UI and security: two sides of the story

Abstract:
In this talk, I will mainly discuss the (in)security of UI as well as how UI can be leveraged to improve systems security.
New UI features often introduce security vulnerabilities in the underlying operating systems. I will describe an evaluation of accessibility support for four of the most popular computing platforms: Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. I will outline new attacks that can bypass state-of-the-art defense mechanisms deployed on these OSs, including User Account Control, the Yama security module, the iOS sandbox, and the Android sandbox.

I will then describe a new systems mechanism called the security overlay, which can intercept user input and application output and display relevant data on an overlay window right on top of the application's UI. For example, the security overlay of a web-based email client can ensure that user sees and agrees that the text on the overlay display is really his message, and that the outgoing email payload matches that text. We call this the "what you see is what you send (WYSIWYS)" policy.

I will also give a brief overview of my current work on biometrics-based user authentication.


Biodata:
Wenke Lee is the co-Executive Director of the Institute for Information Security & Privacy and a Professor of Computer Science and the John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. His research expertise includes systems and network security, botnet detection and attribution, malware analysis, virtual machine monitoring, mobile systems security, and detection and mitigation of information manipulation on the Internet. Lee regularly leads large research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and private industry. Significant discoveries from his research group have been transferred to industry, and in 2006, Lee co-founded Damballa, Inc. to focus on detection and mitigation of advanced persistent threats. He is an ACM Fellow.