Collegium Helveticum
Switzerland
fellow
N. Asokan
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Waterloo, CA
Country of origin (home institution)
Canada
Discipline(s)
Computers and intelligent systems
Theme(s)
Artificial Intelligence; Information & media
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
N. Asokan is professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, where he also serves as the executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Aalto University (FI). Asokan is broadly interested in systems security, focusing specifically on two types of systems: computing platforms such as operating systems and hardware as well as systems based on artificial intelligence. In the past, Asokan explored how usability considerations affect design decisions in systems security. He was a co-designer of the Bluetooth Secure Simple Pairing protocol, which attempts to balance usability and security. He and his students also initiated a line of work on evaluating the usability and security of different types of pairing protocols.
Asokan is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Royal Society of Canada.
Research Project
Understanding the Real-Life Impacts of Security Break
Security breaks are exploitable security/privacy vulnerabilities that are uncovered by researchers who are analyzing a system. Claims of security breaks in the research literature are technically correct and peer-reviewed. However, practitioners and decision-makers need to decide what remedial action, if any, is warranted. Sometimes, claimed total breaks had no discernible practical impact as the affected systems continued to be used years after the initial break announcements and were gradually replaced eventually. This, for instance, happened in the 1990s when vulnerabilities were discovered in cryptographic algorithms, which were nonetheless used in 2G mobile communication systems.
Widespread negative perception from well-publicized breaks can also lead to a substantial opportunity cost. Industry decision-makers may be tempted to prematurely pull technologies from deployment. Moreover, students and starting researchers may shy away from a particular technology that was subject to claimed security breaks because they perceive it as too risky.
Can we assess the realistic real-life impact of claimed security breaks? And if so, how? To begin this conversation, Asokan will arrange a half-day workshop during his fellowship at the Collegium, bringing together cybersecurity experts, industry practitioners, and economists.
Research Interests:
computer science; cybersecurity