HAIC

HAIC talk: Current State of Applied Cryptography – Attacks, Standardization, Government Requirements, and Best Practices – with John Mattsson
2022-10-31 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Speaker: John Mattsson, Ericsson Research, Sweden
Lecture description: Applied cryptography has been a very active area in the last 10 years since the Snowden revelations. From being used selectively, cryptography is now used everywhere for both security and privacy. To prevent pervasive monitoring, mandatory to use encryption, identity protection, and perfect forward secrecy are now seen as requirements. The increased use of crypto has put new requirements on performance, and old standards with questionable security have been replaced with new high-performance algorithms with improved side-channel protection. Current activities include aligning with zero trust principles and making systems resistant to attacks from quantum computers. This talk will explain how and why applied cryptography has evolved in recent years and how it will change with the introduction of post-quantum algorithms and key encapsulation mechanisms.
About the speaker: John is an expert in cryptographic algorithms and security protocols at Ericsson Research. His work focuses on applied cryptography, security protocols, privacy, IoT security, post-quantum cryptography, and trade compliance. During his 15 years at Ericsson, he has worked with a lot of different technology areas and been active in many security standardization organizations including IETF, IRTF, 3GPP, GSMA, and NIST where he has significantly influenced Internet and cellular security standards. In addition to designing new protocols, John has also found significant attacks on many algorithms and protocols including Polar Bear, GCM, SRTP, CoAP, and SCTP. John holds an M.Sc. in engineering physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and an M.Sc. in business administration and economics from Stockholm University.
Registration: The event is open to all and free of charge but we ask you to register for the event as it helps us to estimate the number of coffee ordered, thank you.

Internet of Things (IoT) Security: from specification to code – HAIC Talk with Hannes Tschofenig
2021-05-19 16:00 - 17:30 | Online event
Lecture description: During the last 10 years security researchers and standards experts have been working on specifications to ensure that state-of-the-art cryptography can be used on low end IoT devices. Most of those standards efforts have either been completed or are in the final stages. At the same time, industry groups and governmental agencies have written IoT security guidelines offering valuable suggestions for developers to design more secure IoT products. Even IoT security regulation exists asking for state-of-the-art crypto, the use of standards, and for a ban of passwords.
What challenges do developers face designing IoT products? Can they use open source software implementations and follow IoT security guidelines? In this talk Hannes Tschofenig will make an attempt to answer this question.
About the speaker: Hannes Tschofenig is employed by Arm; prior employers include the European Data Protection Supervisor, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Siemens. His work life focused on developing global standards to make the Internet more secure. He has been active in the IETF for the past 15 years and contributed to more than 80 RFCs on security, privacy and various Internet protocols. Hannes co-chaired several IETF working groups, including OAuth, ACE, KEYPROV, DIME, and ECRIT. From 2010 to 2014 Hannes was a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), a committee of the IETF. Currently, he is a board member and chair of the Device Management and Service Enablement working group of OMA SpecWorks.
Registration: https://haic-talk-with-hannes-tschofenig.eventbrite.fi/

Secure Systems Demo Day 2020
2020-10-29 15:00 - 18:30 | Online event
Secure Systems Demo Day 2020 will be held virtually on October 29!
The Secure Systems Demo Day is an annual meet-up for researchers in academia and industry and gives an overview of the current information security research going on in Finland’s capital area. Demo Day 2020 will end with a HAIC talk “Learning from the People: From Normative to Descriptive Solutions to Problems in Security, Privacy & Machine Learning” given by Elissa Redmiles.
Please find more information and the preliminary program on the event page https://ssg.aalto.fi/events/ssg-demo-day-2020/
Please register to receive Zoom meeting information and a calendar invitation!
The Secure Systems Demo Day is part of Helsinki-Aalto Institute for Cybersecurity (HAIC) public outreach program and jointly organized by the Secure Systems Group at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, and Aalto University Department of Computer Science.
If you are interested in the programs of the previous Demo Days, you can find them here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

HAIC Talk: 5th Generation Crime-fighting in Cyberspace: Lawful Intercept in 5G Networks – with Mats Näslund
2020-10-06 17:00 - 18:30 | Online event
Description: Our societies have been prospering, much due to huge technological advances over the last 100 years. Unfortunately, criminal activity has in many cases also been able to draw benefits from these advances. Communication technology, such as the Internet and mobile phones, are today “tools-of-the-trade” that are used to plan, execute, and even hide crimes such as fraud, espionage, terrorism, child abuse, to mention just a few. Almost all countries have regulated how law enforcement, in order to prevent or investigate serious crime, can sometimes get access to meta data and communication content of service providers, data which normally is protected as personal/private information. The commonly used term for this is Lawful Interception (LI). For mobile networks LI is, from a technical standpoint, carried out according to ETSI and 3GPP standards. In this talk, the focus will lie on the technical LI architecture for 5G networks. We will also give some background, describing the general, high-level legal aspects of LI, as well as some current and future technical challenges.

