Tech Talk with Dr. Gelfand
ACM & EHC invite you to a special tech talk by Boris Gelfand, scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), on Wednesday, March 13, 5:00 – 6:00 PM (Central Time) in the CSSE Seminar Room (Shelby 3129).
ACRC will provide complimentary pizza from Marco’s Pizza as well as beverages. In order to have sufficient food on hand and to meet any special dietary restrictions, please register with this Google form:
Tech Talk Topics
Quantum Key Distribution
Boris will present the basic algorithms of quantum key distribution (QKD), some implementation details, and their applications. QKD is a novel mechanism for co-generating symmetric encryption keys on both sides of an optical or free-space network link. A key advantage of QKD is that man-in-the-middle attacks are detectible with very high probability ensuring the safety of the keys generated on both sides.
Analog Aperture
Boris will present a general model of cyber-physical systems and attacks, and will then discuss a class of cyber-physical attacks known as Analog Aperture attacks, characterized by interacting with analog (vs digital) sensors to gain access into a system. He will motivate this by an example of injecting x86 code into a computer via a webcam, using methods derived from an exploit technique known as return-oriented-programming.
Who is Dr. Boris Gelfand?
Dr. Boris Gelfand is a security researcher and systems engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and has many years experience working as a contractor with the U.S. Departments of Defense & Energy, and the U.S. Intelligence Community. Notably he was the chief designer and architect of the National Cyber Range and has been the Principal Investigator of advanced research programs including many from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He holds a PhD in computer science from Michigan State University, as well as degrees in mathematics and physics. He has extensive experience and interest in developing offensive capabilities, especially against large, complex platforms. Prior to joining LANL, he worked for Lockheed Martin in the Advance Technologies Laboratory.