Cybersecurity research showcased at Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

By Nicole Capozziello

NDSS is considered one of the “big four” security conferences, along with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), the USENIX Security Symposium, and the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS). 

“It is simply amazing that UB had such a significant presence at this top security conference,” says Chunming Qiao, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “I am extremely proud of our faculty, students, and graduates.”

This year, seven papers were presented by people associated with the department, five by current faculty and two by alums. For 2021, the paper acceptance rate at NDSS was 15.2 percent or 87 out of 573.

Ziming Zhao, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, also co-chaired the third International Workshop on Automotive and Autonomous Vehicle Security (AutoSec), a part of NDSS 2021.

The five papers presented by UB faculty and students were:

• Your Phone is My Proxy: Detecting and Understanding Mobile Proxy Networks by Xianghang Mi (University at Buffalo), Siyuan Tang (Indiana University Bloomington), Zhengyi Li (Indiana University Bloomington), Xiaojing Liao (Indiana University Bloomington), Feng Qian (University of Minnesota Twin Cities), XiaoFeng Wang (Indiana University Bloomington)
• Towards Understanding and Detecting Cyberbullying in Real-world Images by Nishant Vishwamitra (University at Buffalo), Hongxin Hu (University at Buffalo), Feng Luo (Clemson University), Long Cheng (Clemson University)
• IoTSafe: Enforcing Safety and Security Policy with Real IoT Physical Interaction Discovery by Wenbo Ding (Clemson University), Hongxin Hu (University at Buffalo), Long Cheng (Clemson University)
• A Formal Analysis of the FIDO UAF Protocol by Haonan Feng (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications), Hui Li (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications), Xuesong Pan (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications), Ziming Zhao (University at Buffalo)
• C^2SR: Cybercrime Scene Reconstruction for Post-mortem Forensic Analysis by Yonghwi Kwon (University of Virginia), Weihang Wang (University at Buffalo), Jinho Jung (Georgia Institute of Technology), Kyu Hyung Lee (University of Georgia), Roberto Perdisci (Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Georgia

In addition, three CSE alumni presented papers: Hongyi Wu (PhD ’02) and Chunsheng Xin (PhD ’02), both current professors at Old Dominion University, and Murtuza Jadiwala (PhD ’08), an assistant professor at University at Texas at San Antonio and a recent NSF CAREER Award recipient. Wu and Xin were advised by Chunming Qiao while Jadiwala was advised by Shambhu Upadhaya.

The annual conference is attended by researchers and educators, as well as professionals in the fields of security and technology. It “fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security” while enabling the internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies. 

The NDSS 2021 conference was held virtually from February 21-25, 2021.