COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH WEEK JANUARY 2024
Professor Jonathan Protzenko,RiSE group at Microsoft Research Redmond
Professor Carlo Ghezzi, Computer Science at Politecnico di Milano, Italy
COM3 Level 1
Multipurposed Hall 1, 2 and 3 [COM3 01-26, 01-27 and 01-28]
This is a distinguished talk as part of the NUS Computer Science Research Week 2024 https://researchweek.comp.nus.edu.sg/
10:00 – 11:20 Cryptography in the Wild - Kenneth Paterson
Abstract:
In this talk I’ll discuss the analysis of cryptographic systems as they are found in the wild. I’ll reflect on how we conduct this kind of research, why we do it, and what we can learn from it about how developers use (and misuse) cryptography.
Bio: Kenneth Paterson is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Applied Cryptography Group. He is also the current Head of Department. Prior to joining ETH, he was a Lecturer, Reader and then Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London (2001-2019). He was also an EPSRC Leadership Fellow (2010-2015). Kenny was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cryptology from 2017 to 2020 and Program Chair for Eurocrypt 2011. He was made a Fellow of the IACR in 2017 for research and service contributions spanning theory and practice, and for improving the security of widely deployed protocols. He is co-founder of the Real World Cryptography series of conferences. His research has won best paper awards at ACM CCS 2016 and 2022, IEEE S&P 2022 and 2023, NDSS 2012, CHES 2018, and IMC 2018. In 2022, he was winner of the "Golden Owl" best teaching award for the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.
13:00 – 14:20 Proving the security of real-world cryptography and protocols - Jonathan Protzenko
Abstract:
Cryptography and secure protocols are omnipresent in today's computing environment. Together, they form the cornerstone of modern computer security, powering a wide array of components such as secure web browsing (TLS), or private messaging services such Signal or WhatsApp.
Cryptography is not only hard to get right, but the consequences of failure are also catastrophic. Recognizing this, both industry and research have worked together to apply formal methods, and specifically software verification, to establish the correctness of cryptographic components with mathematical certainty. And today, if you are running Firefox, or an up-to-date version of the Python programming language, you are most likely using verified cryptography.
This lecture will provide an in-depth tour of the field of formal verification, and specifically its application to real-world cryptography, including deployment into widely used software. I will provide background on verification ; the various properties of interest one might want to establish when it comes to secure components ; and how to go about proving those in practice, using concrete examples from past research. Near the end of the talk, I will outline future directions and where cryptographic verification might be headed.
Bio: Jonathan Protzenko is a Principal Researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft Research Redmond. His research focuses on advancing the theory and practice of software verification, i.e. showing with mathematical certainty that a critical piece of code exhibits the intended behavior. This is important for the software industry (e.g. cryptography), but also for society at large (e.g. the law).
His joint work (with many wonderful collaborators!) has received the Internet Defense Prize, and his code made it into the Linux kernel, the Python programming language, and the Firefox web browser, among others. His research on verified cryptography was featured in Quanta Magazine and IEEE Computer Magazine; his research on computational law appeared in Communications of the ACM.
15:00 – 16:20 Rethinking software engineering research and education in the light of digital humanism - Carlo Ghezzi
Abstract:
The world in which we live relies on digital technologies, and in particular on software, which operates and interacts with the physical world and humans. In the digital era, software engineers are the demiurges who are creating a new cyber-physical world, where humans, autonomous agents powered by AI, and physical entities live together in a new kind of society. Already in the late 1990's constitutionalist L. Lessig said that software is the law that governs the world and asked for reflection and action, because of the potential disruptive consequences. This is even more urgent today, due to to the phenomenal progress of AI and AI-generated software, which led to an increasing pervasiveness of software-enabled functions, with more and more intimate relation with humans and society. This raises the urgent need for re-thinking the way we do research, the competences and responsibilities of technologists who conceive and develop software, and the skills they should acquire through education. Rethinking should start by asking questions like: Should software engineers care about the human values involved while conceiving/developing new applications? About possible future uses and ethical implications? Can they do it by themselves? What kind of skills would they need? The talk mainly aims at setting the stage for opening a much needed and urgent discussion, which should involve software researchers and educators and has to be broad and open, especially to social science and humanities.
Bio: Carlo Ghezzi is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he is currently Chair of the Ethical Committee.
He is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, member of Academia Europaea, member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (Istituto Lombardo). He has been awarded the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award, the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award, and the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Education Award. He has been on the board of several international research programs and institutions in Europe, China, Japan, and the USA. He has been President of Informatics Europe, the association of computer science departments and research laboratories in Europe and neighboring areas.
Carlo Ghezzi has been Program Co-Chair and General chair of several prestigious conferences (including the two flagship conferences on Software Engineering, ICSE and ESEC) and member of the program committee of many international conferences.
He has been Editor in Chief of the ACM Trans. on Software Engineering and Methodology, Associate Editor of Communications of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Science of Computer Programming. His research has been focusing on software engineering and programming languages.
He co-authored over 200 papers and 11 books, and coordinated several national and international research projects. He was a recipient of a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. He is currently a Steering Committee member of the Digital Humanism Initiative and has recently co-edited a widely circulating open-access book on digital humanism.