Cybersecurity

News Feed

Hacked voting machine donated to Henry Ford museum

The machine was used by Prof. J. Alex Halderman for election cybersecurity research, and in a demonstration during which then-Senator Kamala Harris voted on it.

Visiting researcher assesses Starlink as path to avoid government censorship

The study is the first to technically describe how and to what extent Starlink can be used to access the internet from inside Iran.

Mingyan Liu named Alice L. Hunt Collegiate Professor of Engineering

Mingyan Liu, renowned for her research specializing in communication networks and cybersecurity, has served as Chair of ECE since 2018. (video of the talk now available)

U-M spin-off Agita Labs releases always encrypted computing product

TrustForge, based on U-M research spearheaded by Austin and Bertacco, provides users with the ability to protect data using a process called sequestered encryption

Kang G. Shin recognized with Distinguished Leadership Award by IEEE Computer Society Technical & Conference Activities Board

His work in the area of real-time computing has spanned decades and has had impact in a broad range of applications.

Five ways to keep vaccine cold storage equipment safe from hackers

A medical security expert outlines the risks and how hospitals can protect themselves.

The NAE invites Necmiye Ozay to symposium to advance the engineering frontier

Prof. Ozay presented on her research that is relevant to cybersecurity and the future of space exploration.

Marina Minkin chosen for Facebook Fellowship

Marina’s research in security closely investigates the boundary between software and hardware.

DARPA pitted 500+ hackers against this computer chip. The chip won.

University of Michigan’s MORPHEUS technology emerges unscathed from bug bounty effort.

After five years, Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit based on tech developed at Michigan, has helped to secure the internet

Today, over 225 million websites are protected by free certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt.

NIST finalists for post-quantum security standards include research results developed by Prof. Chris Peikert

A new secure code is needed to protect private information from the power of quantum computing.

Xueru Zhang awarded Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

Zhang is working to improve data security and address important ethical issues related to AI and discriminatory data sets.

Advancing the future of circuit design with Intel’s Dr. Eric Karl

Karl (BSE MSE PhD EE) talks about how his time at Michigan helped prepare him for his dream job at Intel and a career advancing embedded memory technology and circuits.

Data security for a safer world

ECE alum Kurt Rohloff helped create one of the world’s best homomorphic encryption software libraries, and he reflects on how his time at Michigan helped shape his career.

Todd Austin Named S. Jack Hu Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering

Prof. Austin is a creative, outside-the-box thinker who has produced a body of work that has had extraordinary impact in the area of computer architecture.

New attack on autonomous vehicle sensors creates fake obstacles

Up to this point, no attacks had been discovered targeting a car’s LiDAR system—but a major new finding from researchers at the University of Michigan has demonstrated what that might look like.

Best paper award for analysis of a decade of malware reports

The research suggests that common blacklist-based prevention systems are ineffective.

Michigan’s new Election Security Commission holds inaugural meeting on U-M Campus

The meeting began the commission’s review and assessment of election security in Michigan.

Halderman co-chairs new commission to protect Michigan votes

The effort seeks to protect the integrity of every vote.

Election security: Halderman recommends actions to ensure integrity of US systems

In congressional testimony, professor urges $370M in federal funding to replace outdated machines.

Study reveals new data on region-specific website blocking practices

A team of researchers unearthed new data on geographic denial of access to web content in a new paper.

A secure future for US elections starts in the classroom

A new special topics course on election cybersecurity gives students an examination of the past, present, and future of US elections.

Tyche: A new permission model to defend against smart home hacks

“The work is an important step towards understanding how to make tradeoffs between usability and security.”

Intel processor vulnerability could put millions of PCs at risk

Patches can provide protection.

Undocumented immigrants’ privacy at risk online, on phones

When it comes to their smartphones, immigrants struggle to apply instinctive caution, according to a study by a team of University of Michigan researchers.

Mingyan Liu, 2018 Distinguished University Innovator, talks about her company and data science commercialization

Mingyan Liu, recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Innovator of the Year award, gave a talk about her startup company and participated on a panel discussing data science commercialiation.

Building a security standard for a post-quantum future

A large quantum computer could retroactively decrypt almost all internet communication ever recorded.

Zuckerberg Capitol Hill testimony: Engineering experts offer comments

U-M profs weigh new business model, European-style regulation

‘I hacked an election. So can the Russians.’

Professor Alex Halderman and the New York Times staged a mock election to demonstrate voting machine vulnerability.

Inaugural ECE Willie Hobbs Moore Alumni Lecture: Dr. Isaac R. Porche III

Porche discussed the changing definition of war and how information is playing a greater role than ever.

Michigan researchers discover vulnerabilities in next-generation connected vehicle technology

The vulnerability allows an attacker to manipulate a new intelligent traffic control algorithm and cause severe traffic jams.

