JOINT SYSTEMS AND SDI / ISTC Seminar
DATE: Thursday, August 30, 2012
TIME: Noon - 1:00 pm
PLACE: GHC 8102
SPEAKER: Stefan Savage, UC San Diego
TITLE: Buying Drugs For Science: Addressing Cybercrime From An Economic Perspective
ABSTRACT:
Computer security is a field that is fundamentally co-dependent -- driven to respond by the actions of adversaries. This dance fuels both the research community and a multi-billion-dollar computer security industry. However, to date most efforts have focused on the technical components of this battle: identifying new vulnerabilities, exploits, and attacks, building and deploying new defenses, and so on. However, this focus on the "medium" of the conflict has not been matched by a similar effort to understand the underlying drivers, dependencies and motivations. In this talk, I will argue for a complementary research agenda based on understanding the social and economic forces that drive today's Internet attacks, deconstructing the underlying value chain for attackers and ultimately using this information to better focus on security interventions. I will provide a rough sketch of the modern cyber-criminal ecosystem, describe its dependencies, and highlight some of the key open questions that motivate our focus. Using the sale of counterfeit goods as a case study, I'll show that the empirical analyses of these factors are both achievable and essential for security interventions to have meaningful impact. Finally, I'll discuss the real and significant challenges in conducting this sort of research (which involves both network measurement and direct engagement with criminal enterprises) and in bringing it to appropriate stakeholders to affect action.
BIO:
Stefan Savage is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Applied History from Carnegie Mellon University. Savage's research interests lie at the intersection of distributed systems, networking, and computer security, with a current focus on embedded security and the economics of cybercrime. He currently serves as director of UCSD's Center for Network Systems (CNS) and as co-director for the Cooperative Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses (CCIED), a joint effort between UCSD and the International Computer Science Institute. Savage is a fairly down-to-earth guy and only writes about himself in the third person when asked.
VISITOR HOST: Dave Andersen
VISITOR COORDINATOR: Kathy McNiff (kmm@cs.cmu.edu)
SDI / ISTC SEMINAR QUESTIONS?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/