaffer 09 Dec '21

09 Dec '21

I am sorry, but my office hour scheduled for today is CANCELED. I plan to hold office hours on my regular schedule next week: Monday and Thursday at 2-3, in Torgersen 3210 and Zoom https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/85921891325. After next week, I will no longer hold office hours at these times. I will post my Spring office hour availability sometime in January. Of course, I will easily be accessible via email, and I can schedule a one-off zoom meeting if there is a need. I hope that everyone has a successful finals week and a good winter break! -- Dr. Cliff Shaffer Professor and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies Department of Computer Science Phone: (540) 231-4354 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 WWW: www.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer

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Grad Council Meeting Today
by Alex Hicks 09 Dec '21

09 Dec '21

Hello all, I wanted to send a reminder email about today's CS Grad Council Meeting! The meeting will be held in Torgerson 1210 from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm and also on Zoom (calendar here) if you can't make it in person. During today's meeting we will discuss: • Representatives for GPC, GSA, and Faculty Meeting Diversity • Event Debriefs • General Survey Updates • Preview Weekend Plans • Other Concerns TLDR: CS Grad Council Meeting today in Torgerson 1210 1:00 - 2:00 pm. Find our calendar which has the zoom link here. Hope to see many of you in person or virtually later today! Alex Hicks Computer Science PhD Student Pratt Fellow - Virginia Tech New Horizons Graduate Scholar Vice President - CS Graduate Council E // alexhicks(a)vt.edu P // (540) 336-1860

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Work with The Lab @ DC
by Samantha Pipkin 09 Dec '21

09 Dec '21

The Lab @ DC-is hiring. We're looking for Data Scientist and Social Scientists at the Masters and PhD levels (all the details are on our <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthelabpro jects.dc.gov%2Fjobs&data=04%7C01%7Cdavidab7%40vt.edu%7Cf83a50bc85654a6e1f420 8d9ba7ccfc0%7C6095688410ad40fa863d4f32c1e3a37a%7C0%7C0%7C637745867930696209% 7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwi LCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=olfA9fSSw2%2Fa7sxsioim%2FTCp1Hh7Gav8u0tgg6E%2BL1 I%3D&reserved=0> website). Thanks to Federal recovery funds, the District has the opportunity to test innovative and bold ideas to build back better. Over the next three years the Lab will help policymakers evaluate these efforts to make informed decisions on efforts related to alternatives to policing, gun violence prevention, housing stability, combating academic learning loss, supporting returning citizens, or workforce development. Applications are due December 21. These are rare opportunities to leverage scientific tools to make a positive difference in the lives of DC residents. Samantha Pipkin, Program Coordinator Blacksburg and Northern Virginia Campus Virginia Tech | Master of Engineering 7054 Haycock Road, Room 478 Falls Church, Virginia 22043 <mailto:samanthap@vt.edu> samanthap(a)vt.edu | (703) 538-3766 Virtual Office Hours: Tuesdays, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. Fridays, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. <https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/86541574451> https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/86541574451 Meeting ID: 865 4157 4451

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Salman's PhD thesis defense tomorrow (Thursday) at 9am
by Daphne Yao 08 Dec '21

