Division of Information and Communication Sciences

Information and Networked Systems Security Research

INSS Projects funded by:

RESEARCH POSITION AVAILABLE

A Research Position is available in the area of Secure Virtual Machines based Distributed Systems in the Information and Networked Systems Security Research at Macquarie University under the guidance of Professor Vijay Varadharajan. The position can be at a Research Fellow level or a Research Assistant level depending on the level of experience and background of the candidate.

The research project involves design and analysis of secure virtual machine based systems. It will address security and trust requirements in virtual machine monitors based architectures, specification of security policies for sharing virtual resources between virtual machines in distributed platforms, design of security and trust management architecture for virtual machine based distributed systems and development of secure distributed Grid application to demonstrate the proposed security architecture in a virtualized environment.

The candidate should have a thorough understanding of operating systems at a detailed level, experience with virtual systems such as Xen and background in distributed systems. Knowledge of secure systems will be a distinct advantage. The candidate should have an excellent background in computing systems concepts and design, and should be able to develop practical proof of concept prototype work distributed systems.

Interested candidates should send their CV along with information on their experience relevant to the project to Professor Vijay Varadharajan via email vijay@ics.mq.edu.au

SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR TOP STUDENTS

Currently there are MQRES scholarship opportunities for potential PhD students in areas such as Trusted Computing, Secure Sensor Networks, Secure Web Services, Mobile Security and Formal Security Verification.

Details can be found at ICS MQRES, or Research Office MQRES.

Applications for these scholarships should be made through the Higher Degree Research Unit. Check closing dates, status and application procedures on the HDRU Scholarships page.

INSS News

Over the Horizon Forum

Experts from government, industry and community organisations met in Sydney on 13th June 2008 to discuss emerging e-security challenges and how to prepare for the future. Prof Vijay Varadharajan was one of the members of the forum.

Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy and the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland MP, said discussions at the Over the Horizon forum will inform the Government's future e-security policy deliberations. For more information view Media Release

Invited Keynote Speaker

Professor Varadharajan was an Invited Keynote Speaker at the 4^th International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC 2008) on 21-23 April 2008.

IT Business Leaders Forum

Professor Varadharajan chaired the IT Business Leaders Forum in Sydney on 7-8 April 2008. The invited speakers included CIO and Senior VP from CPS Energy (USA), CIO from Jetstar (Australia), Head of Infrastructure (Insurance Australia Group), CIO (REA Group) and President and CIO (Linfox Logistics) and Executive Director (Mallesons Stephen Jacques). The event was sponsored by CIO Network, ACS, Search CIO and others.

Research Presentations

In March 2008, Professor Varadharajan visited and had research discussions/presented seminars at Infosys SETLab, Bangalore, Microsoft Research India, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB) and Hewlett-Packard Labs India.

PhD Awarded in 2007 -Sarath Indrakanti, Ching Lin and Junqi Zhang

Sarath Indrakanti, Ching Lin and Junqi Zhang have been awarded their PhDs by Macquarie University.

Junqi Zhang graduated in April 2007 and the title of his thesis "Group key management and multicast security".

Ching Lin on 19th September, 2007 and the title of his thesis "Trust enhanced security for mobile agents".

Sarath Indrakanti graduated on 19th September, 2007 and the title of his thesis "On Engineering Authorization Systems for Web Services based Service-Oriented Architecture".

