Trustworthy Systems Group

The Trustworthy Systems Group (TSG) is engaged in experimental computer science research that investigates cross-layer methods of creating efficient, trustworthy computer systems. We seek to understand why it seems difficult to build trustworthy systems and how we can get better at it. Our areas of research include tools and patterns for trust design and coordination, operating systems and architectural support for security, debugging, intrusion defense, and infosec education. The TSG is affiliated with the University of Calgary's Institute for Security, Privacy, and Information Assurance (ISPIA).

April 2012: Congratulations to Aswathi, who received a QEII award!
Feb 2012: CSUS talk "Studying Risk, Wreckage, and Errors"
Jan 2012: NSERC ECR supplement to Discovery Grant
Dec 2011: NSPW Panel @ ACSAC
Sept 2011: Research talk @ Purdue on Deep Introspection
July 2011: Quoted in a syndicated news article on recent hacks of NATO computers.
June 2011: US Patent 7,962,798 issued.
April 2011: Locasto awarded NSERC Discovery Grant. [UofC, NSERC]
March 2011: COMTOR funded by NSF TUES program.
December 2010: Locasto on CBC's Homestretch radio program.
August 2010: US Patents 7,784,097 and 7,779,463 issued.
July 2010: Politifact article on the "Internet Kill Switch".

We occasionally contribute to the U of C's wiki:

• A libpcap tutorial
• A Linux command line tutorial

And we occasionally find bugs in real software (12 bugs since January 2011).

Prof. Michael E. Locasto
Bogdan Copos (BSc, TCNJ, 2011 summer research intern)
Robin Gonzalez (University of Calgary, MSc student)
Faisal Iqbal (University of Calgary, MSc student, co-advised with Carey Williamson)
Mateus Oliveria (BSc, TCNJ, 2011 summer research intern)
Ashwathi S. Shiva (University of Calgary, MSc student, co-advised with Carey Williamson)

Information Security Education
Security Considerations in eHealth
Deep Introspection
Trust Distribution Diagrams
Digital Footprint
Entropy Measurement Library
The Comment Mentor (w/ P. DePasquale & M. Martinovic, TCNJ; NSF funding)
Infosec Topics

1. "Intrusion Detection For Resource-constrained Embedded Control Systems in the Power Grid." Jason Reeves, Ashwin Ramaswamy, Michael Locasto, Sergey Bratus and Sean Smith. International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection. (2012)
2. "Exploit Programming: From Buffer Overflows to 'Weird Machines' and Theory of Computation". Sergey Bratus, Michael E. Locasto, Meredith L. Patterson, Len Sassaman, and Anna Shubina. USENIX ;login: vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 13--21 December 2011.
3. "Using Active Intrusion Detection to Recover Network Trust" John F. Williamson, Sergey Bratus, Michael E. Locasto, Sean W. Smith. Proceedings of USENIX LISA 2011
4. "Security and Privacy Considerations in Digital Death." Michael E. Locasto, Michael Massimi, and Peter J. DePasquale. Proceedings of the 20th New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW 2011). September 12-15 2011. Marin County, CA, USA. [pre-proceedings version]
5. "A Failure-based Discipline of Trustworthy Computing" Michael E. Locasto and Matthew Little. IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 9, no. 4, July/Aug. 2011
6. "The Ephemeral Legion: Producing an Expert Cyber-security Workforce from Thin Air." Michael E. Locasto, Anup Ghosh, Sushil Jajodia, and Angelos Stavrou. Communications of the ACM, 2011. Vol. 54, Issue 1, pp 129--131.

> full list...