Keynote Talk
Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis delivered an invited keynote talk on the “Big Data in Cyber Security 2019” event organized by Napier University. More information about the event and the program can be found here.
SCC News
SCC News
World Economic Forum
The Smart Card and IoT Security Centre (SCC) team is actively engaged in a joint project with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The SCC team was approached for their expert advice in order to collaborate on the development of an open government procurement system: “Smart Contract-based Digital Procurement System in Colombia”. The project, initiated by the WEF team along with US universities and the country of Colombia, aims at designing a system that provides transparency to the tendering framework and processes, and enables an open/fair auditing mechanism on the blockchain.
PhD Graduation
In 2018, we celebrated the successful completion of four PhD students, supervised by Prof Konstantinos Markantonakis and the Smart Card and IoT Security Centre (SCC). They are:
- Dr Carlton Shepherd, “Techniques for Establishing Trust in Modern Constrained Sensing Platforms with Trusted Execution Environments”
- Dr Iakovos Gurulian, “On Enhancing the Security of Time Constrained Mobile Contactless Transactions”
- Dr Robert Lee, “Schemes and Applications for Binding Hardware and Software in Computing Devices”
- Rashedul Hassan, “Cheat Detection and Security in Video Games”
Well done to them!
At the same time, the SCC is expanding its research efforts in its established research threads, including payment systems, automotive, blockchain and smart contracts, and secure application execution. We are looking for hard working and ambitious PhD candidates to join our research team.
Patent and commercialization
Prof Konstantinos Markantonakis, Dr Raja Naeem Akram and Mr James Tapsell, worked successfully into the creation of a patent as a “Technique to record an event and its impact on the data during the lifetime of a data – specific to individual entities represented in the data.” The implementation helps in serving General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rights: Right to Access, Right to Forget, and Right to Rectification (with evidence).
RHUL has invested in further business analysis around the commercialisation opportunities of the technique developed at SCC. Furthermore, it has invested in building a commercial grade implementation of an MVP, in order to provide the stepping stone for commercialising the aforementioned patent.
CyberASAP
Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis, Dr Raja Akram and Dr Jorge Blasco Alis from ISG, are leading three projects having secured awards under the Innovate UK Cyber security academic start-up accelerate programme (CyberASAP). This programme provides funding to increase the amount of academic research being commercialised by UK universities through a bespoke programme of support.
Starting this April, with support from industry experts, national Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) and the Research and Enterprise Department at our College, the teams will take part in a 4-month value proposition building activity. This will include a boot camp, programme review and followed by pitching to an independent, expert judging panel. If successful, the teams will progress to phase 2 of the programme, gaining support to identify the best commercial route to build a minimal viable product.
Three teams will be taking forward the following projects:
Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis will lead ‘Transparent Compliance’, a project that will develop technology that holistically generates real time analysis of the security and privacy compliance of an organisation.
Dr Raja Akram will lead ‘AISecure’, a project that will develop technologies consisting of novel tools able to evaluate the security and privacy resilience of an AI algorithm against a comprehensive set of threat vectors. It will also provide digital forensics tools for AI algorithms to ascertain and investigate cyber-attacks and decision making bias.
Dr Jorge Blasco Alis will lead ‘BLEmap: Security for Bluetooth Low Energy Enabled Applications’. BLEmap will help companies to develop secure Internet of Things (I0T) devices that communicate using Bluetooth Low Energy.
For more information on this, and similar funding schemes to support research commercialisation, please contact Fay Kassibawi, Technology Transfer Manager in the Research and Enterprise Department by email, or on 01784 276086.
Inaugural Lecture – Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis
Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis, ISG, delivered his inaugural lecture, ‘Embedded system security, bridging theory and practice, towards a new era of internet-of-things (IoT) devices‘ on 26th of March.
Smart Card and IoT Security Centre Open Day 2019
The ISG Smart Card and IoT Security Centre Open-Day 2019 marks the 17th anniversary of the Smart Card Centre. It will be held in the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway, and acts as a relaxed networking and exhibition event for its sponsors, supporters and industry representatives. There will also be VIP guests and students in attendance (some of whom will be looking for jobs).
This year’s event will be held in memory of Professor Mike Walker, who help to set up the Smart Card Centre in 2002. We really hope you can support us and we look forward to welcoming you in August.
The event is held biannually and comprises a mix of exhibits from our students and industry/organisations. There is also a distinguished guest lecture by Prof Steve Babbage, Vodafone Group. Our Open Days include practical demonstrations and lectures from recognised experts. A buffet lunch and refreshments will be provided.
To attend this event, please click here to get your free ticket.
Quote from Professor Konstantinos Markantonakis, Director of the Smart Card and IoT Security Centre:
“The SCC Open Day was once again a great success attracting more than 100 visitors and 8 exhibiting companies. Our twenty-eight Undergraduate, Master and PhD student posters included topics from drone security, trusted execution environments, automotive security, Internet-of-Things (IoT), smart home and e-health, trusted supply chains, carbon labelling, as well as overall application/system security solutions. All our students demonstrated professionalism, commitment and expertise that was widely recognised by all visitors. Their hard work is leading into academic publications and commercialisation activities. This year’s event was held in memory of Professor Mike Walker, who help to set up the Smart Card Centre in 2002 and demonstrated that the SCC research and commercialization activities maintain their highly respected academic and real world significance.”