INSS Group Members have presented recently at the following conferences:

• A Nagarajan, V. Varadharajan, "Trust Management and Negotiation for Attestation in Trusted Platforms using Web Services" 8th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications (PDCAT2007), December 3rd - 6th, 2007, Adelaide, Australia.
• V. Balakrishnan, V. Varadharajan, U.K. Tupakula, P. Lucs, “TEAM: Trust Enhanced Security Architecture for Mobile Ad hoc Networks”, Proceedings of 15 th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON 2007), Adelaide, Australia, 19-21 November, 2007.
• A. Nagarajan, V. Varadharajan, "Trust Management for Trusted Computing Platforms in Web Services" CCS 2007 14th ACM Conference on Computer & Communications Security - Scalable Trusted Computing (ACM CCS STC) October 29th - November 2nd, 2007, Alexandria,Washington, USA.
• Y. Wang, Kwei-Jay Lin, Duncan S. Wong, V. Varadharajan, "The Design of A Rule-Based and Event-Driven Trust Management Framework ", IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering, October 24th - 26th, 2007, Hong Kong.
• V. Balakrishnan, V. Varadharajan, Uday Tupakula, Phillip Lucs, "Trust Enhanced Security Architecture for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks", 4th IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Communications systems (ISWCS07) 16th - 19th October, 2007, Trondheim, Norway.
• V. Balakrishnan, V. Varadharajan, "Mitigating Flooding Attacks in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks Supporting Anonymous Communications" 2nd Australian Conference on Wireless Broadband and Ultra Wideband Communications (AusWireless2007), August 27-30th, 2007, Sydney.
• Y. Wang, V. Varadharajan, "Role-based Recommendation and Trust Evaluation", IEEE Joint Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC07) and Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services (EEE07), July 23rd - 26th, 2007, Tokyo, Japan.

1st Asia-Pacific Summer School on Trusted Infrastructure Technologies (APTISS) 20th - 24th August 2007, Zhuhai, China

The purpose of this event is to bring together world renowned scientists to provide lectures on the latest developments in Trusted Infrastructure such as TCG technologies ( www.trustedcomputinggroup.org ), which are likely to become key standards for next-generation IT infrastructure around the world.

Prof Vijay Varadharajan gave an invited talk on "Trusted Infrastructure Technology".

ARC Discovery Grant Success

Professor Vijay Varadharajan and Professor Chris Mitchell secured an ARC Discovery Grant in the latest round for a project on "Techniques for the Design of Trust Enhanced Secure Distributed Applications". The project will run from January 2007 to December 2009.

Visit to Research Centres in Beijing

Professor Vijay Varadharajan visited Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing and gave a presentation on "Trust Enhanced Security and Peer to Peer Computing" to researchers on 25th October, 2006.

Whilst in Beijing, Prof Varadharajan also visited Hewlett-Packard Labs China, and gave a presentation on "Challenges for Computing and Engineering - Systems Approach and Trust Enhanced Security" on 26th October, 2006.

Microsoft Faculty Summit - Beijing, China 23rd - 24th October, 2006

Professor Vijay Varadharajan attended the Microsoft Faculty Summit in Beijing 23rd - 24th October, 2006. He chaired a high level panel discussion with senior academic leaders from various countries from around the world on the issue of fostering high quality research students in computer science and information technology. The panel members included:

Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Tsinghua University, China and Turing Award Recipient 2000 Ke Gong, President of Tianjin University, China
Myung-Soo Kim, Professor and Chair of Computer Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea
Noriko Kando, Professor, Software Research Division, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Pat Hanrahan, CANON USA Professor of Stanford University, USA
Wei-Ying Ma, Principal Researcher and Area Research Manager, Microsoft Research Asia

Award for Research in Trustworthy Computing

Professor Vijay Varadharajan was given an Award for his research contributions to the Microsoft Privacy Program in Trustworthy Computing. A commemorative plaque was presented to him on 21st July, 2006 at a Forum in Microsoft, Redmond, by Microsoft Privacy Strategist J. C. Cannon.

PhD Awarded to Udaya Tupakula

Udaya Tupakula graduated on 20th September, 2006, with his PhD thesis entitled "Modeling, design and implementation techniques for counteracting denial of service attacks in networks". It was accepted for the degree of PhD by Macquarie University.

IT Security Summit 2006 - 15th June, 2006

Prof. Vijay Varadharajan was one of many speakers at the one day IT Security Summit 2006, 15th June 2006 at Convention Centre, Darling Harbour, Sydney. His topic was "It's all about Trust".

