Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Yong Guan Wins NSF CAREER Award

 

Contacts:
Yong Guan, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering, 515-294-8378
Dana Schmidt, communications specialist, electrical and computer engineering, 515-294-3071

Ames, Iowa – For several years, Yong Guan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University, has conducted research in computer security. His work is now paying off and honors are abounding. Guan recently received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. He also was invited to give a tutorial on digital forensics at a major security conference—the Association for Computing Machinery's Computer and Communication Security Conference—last October and to serve as the general chair of the the nation's top conference in security—the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 2008 Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, California.

NSF research and award

Guan's NSF CAREER award provides $400,000 over a five-year period to fund his current research in wireless security. His work could impact the security in the areas of healthcare, search and rescue operations, power grid operations, and battlefield surveillance. Guan says security and privacy are serious problems for those areas due to the design and tactics being used for those systems and applications.

Currently, attackers can observe and eavesdrop on wireless devices (such as sensors and PDAs), causing the leakage of confidential information or false data reports, Guan says. The failure of these applications can compromise public safety, homeland security, personal privacy, the economy, and society at large. "We're developing methods to provide practical and resilient solutions to this problem," he adds.

As part of this research project, Guan is developing techniques to verify locations of mobile wireless devices and ensure the integrity of information provided by sensors and other devices. For example, firefighters use sensors to learn about the conditions inside burning buildings. The sensors record information about temperature, humidity, and the presence of explosive chemicals. That information is fed to the fire chief so he can decide whether or not to send in his firefighters. For the safety of the crew, the data from the sensor must be accurate.

Location verification has other important applications, too. For instance, individuals can access their computers remotely from nearly anywhere—from an airport, hotel room, home computer, or work station. Today's technology verifies the identity of the person logging in, usually with just a password. But that's as far as the verification process goes.

Guan and his team of researchers are developing location-based access control so the system can verify not only who the person is, but also the location where he is logging in. This is especially important for employees who work with classified data.

Take the Los Alamos National Laboratory security breach that occurred last year, for example. According to reports by CBS News, classified documents, including sensitive weapons-design data, were found on USB thumb-drives during a drug raid at a Los Alamos, California, home in October 2006. The woman believed to have taken the information reportedly took the material home to work on and forgot about it.

With Guan's location-based access control, Guan says an employee dealing with sensitive materials could access classified documents only from a designated work computer at her office in the laboratory, thus preventing people from breaching classified information.

Research background and goals

When Guan began his research, he had one main goal: To develop practical solutions for detecting, tracing, and mitigating cyber-based attacks and criminals. With NSF support, Guan and his team have focused their research efforts on digital forensics. They are designing practical techniques for discovering, extracting, and analyzing digital evidence to accurately prosecute cyber criminals.

As a result of this research, Guan developed one of the first digital forensic courses in the United States at Iowa State University. Now schools such as George Mason University, the University of Massachusetts, North Dakota State University, Dakota State University, and the City University of New York—are seeking Guan's help in creating their own digital forensics classes. Guan, along with his colleagues Julie Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Tom Daniels, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, also received a $1.18 million grant from the Disruptive Technology Office (formerly known as Advanced Research and Development Activity) for researching innovative ways to find hidden criminal network attackers.

Other research Guan is conducting addresses secure network coding and cooperative relaying techniques. Guan, along with his colleagues Ahmed Kamal, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Sang Kim, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, are proposing technology to secure wireless networks. In September 2006, the team received a NSF grant worth $350,000 for this research.

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About Yong Guan: Yong Guan came to Iowa State University in 2002. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Peking University in China, and his PhD from Texas A&M University. In 2004, Guan delivered the keynote address at the Symposium on Computer Forensics. Guan is affiliated with Iowa State University's National Security Agency-designated Information Assurance Center and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Midwest Forensics Resource Center at the Ames Laboratory. He also is a member of IFIP TC-11 WG 11.9: Digital Forensics, the IFIP’s working group on digital forensics. IFIP is the leading multinational, apolitical organization and communications technologies and sciences.

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