UPDATE: The DMV Security Workshop 2024 was a great success! A huge thank you to all the speakers and attendees for making it possible!

Workshop at a Glance

The DMV Security Workshop is launching its inaugural event in the 2023-2024 academic year. This new series aims to unite researchers in computer security and privacy from Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

This workshop will be an in-person event at Rice Hall in the beautiful campus of the University of Virginia, taking place on March 4th, 2024 from 10:30am to 5:30pm. The session will cover speed advising, faculty/students lightning talks and break-out discussion sessions. Unlike traditional conferences, DMV Security Workshop emphasizes future collaborations over past work presentations, offering a unique platform for seeding new partnerships and ideas.

The event is open to all researchers in the field from the DMV area. To encourage broad participation, registration for the workshop is free. We will provide coffee and light snacks during breaks, but participants are on their own for covering the costs of all other food, transportation, accommodations (if applicable), and other logistics.

Schedule

Time (EST)
10:30	Registration and Coffee
11:00	Welcome and Overview
11:10	Keynote: Measurable and Deployable Security: Gaps, Successes, and Opportunities Dr. Danfeng (Daphne) Yao. Room: Rice Hall 130 Abstract Security measurement helps identify deployment gaps and present extremely valuable research opportunities. However, such research is often deemed as not novelty by academia. I will first share my research journey designing and producing a high-precision tool CryptoGuard for scanning cryptographic vulnerabilities in large Java projects. That work led us to publish two benchmarks used for systematically assessing state-of-the-art academic and commercial solutions, as well as help Oracle Labs integrate our detection in their routine code screening. Other specific measurement and deployment cases to discuss include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which was involved in high-profile data breach incidents, and machine learning prediction for AI digital health. The talk will also point out the need for measurement in AI-based cryptographic code generation. Broadening research styles by accepting and encouraging deployment-related work will facilitate our field to progress towards maturity. Biography Dr. Danfeng (Daphne) Yao is a Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. She is an Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ‘56 Faculty Fellow and CACI Faculty Fellow. Her research interests include building cyber defenses, as well as machine learning for digital health, with a shared focus on accuracy and deployment. Her tool CryptoGuard helps large software companies and Apache projects harden their cryptographic code. Her patents on anomaly detection are extremely influential in the industry, cited by patents from major cybersecurity firms and technology companies, including FireEye, Symantec, Qualcomm, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Boeing, and Palo Alto Networks. Dr. Yao is an IEEE Fellow for her contributions to enterprise data security and high-precision vulnerability screening. In 2021, she received the prestigious ACM CODASPY Lasting Research Award. She is also an ACM Distinguished Scientist. Previously, she received the NSF CAREER Award and ARO Young Investigator Award. Dr. Yao is the ACM SIGSAC Vice Chair and has been a member of the ACM SIGSAC executive committee since 2017. Daphne received her Ph.D. degree from Brown University (Computer Science), M.S. degrees from Princeton University (Chemistry) and Indiana University (Computer Science), Bloomington, B.S. degree from Peking University in China (Chemistry).
12:00	Lunch and Student Poster Session. Room: Rice Hall’s Davis Commons
1:30	Speed Advising: Speed advising sessions enable students to meet for 15 minutes each with faculty from other universities. Mentors will stay in place, and students will come to them Room: Rice Hall 130
2:45	Break
3:15	Lightning Talks: Ten-minute talks about research. Room: Rice Hall 130 • Xiaokuan Zhang (GMU) Security and Privacy Issues in the Era of Web3 and Metaverse • Huajie Shao (William & Mary) Lens: A Foundation Model for Network Traffic in Cybersecurity • Thang Hoang (VT) Privacy-Preserving and Trustworthy Data Outsourcing • Yixin Sun (UVA) Application-Driven Network Security • Changqing Luo (VCU) Publicly Verifiable Watermarking for Model Identity Protection • Tahseen Rabbani (UMD) Benchmarking the Robustness of Image Watermarks • Amit Seal Ami (William & Mary) Systematically Evaluating Static Analysis-Based Security Testing Tools - The Gaps within Design and Practice
4:25	Break-out Discussion Sessions: Faculty will be divided into groups based on research areas, and sit at different tables for students to come and talk to System and Network Security Room: Rice Hall 109 • Wajih Hassan, Peng Gao, Yixin Sun AI Security and Privacy Room: Rice Hall 108 • David Evans, Bimal Viswanath, Thang Hoang
5:25	Concluding Remarks
5:30	Dinner/Social (On your own)