2006 IEEE 63rd Vehicular Technology Conference 7-8 May (VTC 2006)

Prof. Vijay Varadharajan gave a presentation at one of the Panel Session at the 63rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC 2006) in Melbourne, 7-8 May 2006.

2GB Radio Interview

Recently Prof. Vijay Varadharajan gave an interview on Sydney radio station 2GB on Identity Theft. He discussed issues of the role and the nature of identities in the digital world and opportunities for stealing and masquerading, and possible countermeasures that could be taken.

Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering

Congratulations to Udaya Tupakula, INSS Research Assistant, who has been chosen as a candidate for inclusion in the 2006-2007 (9th) edition of Who's Who in Science and Engineering, scheduled to be published in September 2006. This is a significant honour, an achievement in itself, that is afforded to very few individuals in the course of a lifetime.

INSS Student receives Macquarie University Student Travel Scholarship

Venkatesan Balakrishnan, who is a PhD student and a member of the INSS Research Group, received a Macquarie University Student International Travel Scholarship. He presented his accepted paper to the 10th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Networks Management and Operations Symposium (NOMS 2006) in Vancouver, Canada, 3-7 April, 2006.

Keynote Speech at the International Conference on Information System Security ICISS 2005

Professor Vijay Varadharajan gave a Keynote Speech at the International Conference on Information System Security ICISS'2005 in Dec. 2005 on "Authorization and Trust Enhanced Security of Distributed Applications"

Invited Fellow at British Telecom Research Labs, UK

Professor Vijay Varadharajan was invited as a Fellow at British Telecom Labs in June/July 2005. He worked with the management teams and various research centres at British Telecom on the possible strategies for research trends in security mobility and networks and their implications for telecommunications and computing industry.

Invited Talks at Microsoft Redmond, USA

Professor Vijay Varadharajan gave invited seminars and talks in July/August 2005 on Web Services Security, Secure Authorization Architecture, Security Policies and their Applications in Healthcare to Research Groups and Developers and Consultants at Microsoft in Redmond USA.

Chairman at Information Security World Australia

Professor Vijay Varadharajan chaired the Information Security World 2005 Event on 7 Sept. 2005 held at the Sydney Convention Centre at Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia. The event is one of the important annual events in the calendar of Information Security in Australia. It had numerous sponsors including Sun Microsystems, ISC2, ASIS Security Alliance and ISSA. There were several presentations from industry and academia including speakers from Standard Chartered Bank in the UK, Sun Microsystems, Blackberry Research, Qantas and Standards Australia. There were also 2 international panel sessions on Open Source versus Proprietary Software and Security Technology Roadmap. It was a highly successful event.

Professor Vijay Varadharajan's Interview on Research Supervision in Sydney Morning Herald (12 September, 2005) Postgraduate Study Supplement

As part of the Postgraduate Study Supplement in the Sydney Morning Herald, Prof Vijay Varadharajan was interviewed about supervising PhD students. The article explored the idea that supervising PhD students is just like coaching elite athletes. "One of the main stumbling blocks to any project is when the research is not progressing. I believe keeping students motivated is the key to ensuring they are committed for the duration of a project", said Prof. Varadharajan.

Microsoft Research Asia Regional Workshop - May 26-27, 2005

As part of this workshop Prof. Vijay Varadharajan presented a keynote speech on "Trustworthy Computing", as well as hosting a panel session on the future for Research and Curriculum in Trustworthy Computing. For more details.

INSS Microsoft Computing Projects

INSS co-ordinated leading-edge, Microsoft-sponsored computer security projects for Macquarie University post-graduate students for Semester 1 2005, including topics such as Pervasive Computing, Mobile Agents and Secure Routing.

Macquarie University/CSIRO Technology Trends Seminar

Prof. Vijay Varadharajan presented to the MQ/CSIRO Technology Trends Seminar on Trusted Computing. For more details of the presentation