HotSoft

2014-05-09, 11:38 AM
Today, Stevenson successfully defended his MCS (Master of Computer Science)
thesis.
Congratulations Stevenson!
Robert Biddle


2014-04-25, 6:26 PM
Today, Shuja successfully defended his MASc (Master of Applied Science)
in HCI thesis!
Robert Biddle

Schloss Dagstuhl is a computer science research centre in the Saarland, Germany. In September there was a seminar on Live Coding: typically electronic music improvised and programmed live. It made me want to run away and join the circus. The key idea is that live coding is an experience in programming that is common, and exciting, but seldom discussed or supported.

Robert Biddle

Sunset over the University of Calgary in July 2013; and soon sunset over ISSNet.

For the past 5 years, ISSNet has been a big part of our lives. ISSNet is the NSERC Strategic Research Network on Internetworked Systems Security, and it was a real networking and research success. Through ISSNet, we made connections between many of the researchers in computer security across Canada, and built a community that will last a long time. But ISSNet itself is ending, and its 5 year term is done at the end of 2013. To start the process of moving on, we held a summer event in July at the University of Calgary. Normally the ISSNet summer events were “summer schools”, and featured background sessions on all the kinds of work involved in contemporary practical security research. But this year we looked forward, and held one day each on the perspectives from the government, academic, and industry sectors. The students held extra sessions to round out the week. It all worked well, and reinforced the feeling that there is a strong spirit of collaboration that lightens the challenges in this kind of work. What will come after ISSNet? Some plans are already hatching: one is the VENUS effort. But more will unfold in the months ahead: the real legacy of ISSNet is the ongoing community it built.

Robert Biddle

In May we had a visit from Rilla Khaled and Pippin Barr. They were once here doing post-doctoral work, and are now at the Digital Games Institute at the University of Malta. There were in Canada because Pippin was “Game Designer in Residence” at Concordia University in Montreal, and Rilla was working on grants and book chapters. In Ottawa, Pippin gave the keynote talk at the Interface 2013 conference on Digital Humanities, organized by Carleton graduate students.

We were pleased to learn that our survey of graphical passwords has been accepted for publication in ACM Computing Surveys. It will appear in issue 44(4).

Title: Graphical Passwords: Learning from the First Twelve Years
Abstract:
Starting around 1999, a great many graphical password schemes have been proposed as alternatives to text-based password authentication. We provide a comprehensive overview of published research in the area, covering both usability and security aspects, as well as system evaluation. The paper first catalogues existing approaches, highlighting novel features of selected schemes and identifying key usability or security advantages. We then review usability requirements for knowledge-based authentication as they apply to graphical passwords, identify security threats that such systems must address and review known attacks, discuss methodological issues related to empirical evaluation, and identify areas for further research and improved methodology.

After completing his comprehensive examinations, Alain spent the past 3 months as an intern at Microsoft Research. He worked with fellow intern and Ph.D. Candidate Kami Vaniea and mentors Stuart Schechter and Rob Reeder on Laissez-faire file sharing.

It has been a fantastic learning experience on several topics, including the subtle issues involved in designing usable access control, how industry-based research at Microsoft differs from academic research, and sneak peeks of upcoming Windows products, such as Windows Phone 7 and Kinect; a controller-less interface for the Xbox 360.

The Chateau Laurier is an icon of Ottawa: it reminds me of a dreamier vision of Canada, romantic, heroic, and yet knowingly aware of the time. This photo, on display in the Chateau, spoke volumes to me: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Pierre Trudeau, all at the Chateau. It was 1969, and I was 16 and at school only a few kilometers away. Anyway, my visit to the Chateau today, all of 10 minutes drive from our lab, was for the official announcement of SurfNet, the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Strategic Network on Surface Computing. Let’s think of the future.  Robert Biddle

GRAND was announced today: the Graphics, Animation and New Media NCE (Network of Centers of Excellence). This is a national network of scholars in Computer Science, the Social Sciences and Humanities, put together by the redoubtable Kelly Booth over the past year. Our group is leading the project on Security and Privacy in New Media, and is involved in two cool projects on games: play and performance, and games for learning. The announcement was made that NCE conference in downtown Ottawa, where the keynote speaker was Canadian astronaut Julie Payette.