Keynote speakers
Jennifer keynote: Prof. Willy Susilo (University of Wollongong)
Title: Cloud Computing: Research Trends and Gaps
Abstract: Cloud computing is considered as one of the most prominent paradigms in the information technology industry, since it can significantly reduce the costs of hardware and software resources in computing infrastructure. This convenience has enabled corporations to efficiently use cloud storage as a mechanism to share data and cloud computing as a mechanism to outsource computing. One of the most important works in the area of cloud computing is how to provide security protections. The work in the cryptography literature has been very rich in this area, as it has been studied in the past two decades. In this lecture, we will revisit the topics that researchers have been studying. Specifically, we will provide an overview on what research topic that was studied, and currently being studied in the literature. We provide a comprehensive understanding of cloud computing research based on the published papers spanning from 2007 to 2023. Furthermore, we also discuss the gap between theory and the implementation of the proposed solutions.
Biography:
Willy Susilo is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. He holds the most prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. He is the director of Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, UOW. He is an IEEE Fellow, an IET Fellow, an ACS Fellow and an AAIA Fellow. Previously, he was awarded the prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2009. He has published more than 500 papers in journals and conference proceedings in cryptography and network security. In 2016, he was awarded the ``Researcher of the Year” at UOW, due to his research excellence and contributions. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Information journal and the Special Content Editor of the Elsevier’s Computer Standards and Interfaces. He is also serving as an Associate Editors in several international jornals, including IEEE Transactions. He has also served as the program committee member of several international conferences.
Keynote: Prof. Yang Zhang (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security)
Title: Safety Assessment of Large Generative Models
Abstract: During the past two years, large generative models like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT have made tremendous progress. While reshaping our daily lives, recent research shows that these large models have severe security and safety issues. In this talk, I will cover some of our recent works in this field. First, I will talk about safety and security attacks against text-to-image generative models, like prompt stealing and unsafe generation. Second, I will focus on large language models, and discuss jailbreak attacks and machine-generated text detection/attribution.
Biography:
Yang Zhang (https://yangzhangalmo.github.io/) is a tenured faculty (equivalent to full professor) at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany. His research concentrates on trustworthy machine learning. Moreover, he works on measuring and understanding misinformation and unsafe content like hateful memes on the Internet. Over the years, he has published multiple papers at top venues in information security, including CCS, NDSS, Oakland, and USENIX Security. His work has received the NDSS 2019 distinguished paper award and the CCS 2022 best paper award runner-up.
Keynote: Prof. Yulei Sui (University of New South Wales)
Title: Path-Sensitive Abstract Execution for Software Vulnerability Detection
Abstract: Abstract Execution or Abstract Interpretation is a general static analysis framework that aims to soundly approximate the runtime behaviors of a program. It provides a rigorous guarantee to prove or disprove code behaviors during compile time. This framework can be used to facilitate the detection of a variety of software vulnerabilities, including information leaks, buffer overflows, and assertion errors. In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in developing precise path-sensitive abstract interpretation techniques on top of our SVF framework (https://github.com/SVF-tools/SVF). This includes a cross-domain abstract execution (published in ICSE 2024) and graph simplification techniques for typestate path-sensitive analysis (published in FSE 2024). We will detail our methods for making path-sensitive analysis scalable to large codebases and effective in detecting a range of security vulnerabilities, and discuss future research opportunities.
Biography:
Yulei Sui is a Scientia Associate Professor at School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales (UNSW). He is broadly interested in Secure Software Engineering and Machine Learning. In particular, his research focuses on building open-source frameworks for static analysis and verification techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. His papers have been published in top-tier conferences and journals in the field of programming languages and software engineering with a number of Distinguished or Best Paper Awards in ICSE, OOPSLA, SAS. He was a plenary talk speaker at EuroLLVM 2016, received a JSPS Invitational Fellowship in 2022, an ARC DECRA, an ARC Future Fellowship, and a Google ASPIRE Award. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a Fellow of Engineers Australia (FIEAust).