Agenda:
09:00 ~ Registration/Coffee
10:00 ~ Introduction and Welcome to the Event
* Welcome to Royal Holloway: Prof. Paul Layzell (Principal)
* Welcome to the Open-Day: Prof. Konstantinos Markantonakis (Director of the SCC)
10:20 ~ Exhibition Morning Session Start
12:00 ~ Buffet Lunch Start
13:00 ~ Exhibition Afternoon Session Start
14:30 ~ Exhibition Awards Ceremony
15:00 ~ Guest Lecture (Main Lecture Theatre), in the memory of Prof. Mike Walker
* Introduction by Prof. Keith Mayes and TBC
* Guest Speaker: Prof. Steve Babbage (Vodafone Group) (see description below)
16:00 ~ Speaker thanks and closing remarks from Prof. Konstantinos Markantonakis
Guest Lecture, Steve Babbage (Vodafone Group): “The History of Mobile Network Security”
This lecture is a tribute to Professor Mike Walker (1947 – 2018). Steve will talk about the history and motivation behind different generations of mobile network security, including the roles played by Mike and by Royal Holloway.
Exhibitors List:
[slideshow_deploy id=’3008′] [slideshow_deploy id=’3016′]Gallery:
[slideshow_deploy id=’3153′]Student best poster awards
[slideshow_deploy id=’3183′]ISG SCC Workshop 2018
On the 1st of November 2018, the ISG SCC Workshop 2018 showcased the excellent work carried out by its summer internship recipient students of the 2017-2018 academic year. The SCC provided the necessary funding and had the privilege of collaborating with eleven amazing undergraduate (UG) Computer Science students investigating a range of topics including data provenance, machine/deep learning, visualisation, blockchain, smart contracts, e-voting, syscall and database monitoring.
The ISG SCC undergraduate internship programme is designed to provide a first-hand experience of research and development at the highest level, by enabling undergraduate students to work with experienced researchers on real world problems related to cybersecurity and privacy.
The ISG SCC staff provides support and direction in selecting a real world research question, co-developing it, finding the core issues that need to be tackled and propose realistic solutions. The programme has a significant active research and programming (development) component, along with extensible emphasis towards exploring commercialisation opportunities.
During the workshop, each intern delivered a soundbite talk summarising their work, the skills they gained and the challenges they had to overcome during the 10 week programme.
Results
- All projects achieved their identified objectives.
- One proposal is already in the commercialisation stage (by RHUL).
- Four papers accepted (published) in international conferences; another paper is under submission and a journal paper under development.
Visiting Researcher Awarded European Emerging Forensic Scientist 2018
Doctor Heckmann Thibaut, who was a SCC’s academic visitor from 2017 to 2018, was rewarded with the “European Emerging Forensic Scientist Award 2018-2021” at the European Acadamy of Forensic Science (EAFS) conference, which took place in Lyon from August 27 to 31, 2018, and which brings together all the European forensic laboratories.
This prize rewards a process of collaboration between the RHUL, the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris (ENS), and the Forensic Science Laboratory of the French National Gendarmerie (IRCGN). In that sense, when considering the latest generation of encrypted mobile devices (BlackBerry’s PGP,Apple’s iPhone), data extraction by forensic experts is an increasingly complex task. Forensic analyses even become a real challenge following an air crash or a terrorist attack. The collaboration between the SCC, the ENS and the IRCGN has helped to develop physical recovery of data on encrypted systems for the purpose of forensic analysis.
The EAFS committee noted that “the recovery of data and exploitation of electronic devices is a fast growing investigation field in forensic IT. Only a limited number of scientists are available in this discipline and all possible incentive needs to be going their ways. Data extraction from embedded and encrypted mobile phone devices is a highly complex task. Those data extractions are most important and fundamental in terrorist cases. In our opinion reading encrypted data is one of the most essential fields of Forensic Sciences in future”.
The techniques developed during SCC/ENS/IRCGN collaboration , put end-to-end and coupled with physical devices (X-ray 3D tomography, laser, SEM, fuming acids), have made it possible to have successful forensic transplants of encrypted systems in degraded conditions and applied, for the first time, on a PGP-encrypted BlackBerry mobile phone (used by terrorist networks and drug traffickers).
Finally, beyond the field of research, the work of the SCC, the ENS and IRCGN had a significant impact on the work of international forensic experts, particularly in the recovery of damaged and encrypted phones.
PhD Studentship in IoT Threat Modelling
Applications are invited for a PhD studentship on threat modelling of IoT devices starting in October 2018, supervised by Daniele Sgandurra. The focus of the PhD studentship is on threat modelling of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the successful candidate will join the Smart Card and IoT Security Center of the Information Security Group. Please note that only British applicants can apply for this position.
More information can be found at this link.
