Overview of Research

Networked information systems are playing increasingly important roles in our infrastructures for critical services such as commerce, transportation, telecommunication and national/international security. The spate of "hacker attacks" at many prominent commercial, military and governmental sites has highlighted the vulnerabilities in these systems. In response, we have witnessed a rapid increase in public and private spending on computer security technologies. In spite of these increased investments, security incidents reported by organizations such as the CERT Coordination Center have continued to increase at alarming rates.

The Secure Systems Laboratory conducts research into developing techniques that can fundamentally alter the balance of power between those trying to secure systems and those attempting to defeat the security measures. The laboratory focusses on proactive cybersecurity, which emphasizes identification of security vulnerabilities and prevention of their exploitation, and system survivability, which emphasizes continued system operation in the face of attacks. These approaches are targeted at various stages in the system lifecycle: requirements and design stage, compile-time, install-time, and runtime. These approaches are based on research in the following technical areas:

Specific projects conducted at the laboratory address: These projects are conducted primarily in the context of the Linux operating system, although the techniques themselves are applicable to all OSes. Secure systems laboratory emphasizes system implementation and experimental evaluation of all the techniques developed in the lab. For additional information about these projects, please visit the projects page, or our publications page.