Security Seminar

In our digitally interconnected world, cyberstalking has become a significant concern for online users worldwide. Young people have embraced new technologies for communication, making social media apps such as Facebook, X, Instagram, Snapchat and other platforms an integral part of their lives for communicating with each...

Cancer-related medical misinformation is a wicked problem, deeply embedded in social, cultural, and technical systems. It represents a deliberate and profit-driven phenomenon, perpetuated by bad actors exploiting online platforms and societal vulnerabilities. Cancer misinformation thrives on information asymmetry, where...

In recent years, building and launching satellites has become considerably cheaper, making satellite systems more accessible to an expanding user base. This accessibility has led to a diverse array of applications—such as navigation, communications, and earth observation—that depend on satellites. However, hardware...

Ethereum's Gasper consensus protocol typically requires 64 to 95 slots-the units of time during which a new chain extending the previous one by one block is proposed and voted-to finalize, even under ideal conditions with synchrony and honest validators. This exposes a significant portion of the blockchain to potential...

Common mitigation strategies to combat harmful speech online, such as reporting and blocking, are often insufficient as they are reactive, involve unethical human labour and impose censorship. This explores alternative counter strategies such as a quarantining tool and automated counterspeech generator. Quarantining online...

Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 16 million registered users by November 2024. In this talk I introduce the architecture of Bluesky and the AT Protocol, and explain how the...

Please note this talk is online only. The focus of this lecture will be on privacy and cyber-security issues raised by extracting mobile data for evidential purposes. Firstly, we will provide an overview of our TAS funded project “Trustworthy and useful tools for mobile extraction” led by Helena Webb. We will also describe...

An emerging supply-chain attack due to a backdoor in XZ Utils has been identified. The backdoor allows an attacker to run commands remotely on vulnerable servers utilizing SSH without prior authentication. We have analyzed the critical attack path to discuss current mitigation strategies for such kinds of supply-chain...

Abstract not available

Decentralized collaboration systems offer powerful solutions for various applications. For instance, Wikipedia currently requires significant operational costs to maintain its servers, but a decentralized alternative could run without such constraints. However, maintaining data consistency across peers remains challenging...