April 15, 2015: Invited Speaker Seminar: Toward Understanding Security Through Diversity

Dr. Anil Somayaji
 

Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room EV003.309

Abstract

Many security researchers have recognized the dangers of “software monocultures” where the dominance of an application or operating system can lead to large-scale security problems.  The natural antidote to such monocultures would appear to be software diversity.  However, there is currently no consensus as to how much diversity is necessary (if any), and how much diversity could be achieved for a reasonable cost.  In this talk I will present and synthesize my past work on the software diversity problem.

Biography

Anil Somayaji is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and is Associate Director of the Carleton Computer Security Lab (CCSL).  He received a B.S. (1994) in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. (2002) in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico.  He has served as the program committee chair of the New Security Paradigms Workshop and has served on the program committees of major computer security venues, including ACM CCS, USENIX Security, ACSAC, and RAID, among others.  His research interests include computer security, operating systems, complex adaptive systems, and artificial life.