Leah Findlater:

Title: Accessible Wearable Computing

Abstract: Wearable computing, from smartwatches to head-mounted displays to on-body interaction, has the potential to transform mobile accessibility for people with disabilities. For persons with visual or motor impairments, our research group is exploring wearable computing solutions that provide always-available information access, increased input area compared to traditional touchscreen devices, and can be tailored to each user’s needs. Moving beyond this basic access, we are also investigating how to augment human abilities, for example, by providing hearing and language support on head-mounted displays or augmenting human touch with computer vision capabilities. In this talk, I will discuss projects related to these two threads of work and, more generally, the potential of this emerging area of accessible wearable computing.

Tudor Dumitras:

Title: Vulnerability Disclosure in the Age of Social Media: Exploiting Twitter for Predicting Real-World Exploits

Abstract: In recent years, the number of software vulnerabilities discovered has grown significantly. This creates a need for prioritizing the response to new disclosures by assessing which vulnerabilities are likely to be exploited and by quickly ruling out the vulnerabilities that are not actually exploited in the real world. In our research group, we are exploring the opportunities for mining information about vulnerability exploits from social media sites, where hackers discuss technical details about exploits and the victims of attacks share their experiences.

In the first part of this talk, I will describe the design and evaluation of a system for early exploit detection using information extracted from the Twitter stream. Additionally, as Twitter is a free and open service, which allows an adversary to post false information in order to poison our detector, I will present practical bounds for the damage such adversaries can inflict on a Twitter-based exploit detector. In the second part of this talk, I will describe our broader efforts to understand the lifecycle of security vulnerabilities and the implications of exploit forecasting.