Invited talks
Keynote: Yang-Wai (Casey) Chow (University of Wollongong)
Title: Cybersecurity and the Metaverse
Abstract: The popularity of the Metaverse has rapidly increased in recent years. However, despite the attention, investment, and promise of the Metaverse, there are various cybersecurity issues and challenges that must be addressed before the Metaverse can truly be adopted in practice for serious applications. The Metaverse is multidisciplinary and its realisation requires the integration of various technologies, for example, immersive virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and cloud technologies, which present many challenges. This talk will provide an overview of the cybersecurity threats faced by the Metaverse, and existing and future research directions on the development of countermeasures against such threats.
Biography:
Yang-Wai Chow is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Head of the School of Computing and Information Technology at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. He is a member of the Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, UOW. His research interests are in the area of interactive systems, including immersive virtual reality, multimedia security and cyber security. He has received several grants for his work in these areas and has published in various international conferences and journals. He is an Editor for Elsevier’s Computer Standards & Interfaces and serves on the program committee of several international conferences and journals.
Keynote: Dr. John Yuen (Monash University)
Title: zkMatrix: Batched Short Proof for Committed Matrix Multiplication
Abstract: Matrix multiplication is a common operation in applications like machine learning and data analytics. To demonstrate the correctness of such an operation in a privacy-preserving manner, we propose zkMatrix, a zero-knowledge proof for the multiplication of committed matrices. Among the succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge protocols that have an O(log n) transcript size and O(log n) verifier time, zkMatrix stands out as the first to achieve O(n^2) prover time and O(n^2) RAM usage for multiplying two n×n matrices. Significantly, zkMatrix distinguishes itself as the first zk-SNARK protocol specifically designed for matrix multiplication. By batching multiple proofs together, each additional matrix multiplication only necessitates O(n) group operations in prover time.
Biography:
Dr. Tsz Hon Yuen is an associate professor in the Department of Software Systems & Cybersecurity at Monash University. Before joining Monash, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong. He also worked as a senior researcher of Shield Lab at Huawei Singapore Research Centre and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wollongong in 2010. His current research interests include cryptography, privacy-preserving protocols and blockchain. He has published more than 50 technical papers, including top conferences such as Crypto, Eurocrypt, CCS, IEEE SP, USENIX. He is currently a member of the Central Bank Digital Currency Expert Group of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Keynote: Dr. Shabnam kasra (University of New South Wales)
Title: Automotive Cyber Security and Information Privacy
Abstract: Autonomous vehicles communicate with other vehicles, road users, and infrastructure, and operate within intelligent
transport systems. This improves driver decision-making, road safety, and efficiency. Not all automated vehicles are connected, and not all connected vehicles are automated, but technology should converge. The Australian Government has been working with state and territory governments, the industry and the research community to prepare for their safe deployment. Trials are underway, but automated vehicles are not yet available commercially or in general use on public roads in Australia. Developing sophisticated cyber-attack strategies is critical to Cooperative/Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). These strategies, such as ransomware and privacy attacks could lead to vehicle control manipulation or override of autonomous control. As harmful consequences, these are intentional collisions, theft of vehicles, and drivers’ deaths. Especially when multiple CAVs are compromised simultaneously, the consequences could be devastating, causing widespread accidents and disruptions in traffic flows. The current gap in research on the cybersecurity of CAVs is essentially a lack of effective and flexible security measures that can keep up with evolving cyber threats. Bridging this gap is crucial for ensuring the safety and reliability of self-driving cars, which is not only important for the general public but also aligns with government priorities for advancing secure and innovative transportation technologies.
Biography:
Dr. Shabnam Kasra is a Senior Lecturer specialising in cyber security at the University of New South Wales. She earned her PhD in Security Sciences, with a focus on Applied Cryptography, from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests lie in the areas of cryptography, cybersecurity, information privacy, Automotive Cyber Security, and Blockchain. She is a chief investigator in multiple governmental and international research projects including the SELFY consortium, a 7 million Euro European project led by Eurecat. SELFY aims to develop tools for secure and trustworthy connected automated mobility.