CSE PhD student Matt Bernhard on the Facebook data breach

In this video, CSE PhD Student Matt Bernhard weighs in on the matter Facebook data harvesting, such as that done by Cambridge Analytica.

Internet-scanning U-M startup offers new approach to cybersecurity

Censys is the first commercially available internet-wide scanning tool. It helps IT experts to secure large networks with a constantly changing array of devices.

Unhackable computer under development with $3.6M DARPA grant

The researchers say they’re making an unsolvable puzzle: ‘It’s like if you’re solving a Rubik’s Cube and every time you blink, I rearrange it.’

The art of cyber war with Isaac Porche

Porche shares the global state of cyber warfare, and how his time at Michigan led him to the front lines.

Chris Peikert Receives TCC Test of Time Award for work in lattice cryptography

Prof. Peikert and his co-author received the award at the Fifteenth Theory of Cryptography Conference for their paper on efficient collision-resistant hashing on cyclic lattices.

Manos Kapritsos and collaborators win USENIX security paper award

Their paper introduces a new programming language and tool called Vale that supports flexible, automated verification of high-performance assembly code.

BugMD: automatic mismatch diagnosis for bug triaging

Bugs that are not caught before a product is released can cost companies billions of dollars.

Prof. J. Alex Halderman testifies in front of senate intelligence committee on secure elections

His remarks focused on vulnerabilities in the US voting system and a policy agenda for securing the system against the threat of hacking.

Smartphone security hole

‘Open port’ backdoors are common.

Open ports act as security wormholes into mobile devices

Researchers have for the first time characterized a widespread vulnerability in the software that runs on mobile devices.

Mingyan Liu: Confessions of a pseudo data scientist

Liu’s most recent research involves online learning, modeling of large-scale internet measurement data, and incentive mechanisms for security games.

Peter Honeyman receives USENIX Test of Time Award

The USENIX Test of Time Awards recognizes papers presented at its respective conference from at least 10 years ago that have had a lasting impact on their fields.

Researchers David Adrian and Alex Halderman receive Pwnie Award for work on DROWN attack

DROWN allows attackers to break encryption used to protect HTTPS websites and read or steal sensitive communications.

With over 7 million certificates issued, Let’s Encrypt aims to secure the entire web

In order to bring HTTPS to everyone, Prof. Halderman joined forces in 2012 with colleagues at Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to found Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit certificate authority with the mission of making the switch to HTTPS vastly easier.

Two Michigan papers win top awards at IEEE Security and Privacy Symposium

One of the paper describes and demonstrates a malicious hardware backdoor. The other demonstrated security failings in a commercial smart home platform.

U-M cyber security startup purchased by FICO

Analytic software company FICO of San Jose, Calif., bought QuadMetrics to help in its development of a FICO Enterprise Security Score.

Michigan and Verisign researchers demonstrate new man-in-the-middle WPAD query attack

New security ramifications exist when laptops and smartphones configured for enterprise systems are used outside the enterprise in the realm of the wider web.

Fighting cyber crime with data analytics

QuadMetrics offers a pair of services to help companies both assess the effectiveness of their security and decide the best way to allocate (or increase) their security budget.

Hacking into homes: Security flaws found in SmartThings connected home system

New vulnerabilities form when hardware like electronic locks, thermostats, ovens, sprinklers, lights and motion sensors are networked and set up to be controlled remotely.

Startup founded by U-M assoc. professor gets NSF grant

Healthcare security company Virta Laboratories, Inc. has received a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Security Flaw in New South Wales Puts Thousands of Online Votes at Risk

Securing Internet voting requires solving some of the hardest problems in computer security, and even the smallest mistakes can undermine the integrity of the election result.

Yi-Chin Wu receives ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award for research in network security

Her dissertation focused on “opacity,” which captures whether a given secret of the system can be inferred by intruders who observe the behavior of the system.

Yang Liu receives Best Applications Paper Award for cyber security research in phishing

His paper detailed his use of big data analysis to solve a major problem of cyber security.

Zakir Durumeric Selected for Google PhD Fellowship

Parinaz Naghizadeh, Researcher in economic network security, is named a Barbour Scholar

Parinaz’s research is in combining communications with economics to assess the security of a network and then apply that to cyber-insurance contracts.

Duo of CSE Alums Form and Grow Security Company in Ann Arbor

Serial entrepreneur Dug Song (CS BS 1997) and recent alum Jon Oberheide (CSE PhD 2011) founded security firm Duo Security in early 2010 and have rapidly grown their company to serve over 500 customers in 40+ countries around the world.

J. Alex Halderman to Teach Course on Electronic and Internet Voting through Coursera

The 5-week course will provide the technical background and public policy foundation that today's citizens need to understand the electronic voting debate.