About the speaker: Mats Näslund has an MSc in Computer Science (1993) and a PhD in cryptography (1998), both from KTH, Stockholm. From 1999 to 2017, he worked with most aspects of network and information security, including standardization contributions in IETF and 3GPP, as part of his employment with Ericsson Research. In 2009, he was appointed Inventor of the Year at Ericsson, and is (co-)inventor of over 100 patent families. As of 2017, he works as a cryptologist at the National Defence Radio Establishment outside Stockholm, an agency under the Swedish dept. of defence. As part of his work, he represents Sweden in technical LI standardization in 3GPP. Mats also has a part time appointment as adjunct professor at KTH.

Venue: online
Time: 17:00 – 18:30. The lecture will be approximately 60 minutes, after which there will be time for questions.
Registration: Registration is open.

HAIC Talk: The Impact of the EU’s GDPR on Northern American Companies and Cross-Border Data Management – with Jordan Fischer
2020-02-04 16:30 - 18:00 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Description: In the last two years, new data protection regulations have gone into effect in a number of different regions, with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation garnering the most attention, both within Europe and in North America. For North American companies, the GDPR has heightened the data protection conversation to the executive level. Many companies in the US operated with little to no restrictions regarding data protection, but are now finding themselves brought under the GDPR requirements. Further, individual US states are moving more towards providing similar data protections as the GDPR: California being the most prominent.
This talk will focus on the role of the GDPR and EU data privacy regulations generally in driving the privacy conversation within North America. The varying regulatory requirements are converging when organizations exchange, transfer and process personal information across borders and, as such, forcing companies to take key steps to efficiently and securely implememnt data management practices.

About the speaker: Jordan Fischer focuses her research on data privacy and cybersecurity, bringing an interdisciplinary approach to her teaching. Professor Fischer explores the convergence of the law and technology, researching the practical implications of regional data protection regulations within a backdrop of the global economy. Professor Fischer applies her practical experience working with multinational companies to better understand the evolution of security and privacy within changing regulatory and legal frameworks to balance consumer and end-user rights with enterprise innovation and business efficiencies.
After receiving her JD summa cum laude from the Kline School of Law in 2013, Professor Fischer clerked at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg for Koen Lenaerts, who is now the president-judge of the court. Professor Fischer joined the Kline School of Law faculty in 2015, teaching European Union law courses.
In addition to teaching, Professor Fischer is a co-founder and managing partner at XPAN Law Group, LLC, a certified Women’s Business Enterprise by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and a certified Women Owned Small Business. At XPAN, she focuses her practice on international data privacy and cybersecurity and cross-border data management, with an emphasis in European Union data privacy regulations and the General Data Protection Regulation. Professor Fischer’s background in business and international data protection regulation enables her to provide critical legal guidance to balance business growth and development with data management, network assessments and best practices in cybersecurity. She also counsels clients on cross-border data management, including the complexities of discovery in international litigation.
Professor Fischer is a visiting scholar in the SECCLO programme.
Venue: Lumituuli auditorium, Dipoli, Otakaari 24, 02150 Espoo.
Time: 16:30 – 18:00 (coffee and buns served from 16:00). The lecture will be approximately 45 minutes, after which there will be time for questions.
Registration: HAIC Talks are open to everyone and free of charge but we ask you to register for the event as it helps us to estimate the number of coffee ordered, thank you.