08 Dec '21

Good evening! You're cordially invited to my student Salman Ahmed's virtual Ph.D. thesis defense on security measurement for complex defenses. Hope to see some of you there! *Dissertation Title:* Quantitative Metrics and Measurement Methodologies for System Security Assurance *Name:* Salman Ahmed *Date/Time: *Dec 9, 2021 09:00 AM Eastern Time *Zoom:* https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/83570298928?pwd=OTBESEp0d2FxNXZuQmIrbVJJUTd5… Meeting ID: 835 7029 8928 Passcode: defense *Committee members:* Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (Chair), Professor, Turner Fellow, and CACI Fellow, Computer Science, Virginia Tech Matthew Hicks (Member), Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Virginia Tech Gang Wang (External Member), Assistant Professor, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Patrick R. Schaumont (External Member), Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Fabian Monrose (External Member), Kenan Distinguished Professor, Computer Science, UNC at Chapel Hill *Abstract:* Proactive approaches for preventing attacks through security measures are crucial because reactive approaches can become challenging, especially when attackers enter sophisticated attacks. However, proactive approaches must employ qualitative security metrics and systemic measurement methodologies to assess security guarantees, as some metrics (e.g., entropy) used for evaluating security guarantees may not capture the capabilities of advanced attackers. Also, many proactive measures (e.g., data pointer protection or data flow integrity) suffer performance bottlenecks (around 20-50% overhead for hardware-based and 44-116% for software-based). This dissertation identifies qualitative and representative metrics by breaking down advanced code reuse attacks and systemizing data-oriented attacks and demonstrates the effectiveness of the metrics by quantifying the security risk and enabling the capability to fine-tune between security vs. performance. We measure security risk by quantifying the impact of fine-grained Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) on code reuse attacks under the Just-In-Time Return-Oriented Programming (JITROP) attack model. We conduct a comprehensive measurement study with five fine-grained ASLR tools, 20 applications including six browsers, one browser engine, and 25 dynamic libraries. Experiments show that attackers only need several seconds (1.5-3.5) to find Turing Complete gadgets, locations of leaked addresses/pointers have no impact on gadget availability but affect how fast attackers find gadgets, and instruction-level single-round randomization still works under JITROP. To tune performance vs. security, this dissertation proposes a generic and adaptable data object/pointer prioritization framework for prioritizing and protecting sensitive or vulnerable data objects/pointers. The prioritization framework taints all externally manipulatable data objects/pointers and applies seven rule-based heuristics to prioritize sensitive data objects/pointers. Our experimental evaluations using 23 ground truths data objects/pointers from 18 programs (including real-world servers) show zero false positives with an 18% performance improvement over AddressSanitizer by protecting 100% of the prioritized data objects. Our results also suggest that sensitive data objects are as low as 3%, and on average, 82% of data objects do not need protection. *Bio:* Salman Ahmed is a Ph.D. Candidate at Virginia Tech working with Professor Danfeng (Daphne) Yao. His research interests include security metrics and methodologies for security assurance and attack surface quantification, measurable cloud security, threat intelligence analysis, insider threat detection, and program analysis. He received his M.S. degree from East Tennessee State University and B.S. degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He was nominated for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award from the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He also received an outstanding M.S. thesis award from the Tennessee Conference of Graduate Schools (TCBS). He will join IBM Research after graduation. Best, Daphne Yao Professor Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. '56 Faculty Fellow CACI Faculty Fellow Department of computer science Virginia Tech http://yaogroup.cs.vt.edu/ https://twitter.com/yaogroup1

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HCI capstone demo day Dec. 8, 2:30-4:00
by Douglas Bowman 08 Dec '21

08 Dec '21

Colleagues, The students in the Human-Computer Interaction Capstone class (CS 4774/4784) will present a demo day this Wednesday to show off the immersive experiences they have designed this semester. Projects range from an intelligent AR application for construction workers, to a system for managing AR virtual monitors, to a mobile exergame. Six projects in all will be presented. All are invited to join us! Details below. HCI Capstone Demo Day Wednesday, Dec. 8 2:30-4:00 PM The Sandbox, Moss Arts Center 160 —Doug -- Doug A. Bowman Frank J. Maher Professor, Computer Science Director, Center for Human-Computer Interaction Senior Fellow, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology Virginia Tech dbowman(a)vt.edu https://wordpress.cs.vt.edu/3digroup/author/dbowman/ Group: https://wordpress.cs.vt.edu/3digroup/ Center: http://hci.vt.edu/ Twitter: @CHCI_VT

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Looking for a GRA
by Matthew Hicks 07 Dec '21

07 Dec '21

I am looking to hire a GRA for (at least) the upcoming Spring semester. We are looking for new members with experience in (at least) one of the following areas: Circuit design ASIC design Verilog/VHDL/FPGA development RTL verification Computer architecture Embedded systems development Python interpreter internals Compiler modification (i.e., LLVM) My group tackles problems across the system stack, from the analog aspects of otherwise-digital circuits, to operating systems and compilers. You can see our publications list on my website to get a better idea of what we do and where we publish: http://www.impedimenttoprogress.com/publications/. Our group tackles big problems that society faces, builds systems that solve those problems, open sources the resulting research artifacts for society's benefit (https://github.com/FoRTE-Research), and publicizes our work at top-tier venues. In short, we work hard on challenging and impactful problems, with a little conversation and ping pong mixed in. If you are interested and a good match, please email me with your CV and your skills/interests. ---Matthew Hicks Assistant Professor Computer Science, Virginia Tech

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Lost Key ring
by Rob Hunter 07 Dec '21

