The Cybersecurity Lecture Series at Georgia Tech is a free, one-hour lecture from a thought leader who is advancing the field of information security and privacy. Invited speakers include executives and researchers from Fortune 500 companies, federal intelligence agencies, start-ups, and incubators, as well as Georgia Tech faculty and students presenting their research. Lectures are open to all -- students, faculty, industry, government, or simply the curious.

RSVP

Abstract:

As software security breaches continue to increase in frequency and sophistication, there has been an increase in the research and development of new methods for improving software security. One such method that has seen a surge of new research recently is software debloating. Several software debloating techniques have been proposed that promise to improve security by removing code bloat at various stages of the software lifecycle. However, effectively measuring security improvement remains a challenge. In this lecture, I will review recently published software debloating techniques and the measures used to assess their impact on security. I will then present my work that demonstrates these measures are inadequate and propose a set of new measures for effectively measuring the security impact of software debloating. 

Bio: 

Michael Brown is a Research Scientist in the CIPHER lab at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. At GTRI, Michael works on a variety of applied and fundamental research projects focused on software assurance. Michael is currently a Ph.D. student at the Georgia Institute of Technology with research interests centered on using software transformations to improve the security computing systems. Michael earned his M.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech and his B.S. in Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati.