IT, Defense and IntelligenceIT, Defense and Intelligencesome current research and future opportunitiessome current research and future opportunitiesIT, Defense and IntelligenceIT, Defense and Intelligencesome current research and future opportunitiessome current research and future opportunities

Tim Finin and Anupam JoshiComputer Science and Electrical Engineering

12 September 2011 http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/r/322

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering• UMBC’s largest department – Faculty: 34 tenure-track, 6 teaching, 16 research;

Students: 900 BS, 225 grad• Degree programs in computer science,

computer eng., electrical eng., systemseng. and cybersecurity– PhD programs ranked highly (EE:68%,

CS:62%) for research productivity in2010 NRC study

– 220 Ph.D.s since 1986• Breadth and focus in research areas – $6M/year in sponsored research

expenditures

Strong growth for computing jobs• Bureau of Labor Statistics ten-year job growth

forecast is strong on IT, with demand exceeding new BS, MS and PhD production

• It projects computing occupa-tions to be ~ 60% of STEM job growth in the next ten years

• Maryland will especially benefit,with its emphasis on DoD,intelligence and cyber security

UMBC is a major producer of IT degrees• Seven IT degree programs, from

computer science to human-cen-tered computing to bioinformatics

• Enrollment in IT programs is up,with > 2400 estimated for 2011-12

• Among all US research universities, UMBC is#2 for undergraduate IT degrees awarded #5 all IT degrees and certificates#31 for IT PhDs awarded

• Among all MD/DE/DC/VA research universities, UMBC is#1 for undergraduate IT degrees awarded, #2 for all IT degrees

and #3 for PhDs awarded• UMBC is NSA’s largest source of computing graduates

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

enrollment in core UMBC IT programs

Based on most recent USDept. of Education data

Based on most recent USDept. of Education data

Ebiquity research group• Active faculty and research students

8 full-time core faculty, 15-20 PhD, MS, and BS students• Diverse research strengths

Semantic Web, mobile and pervasive computing, security, trust and privacy, machine learning, NLP, HPC, social media, medical informatics

• Strong funding base$2.5M/year from DoD (DARPA, AFOSR, ONR, NSA), NASA, NIST, NSF, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, …

• Track record of successful prototype systemsIn use by sponsors and the research community

securesecure

mobilemobile

socialsocial

semanticsemantic

Some Current Project AreasSituational awareness, security, privacy, CPS, and assured information sharing (AFOSR, NGC, DHS)

Executable policies, trustworthy data management in ad hoc networks, privacy

Social networks & social media analytics (ONR, MIPS, Google)Analytics for sentiment, geo-location, identifying communities/influence, information extraction

Semantic web (NSF, SAP, Microsoft)Search, information extraction, ecoinformatics, intelligence, text understanding, linked open data

Intelligent networks & pervasive computing (NSF, Qualcomm, DARPA)

Policy-based router management, mobile computing, context aware computing

Medical informatics and imaging (NIST)Interpreting laparoscopic videos, cellular images, EHR text

securesecure

mobilemobile

socialsocial

semanticsemantic

Situational Awareness• Awareness of what’s happening around

you to understand how information,events, and actions will impact yourgoals & objectives, now and in future

• Common theme in many scenarios as webecome increasingly instrumented andinterconnected

Hot conflicts, homeland security, cyber-security, cyber-physical systems, disaster relief, health-care, IT services, network operations & management …

• Applies to people, smart interfaces, sensors, AI, wireless networks, embedded systems, streaming data, image processing, SIGINT, HUMINT, smartphones, etc.

• Highly distributed, dynamic & interconnected systems

Managing the Assured Information Sharing Lifecycle

• UMBC leads a $7.5M five-year project funded by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research

• Six university groups: UMBC, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, U. Texas at Dallas, U. Texas at San Antonio

• Move information systems from a “need to know” toward a “need to share” (9/11 commission)

• Goal: understand and reduce barriers preventing people and organizations from sharing information with appropriate constraints on security, trust, privacy and quality

E.g.: Securing information networks• Internet routers must share information about

sub-networks, nodes, routes and network status• Accidental or malicious misinformation can degrade or

disable our information systems15% of Internet’s traffic redirected through Chinese computer networks for 18 minutes in April 2010 !!

• We developed an approach to assure safe, dynamic and context-aware router configuration

• Routers’ software agents reason withpolicies and context information todetect, diagnose and recover fromrouting misconfigurations

Router 1

Router 2

` ` `

Ethernet

Ethernet

Serial Line

E.g.: Privacy Preserving Information Fusion across Agencies

New algorithms and computer enforceable policies allow data fusion and mining across organizations with privacy preservation guarantees

Mediator Machine

User 1

User 2

User 3

Query Manipulator (Splitter, Negotiator, Rewriter)

Query Manipulator (Splitter, Negotiator, Rewriter)

Query Manipulator (Splitter, Negotiator, Rewriter)

Database 1

Database 3

Database 4

Database 2

Compliance Node

Compliance Node

Compliance Node

Compliance Node

1

3Compliance

Screen

2

4

3

4

3

Compliance Screen

Compliance Screen

P1

P3

Audit Reports

Audit Reports

Audit Reports

Machine understandable privacy policy for passport database owner includes rules like:•Don’t share data “dumps” for data exploration or fishing•Don’t share data with personally identifiable information (name, DoB,…) unless request is from a certain level of authority for a specified use

Machine understandable privacy policy for passport database owner includes rules like:•Don’t share data “dumps” for data exploration or fishing•Don’t share data with personally identifiable information (name, DoB,…) unless request is from a certain level of authority for a specified use

E.g.: Smartphones sharing context•Platys is an $1.8M NSFproject with Duke & NCSU

•Sensor-rich android phones learn torecognize their user’s context: what,who, where, when, how …

• Information is shared securely and with appropriate detail following user specified privacy policies and context

•The shared information helps other devices learn faster and provide better services

We’re in a two-hour budget meeting at X with A, B and C

We’re in a two-hour budget meeting at X with A, B and C

We’re in a impor-tant meeting

We’re in a impor-tant meeting

We’re busyWe’re busy

E.g.: Tracking Security Vulnerability Info

• Working with Northrop Grumman on system to discover new software vul-nerabilities and track their spread and evolution

• We use human language technology, machine learning and cybersecurity knowledge bases to extract, evaluate and fuse structured information from Web, chat rooms, and social media

• Our prototype automatically adds to, updates and maintains a structured knowledge base

Ex: input and extracted knowledge

Buffer overflow in Fax4Decode in LibTIFF 3.9.4 and possibly other versions, as used in ImageIO in Apple iTunes before 10.2 on Windows and other products, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (application crash) via a crafted TIFF Internet Fax image file that has been compressed using CCITT Group 4 encoding, related to the EXPAND2D macro in libtiff/tif_fax3.h.

Buffer overflow in Fax4Decode in LibTIFF 3.9.4 and possibly other versions, as used in ImageIO in Apple iTunes before 10.2 on Windows and other products, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (application crash) via a crafted TIFF Internet Fax image file that has been compressed using CCITT Group 4 encoding, related to the EXPAND2D macro in libtiff/tif_fax3.h.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Buffer_overflow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Buffer_overflow Manufacturer + Product + Version

Manufacturer + Product + Version

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Knowledge represented as OWL semantic web data

for info, contact finin@umbc.edu or joshi@umbc.edu or see http://ebiquity.org/r/322