Speaker: Marwan Krunz, Kenneth VonBehren Endowed Professor, Site Co-Director, NSF BWAC Center, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, The University of Arizona
Title: Obfuscation of Transmission Fingerprints for Secure Wireless Communications
Abstract: As we continue to depend on the rapidly expanding wireless ecosystem, we are challenged with threats related to user privacy, data confidentiality, and critical system availability. A significant portion of these threats is attributed to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions. Using commodity radio hardware, unauthorized parties can easily eavesdrop on over-the-air transmissions and breach the privacy of communicating users by tracking their whereabouts and movements, and inferring their associations, health state, and preferences. Common (application-level) cryptographic mechanisms fail to provide adequate security and privacy, as they leave low-level transmission identifiers open to traffic analysis. In this talk, I will present various examples of leaked transmission signatures and discuss how they have been used to breach user privacy and launch sophisticated jamming attacks. I will then present various mitigation techniques for obfuscating wireless fingerprints and countering malicious eavesdropping.
Bio: Marwan Krunz is the Kenneth VonBehren Endowed Professor in the Department of ECE at the University of Arizona. He also holds a joint appointment as a professor of computer science. He co-directs the Broadband Wireless Access and Applications Center, a multi-university industry-focused NSF center that includes 16+ industry affiliates. He previously served as the UA site director for Connection One, an NSF IUCRC that focuses on wireless communication circuits and systems. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Michigan State University in 1995 and joined the University of Arizona in January 1997, after a brief postdoctoral stint at the University of Maryland. In 2010, he was a Visiting Chair of Excellence at the University of Carlos III de Madrid. He previously held various visiting research positions at University Technology Sydney, INRIA-Sophia Antipolis, HP Labs, University of Paris VI, University of Paris V, University of Jordan, and US West Advanced Technologies. Dr. Krunz’s research interests lie in the areas of wireless communications and networking, with emphasis on resource management, adaptive protocols, and security issues. He has published more than 245 journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers, and is a co-inventor on several US patents. He is an IEEE Fellow, an Arizona Engineering Faculty Fellow (2011-2014), and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer (2013 and 2014). He was the recipient of the 2012 IEEE TCCC Outstanding Service Award. He received the NSF CAREER award in 1998. He currently serves on the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networks. Previously, he served on the editorial boards for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, Computer Communications Journal, and IEEE Communications Interactive Magazine. Effective January 2017, he will be the next EiC for TMC. He was the general vice-chair for WiOpt 2016 and general co-chair for WiSec’12. He was the TPC chair for WCNC 2016 (Networking Track), INFOCOM’04, SECON’05, WoWMoM’06, and Hot Interconnects 9. He has served and continues to serve on the steering and advisory committees of numerous conferences and on the panels of several funding agencies. He was a keynote speaker, an invited panelist, and a tutorial presenter at numerous international conferences. See http://www2.engr.arizona.edu/~krunz/ for more details.