07 Dec '21

Found a key this morning on a key ring outside of the KWII main doors. Visit the downstairs main office if you are missing your keys. -- Thanks, Rob Rob Hunter Computer Science Department Virginia Tech Room 2233 KW II 2202 Kraft Drive Phone: 540-231-6470 Email: rhunter(a)vt.edu

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MS thesis defense: Manisha Kusuma (12/7/21, 3pm)
by Kurt Luther 06 Dec '21

06 Dec '21

Hi all, You are cordially invited to Manisha Kusuma's MS thesis defense. *Title*: Civil War Twin: Exploring Ethical Challenges in Designing an Educational Face Recognition Application *Date/Time*: Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 3:00pm ET *Zoom link*: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/j/81807603132 *Committee*: Prof. Kurt Luther (chair) Prof. Deborah Tatar Prof. Sylvester Johnson *Abstract*: Facial recognition systems pose numerous ethical challenges around privacy, racial and gender bias, and accuracy, yet little guidance is available for designers and developers. We explore solutions to these challenges in a four-phase design process to create Civil War Twin (CWT), an educational web-based application where users can discover their lookalikes from the American Civil War era (1861-65) while learning more about facial recognition and history. Through this design process, we synthesize industry guidelines, consult with scholars of history, gender, and race, evaluate CWT in feedback sessions with diverse prospective users, and conduct a usability study with crowd workers. We iteratively formulate design goals to incorporate transparency, inclusivity, speculative design, and empathy into our application. We found that users’ perceived learning about the strengths and limitations of facial recognition and Civil War history improved after using CWT, and that our design successfully met users’ ethical standards. We also discuss how our ethical design process can be applied to future facial recognition applications. *Biography:* Manisha Kusuma is an Accelerated BS/MS student studying Computer Science. At the Crowd Intelligence Lab, her research focuses on human-AI interaction and ethical design. After graduating, Manisha plans to join Microsoft as a Software Engineer working on the Windows Accessibility team.

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PhD Qualifier Spring 2022 Registration Final Reminder
by Denis Gracanin 06 Dec '21

06 Dec '21

Hi CS grad students, The final reminder that the PhD Qualifier Spring 2022 Web Page is available at https://www.cs.vt.edu/~gracanin/qualifier/2022/ <https://www.cs.vt.edu/~gracanin/qualifier/2022/> Your participation in the survey did not register you for any exam. 6 December 2021 (by 11:59 PM EST) is the last day to commit to taking the exam Please contact the chair of the area you are interested in for any further questions. Thanks, Denis Gracanin -- Denis Gracanin Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech 2202 Kraft Drive, Room 1135 Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA Phone: (540) 231-2060

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Over-enrollment in courses
by Cliff Shaffer 04 Dec '21

04 Dec '21

We realize that a number of the popular CS courses are currently full. Aside from Mobile (which we plan to offer in the Fall), we are hopeful that we can get most people into the courses that they want by the time that Spring classes start. As mentioned in Dr. Hooshangi's email a day or two ago, the reason why these courses are full is because a lot of people have grabbed more courses than they actually plan to take. We just did an audit on this, and it's a bit embarrassing. Some people are sitting on six regular courses (limited only by the total credit limit permitted, we have to suspect). Starting on Monday, December 13, we will begin removing people from courses if they violate the following limits: Any student on assistantship: 2 regular courses Other MS/PhD: 3 regular courses MEng: 4 regular courses. By "regular courses" we do NOT mean grad seminar or research hours. But any 3-credit course that you are enrolled for counts against the limit (whether a CS course or one outside of CS). You can expect that we will remove people from courses that are full, to free seats for those on the force-add request list. People who don't want that to happen to them ought to drop the extra classes before then. I appreciate that many are uncertain of which courses they actually want to take, and would like to attend at least the first day of class to see what it is like before they decide. If people are not enrolled in extra classes, then there can be seats available for people to pick up a class that they want during the first week of class. But if people are hoarding, then there is no way to get many of you to where you actually want to be. Everyone should please be sure to check that you are not somehow enrolled in two sections of a given course. We will also drop people from what look like duplicates. We will try to guess which is the section that someone would actually prefer to be in, but we can't always be sure to get that right. So you probably will want to take care of it yourself if you are in that situation. Contact Trey Mayo if you need help with any aspect of this. -- Dr. Cliff Shaffer Professor and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies Department of Computer Science Phone: (540) 231-4354 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 WWW: www.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer

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