Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series
The computer science departments at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have joined forces to create the Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series. The series, which began in the 1995-1996 academic year, has been made possible with a number of grants from the U.S. Army Research Office, rotated between the departments.
Schedule Of TCSDLS Talks: 2022-2023
Monday, February 27, 2023
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET |
Speaker: Thomas Ristenpart, Cornell University
Title: Mitigating Technology Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence and Encrypted Messaging Host School: Duke University Abstract Computer security is traditionally about the protection of technology, whereas trust and safety efforts focus on preventing technology abuse from harming people. In this talk, I’ll explore the interplay between security and tech abuse, and make the case that trust and safety represents an important frontier for computer security researchers. To do so, I’ll draw on examples from two lines of my recent work. First, I’ll overview our work on technology abuse in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV is a widespread social ill affecting about one in our women and one in ten men at some point in their lives. Via interviews with survivors and professionals, online measurement studies, and reverse engineering of malicious tools, our research has provided the most granular view to date of technology abuse in IPV contexts. This has helped educate our efforts on intervention design, most notably in the form of what we call clinical computer security: direct, expert assistance to help survivors navigate technology abuse. Our work led to establishing the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, which has so far worked to help hundreds of survivors of IPV in New York City. Second, I’ll discuss how basic security tools like encrypted messaging need to be adapted in light of tech abuse. Here we find a fundamental tension between the desire for messaging service providers to help moderate malicious content and the confidentiality goals of encryption, which prevent the platform from seeing content. I’ll show how we end up reconceptualizing and redesigning basic cryptographic tools to more securely support abuse mitigation. The talk will include content on abuse, including discussion of physical, sexual, and emotional violence. Short Biography Thomas Ristenpart is an Associate Professor at Cornell Tech and a member of the Computer Science department at Cornell University. Before joining Cornell Tech in May, 2015, he spent four and a half years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed his PhD at UC San Diego in 2010. His research spans a wide range of computer security topics, with recent focuses including digital privacy and safety in intimate partner violence, anti-abuse mitigations for encrypted messaging systems, improvements to authentication mechanisms including passwords, and topics in applied and theoretical cryptography. His work is routinely featured in the media and has been recognized by a number of distinguished paper awards, two ACM CCS test-of-time awards, an Advocate of New York City award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Sloan Research Fellowship. |
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Additional lectures will be added as they are scheduled.
Dates and titles are subject to change. |
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Times And Locations
All TCSDLS talks will take place at 4:00 p.m. on Mondays, unless otherwise noted.
Duke University Information
- Contact: Debmalya Panigrahi, Assistant Professor, (919) 660-6545 (debmalya at cs.duke.edu)
N.C. State University Information
- Contact: Mladen Vouk, Professor, (919) 513-0348 (vouk at csc.ncsu.edu)
UNC-Asheville Information
- Contact: Marietta Cameron (mcameron at unca.edu)
UNC-Chapel Hill Information
- Responsibilities of local host
- Contact: Jasleen Kaur, Associate Professor, (919) 590-6066 (jasleen at cs.unc.edu)
Previous Years
Talk Recordings
Please see this YouTube playlist for recorded TCSDLS lectures
Previous Series Lecture Information
- 2021-2022 Series (Titles Only)
- 2020-2021 Series (Titles Only)
- 2019-2020 Series (Titles Only)
- 2018-2019 Series
- 2017-2018 Series
- 2016-2017 Series
- 2015-2016 Series
- 2014-2015 Series
- 2013-2014 Series
- 2012-2013 Series
- 2011-2012 Series
- 2010-2011 Series
- 2009-2010 Series
- 2008-2009 Series
- 2007-2008 Series
- 2006-2007 Series
- 2005-2006 Series
- 2004-2005 Series
- 2003-2004 Series
- 2002-2003 Series
- 2001-2002 Series
- 2000-2001 Series
- 1999-2000 Series
- 1998-1999 Series
- 1997-1998 Series
- 1996-1997 Series
- 1995-1996 Series