HAIC Talk: Post-quantum Cryptography - with Kenneth Paterson
2019-11-01 16:30 - 18:00 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
The HAIC public outreach initiative aims to make information security more accessible to a broader audience. Part of this initiative, are organizing HAIC Talks, a series of public lectures on contemporary topics in information security. In the style of studia generalia, these lectures are free and open to everyone. No background knowledge in information security is required.
Speaker: Prof. Kenneth Paterson, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Lecture description: Quantum computing represents a new computing paradigm that directly exploits the laws of physics to perform “interesting” computations. In particular, if someone could build a sufficiently large quantum computer and run Shor’s algorithm on it, then they would be capable of breaking almost all currently deployed public key cryptographic algorithms. In this talk, I’ll explain the nature of this threat, and how the cryptographic research community, the tech industry, and governments are responding to it.
About the speaker: Kenny obtained a B.Sc. from the University of Glasgow and a Ph.D. from the University of London, both in Mathematics. He was then a Royal Society Fellow at the Institute for Signal and Information Processing in the Department of Electronic Engineering at ETH Zurich. After that, he was a Lloyd’s of London Foundation Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Most recently, Kenny joined ETH Zurich as a Professor of Computer Science in April 2019. Kenny’s research over the last two decades has mostly been in the area of Cryptography, with a strong emphasis being on the analysis of deployed cryptographic systems and the development of provably secure solutions to real-world cryptographic problems. He co-founded the Real World Cryptography series of workshops to support the development of this broad area and to strengthen the links between academia and industry. He is co-chair of the IRTF’s research group on Cryptography, CFRG. This group is working to provide expert advice to the IETF in an effort to strengthen the Internet’s core security protocols. His research on the security of TLS (the Lucky 13 attack on CBC-mode encryption in TLS and attacks on RC4) received significant media attention, helped to drive the widespread adoption of TLS 1.2 with its support for modern encryption schemes, and was an important factor in the TLS Working Group’s decision to abandon legacy encryption mechanisms in TLS 1.3.
Venue: Lumituuli auditorium, Dipoli, Otakaari 24, 02150, Espoo.
Time: 16:30 – 18:00 (doors open at 16:00).
Tickets: The event is free of charge, but registration is recommended.
This event is supported by the Aalto University School of Science.

HAIC Talk: Science of Security: Authentication and Predictive Logical Models - with Janne Lindqvist
2019-10-04 17:00 - 18:30 | TUAS buiding, Aalto University, Maarintie 8, Espoo
Description: Can we trust the results of security research? Are most published research findings false? How can we improve security research? We will discuss these topics in the context of our recent work. We will show flaws in reporting that we discovered in top security research venues. We will discuss how to avoid these kinds of flaws and how to improve your general understanding of security research. We will also discuss why security research needs predictive logical models.
More information available at http://scienceofsecurity.science and in our recent publications “Robust Performance Metrics for Authentication Systems” (NDSS’19), “Forgetting of Passwords: Ecological Theory and Data” (USENIX Security’18) and “Recruit Until It Fails: Exploring Performance Limits for Identification Systems” (IMWUT/UbiComp’19).
About the speaker: Janne Lindqvist is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, which is NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty. He is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University and an associate professor of computer science at Aalto University. Janne directs the Rutgers Human-Computer Interaction and Security Engineering Lab. His work has received sustained attention in the global media with over 1000 mentions including Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, NPR, International Business Times, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, Fortune, Computerworld, Der Spiegel, London Times, New Scientist, PBS, Slashdot, The Register, Wired (UK), Tietoviikko, Tekniikka ja Talous. Janne’s awards include the Best Paper Award from MobiCom’12, the Best Paper Nominee Award from UbiComp’14, and Sustainable Jersey Creation & Innovation Award 2014. You can find more about his group’s work at https://www.lindqvistlab.org.

Registration: HAIC Talks are free and open to all but we ask you to register.

Secure Systems Demo Day 2019
2019-05-29 13:00 - 18:00 | CS building, Aalto University, Konemiehentie 2, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Secure Systems Demo Day is organized annually to showcase our work during the previous 12-month period. Demo Day 2019 will be held on May 29. This event is part of Helsinki-Aalto Center for Information Security (HAIC) public outreach program and jointly organized by the Secure Systems Group at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. The event is intended to bring local academia and industry together and give them an overview of information security research going on in Finland’s capital area. The event is an excellent opportunity for students and researchers to network and search for open positions within the local infosec industry and academia.

HAIC Talk: 5G Security – the What, Why and How – with Alf Zugenmaier
2019-03-01 17:00 - 18:30 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Description: Standardization of the first phase of the next generation of cellular networks has almost concluded now, and the roll out of these 5G networks is coming soon. This talk will focus on the security of 3GPP 5G network standards. It will give an understanding of how standardization works, what was standardized for security and try to shed some light to why some things are the way they are.
About the speaker: Alf Zugenmaier is professor for mobile networks and security at the university of applied sciences in Munich, Germany. He has been active in standardization within the 3GPP security standardization group since 2008, working on security standards for 4G and later 5G. Prior to becoming a professor, he worked at DOCOMO Euro-Labs in Munich, Germany, on secure mobility. Before that he was a postdoc at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and a Diplom in Physics, both from University of Freiburg. His research interest are in network and systems security and privacy.
Venue: Lumituuli Auditorium, Dipoli, Otakaari 24, 02150 Espoo.
Time: 17:00 – 18:30 (coffee and buns served from 16:15). The lecture will be approximately 45 minutes, after which there will be time for questions.
Registration: HAIC Talks are open to everyone and free of charge but we ask you to register for the event as it helps us to estimate the number of coffees ordered, thank you.

