DARPA Researchers to Reveal Cybersecurity Tips at NYU-Poly Conference

Brooklyn, N.Y.— Researchers and cyber security professionals will get a rare glimpse into top cyber security measures that hackers developed for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during a November14, 2013, conference on the Brooklyn campus of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly).

The THREADS Conference, part of the NYU-Poly Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW), will present the work of as many as 15 top hackers who participated in DARPA’s revolutionary Cyber Fast Track program headed by prominent hacker Peiter "Mudge" Zatko. The goal was to quickly predict and address the increasing cyber threats, and THREADS will provide timely results to protect hardware, software, embedded devices, medical equipment, machine learning, mobile devices, and network security, and to reduce overall vulnerability.

In all, DARPA funded 100 cyber security projects by individual hackers and companies during the 18-month program. The NYU-Poly CSAW THREADS Conference will act as the de facto report on Cyber Fast Track, allowing attendees to question and interact with researchers.

“Just as vital as rapid development of strong security measures is implementation,” said Dan Guido, an NYU-Poly Hacker in Residence and founder of Trail of Bits, the founding sponsor of NYU-Poly CSAW’s THREADS Conference. “By hearing first-hand about the latest in attack and defense, professionals will be able to quickly bring the best new measures to their institutions. NYU-Poly is pleased to host such an important conference.”

To register, visit https://csawthreads.eventbrite.com/. Details on the conference topics and speakers are available at https://csaw.isis.poly.edu/threads_program/.

THREADS—, organized by Guido, another NYU-Poly hacker in residence, Dino Dai Zovi; NYU-Poly alumnus Julian Cohen; and NYU-Poly’s cyber security students—will open what has become the largest student cyber security event, including contests and a career fair. Now in its 10th year, the Capture the Flag Applications Security Contest has grown to include more than 1,800 teams and 16,000 individuals in the preliminary round. The High School Digital Forensics Competition, in which students use their digital skills to solve a murder mystery, is among the largest contests for high school students in the United States, attracting 500 teams from 300 schools in 2012. All the competitions are organized by NYU-Poly cyber security students and mentored by professionals and academic researchers.

For more information about CSAW, visit https://csaw.isis.poly.edu/.

NYU-Poly was one of the first universities to introduce a cyber security program, and is designated as both a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and a Center of Academic Excellence in Research by the National Security Agency.  The Sloan Consortium, an affiliation of educators and institutions dedicated to quality online education, named NYU-Poly’s virtual graduate cyber security program the Outstanding Online Program of 2011. The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Security and Privacy (CRISSP), a cutting-edge research collaboration of NYU-Poly and other NYU schools, re-examines the entire cyber security paradigm to integrate technology with broader issues such as human psychology, business, public policies and law. CSAW is hosted by NYU-Poly’s Information Systems and Security Laboratory (ISIS Lab).

THREADS is sponsored by Trail of Bits. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is a gold sponsor of CSAW, and Facebook and Qualcomm provide support at the bronze level. To date, 22 companies have provided generous funding for the educational goals of NYU-Poly’s CSAW.