Projects
Members of the Security Lab are actively engaged in projects in a number of areas of research.
Peer-to-peer security and incentives
(forthcoming)
Electronic voting security
ACCURATE: A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections
A collaborative NSF-funded project involving six institutions, ACCURATE will investigate software architectures, tamper-resistant hardware, cryptographic protocols and verification systems as applied to electronic voting systems. Additionally, ACCURATE will examine system usability and how public policy, in combination with technology, can better safeguard voting nationwide. The center’s research and findings will also apply to other systems where end-to-end security is paramount.
Web and email spam
Trackback Validator
TrackBack is a protocol for automatically placing cross-references on rapidly-updating websites, like weblogs. A legitimate TrackBack to Alice’s site is accompanied by a URL that points to a page which contains a link to Alice. Spam TrackBacks are instead accompanied by a URL that points to a pay-per-click affiliate website or other irrelevant material. The Validator exploits this key difference by crawling the URL accompanying the TrackBack, looking for these inbound links. The result of this simple test is overwhelming: 100% of spam TrackBacks are detected.
