Seminar: Trustworthy Systems through Information-Flow Analysis 
Fred Chong
Director of Computer Engineering, UC Santa Barbara
Friday, October 10, 2014
10 a.m.
Brickyard Artisan Court (BYAC) 150, Tempe campus [map]
Abstract:
Over the last decade, the analysis of how information flows through complex computer systems has been an important tool towards making such systems more secure and reliable. In this talk, I will discuss three research thrusts in this area.
First, the use of instruction-level information-flow tracking and virtual machines to address system-level security issues. For example, tracking the integrity of control flow information at the instruction level provides a general methodology for addressing many security exploits.
Second, the use of gate-level information flow tracking to design secure hardware architectures. This extreme level of low-level hardware instrumentation or analysis reduces all information flows—whether explicit, implicit, or temporal —to the propagation of signals and allows for a uniform methodology for tracking all flows.
Third, the use of mutual information measures to statically analyze reliability or information leakage requirements in next-generation systems. This ongoing work attempts to quantify information flows, not just detect them.
Biography:
Fred Chong is the Director of Computer Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science at UCSB. He also leads the Green scale effort for energy-efficient computing. Chong received his Ph.D from MIT in 1996 and was a faculty member and Chancellor’s fellow at UC Davis from 1997 to 2005. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the DARPATech Most Significant Technical Achievement Award, and 5 best paper awards. His research interests include emerging technologies for computing, multicore and embedded architectures, computer security, and sustainable computing.