HAIC Talks: Bitcoin, Blockchains and Smart Contracts: Understanding the Crypto in Cryptocurrencies – with Colin Boyd
2019-02-06 17:30 - 18:30 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Description: Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are the most widely publicized applications of cryptography today. Using the example of Bitcoin, we will aim to understand the cryptographic building blocks of cryptocurrencies and how they fit together to enable a distributed payment system. We will then explore why newer cryptocurrencies built on Bitcoin employ more advanced cryptography. In particular we will examine the contentious issue of anonymous payments. Finally we will discuss the concept of smart contracts, how they can be achieved using blockchains, and what kinds of applications they may be useful for.
About the speaker: Colin Boyd completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1995 from the University of Warwick, UK. After 5 years at British Telecom Research Laboratories, where he first became interested in cryptography and information security, he started an academic career at University of Manchester. In 1995 he emigrated to Australia and spent 18 years at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). During this time he became Research Director at the QUT Information Security Institute. In 2013 he returned to Europe, taking up a position as Professor in Information Security at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His main research interests are in cryptographic protocols, including key exchange, payment systems and voting.
Venue: Lumituuli Auditorium, Dipoli, Otakaari 24, 02150 Espoo.
Time: 17:30 – 18:30 (coffee and buns served from 16:30). The lecture will be approximately 45 minutes, after which there will be time for questions.
Registration: HAIC Talks are open to everyone and free of charge but we ask you to register for the event.

HAIC Talk: Cybercrime in the Sky
2018-11-02 17:00 - 18:30 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Description: Every day, hundreds of people fly on airline tickets that have been obtained fraudulently, and much of this is facilitated by cybercrime. I will use this example to explore cybercrime in more depth, and understand its real-world impacts. I will explore the trade in these tickets, drawing on interviews with industry and law enforcement, and an analysis of an online blackmarket. Tickets are purchased by complicit travellers or resellers from the online blackmarket. Victim travellers obtain tickets from fake travel agencies or malicious insiders. Compromised credit cards used to be the main method to purchase tickets illegitimately. However, as fraud detection systems improved, offenders displaced to other methods, including compromised loyalty point accounts, phishing, and compromised business accounts. In addition to complicit and victim travellers, fraudulently obtained tickets are used for transporting mules, and for trafficking and smuggling. I will identify the difficulties faced by law enforcement with identifying those who are complicit in this trade. I will also outline potential interventions, aimed at the act, the actor, and the marketplace, with the goal of preventing and disrupting this crime type.
About the speaker: Alice Hutchings is a University Lecturer in the Security Group at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. She is also part of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, an interdisciplinary initiative combining expertise from computer science, criminology, and law. Specialising in cybercrime, she bridges the gap between criminology and computer science. Generally, her research interests include understanding cybercrime offenders, cybercrime events, and the prevention and disruption of online crime.

HAIC Talk: Hard problems for cryptography: From Factoring to Sudoku - with Chris Brzuska
2018-10-09 17:45 - 19:15 | Dipoli, Lumituuli, Otakaari 24, Espoo, 02150, Finland
Description: Cryptographers use hard problems to construct unbreakable encryption schemes, pseudorandom number generators and more. A typical example is the factoring of large numbers, i.e., we learn in primary school how to multiply numbers, but given a large number, even supercomputers struggle to take it apart into its prime factors.
In the talk, we will see the diversity of hard problems that are candidates for secure cryptography, ranging from factoring to sudoku.
About the speaker: Christopher Brzuska is a faculty member at the departments computer science and mathematics and systems analysis at Aalto University. His research area is cryptography and his activities range from investigating secure payment to generating numbers that look random although they are actually not.
Brzuska studied mathematics in Duisburg-Essen, Bordeaux and Darmstadt, holds a PhD from the computer science department at TU Darmstadt and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Tel-Aviv University and Microsoft Research Cambridge. He was an assistant professor for IT Security Analysis at TU Hamburg where he closely collaborated with NXP Semiconductors.
Registration: HAIC Talks are open to everyone and free of charge but we ask you to register for the event.
