Assistant Professor, UIUC Computer Science Department
Thursday, March 24, 2011
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Computer Science Building, Room 151
Faculty Host: Kevin Fu and Ben Ransford

Abstract

Current web browsers are complex, have enormous trusted computing bases, and provide attackers with easy access to modern computer systems. In this talk we introduce the Illinois Browser Operating System (IBOS), a new operating system and a new browser that reduces the trusted computing base for web browsers. In our architecture we expose browser-level abstractions at the lowest software layer, enabling us to remove almost all traditional OS components and services from our trusted computing base by mapping browser abstractions to hardware abstractions directly. We show that this architecture is flexible enough to enable new browser security policies, can still support traditional applications, and adds little overhead to the overall browsing experience.

I will also talk about some of my group's recent work in defending against malicious hardware. I will discuss some of our designs for malicious processors and some of our recent defensive techniques for defending against this threat.

Who Should Attend

Everyone!

About Sam

Samuel T. King is an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Illinois. His research interests include security, experimental software systems, operating systems, and computer architecture. His current research focuses include defending against malicious hardware, designing and implementing secure web browsers, and applying machine learning to systems problems. Sam received his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2006.

Support

This talk is sponsored by the Armstrong Fund for Science.