Abstract

We present new methods for defending against client compromises in two
client-server application scenarios.  First, we consider online games,
in which a client "compromise" reflects the unauthorized manipulation
of the game client by the user himself, in order to cheat in the game.
To address this threat, we develop a new cheat-detection method with
which the server can validate that the messages received from the game
client are consistent with the sanctioned client software.  Second, we
consider a user entering private information to a trusted web server,
via a client computer that might be compromised by malware.  To
address this threat, we leverage trusted computing technology in a
novel way to ferry the user's private inputs to the remote server
while ensuring that malware cannot capture it.

Speaker Bio

Michael Reiter is the Lawrence M. Slifkin Distinguished Professor in
the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill (UNC). He received the B.S. degree in mathematical
sciences from UNC in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer
Science from Cornell University in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He
joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1993 and became a founding member of AT&T
Labs -- Research when NCR and Lucent Technologies (including Bell
Labs) were split away from AT&T in 1996. He then returned to Bell Labs
in 1998 as Director of Secure Systems Research. In 2001, he joined
Carnegie Mellon University as a Professor of Electrical & Computer
Engineering and Computer Science, where he was also the founding
Technical Director of CyLab. He joined the faculty at UNC in 2007.

Dr. Reiter's research interests include all areas of computer and
communications security and distributed computing. He regularly
publishes and serves on conference organizing committees in these
fields, and has served as program chair for the flagship computer
security conferences of the IEEE, the ACM, and the Internet
Society. He presently serves on the editorial board of Communications
of the ACM, and he has previously served as Editor-in-Chief of ACM
Transactions on Information and System Security and on the editorial
boards of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions
on Dependable and Secure Computing, and the International Journal of
Information Security. He presently serves on the Emerging Technology
and Research Advisory Committee for the United States Department of
Commerce. Dr. Reiter was named an ACM Fellow in 2008.