I will be teaching a graduate level course on usable security this semester. It will be held as a 3-hour seminar-style class bright and early on Monday mornings starting January 7, 2013 in the new River Building. … [Read more...] about COMP5900V – Winter 2013 Computer Security & Usability
ACSAC 2012
We recently attended ACSAC in Orlando, FL where Daniel McCarney presented our paper on Tapas, a smartphone based password manager. … [Read more...] about ACSAC 2012
APWG eCrime – Finalist for Best Paper
I presented our eCrime paper, "Does Context Influence Responses to Firewall Warnings?", last week in Puerto Rico. We were happy to learn that we were finalist for the best paper award. It was my first time attending and I wasn't sure what to expect. The conference had a number of very interesting presentations from academia, industry, and government, mostly relating to phishing, but also online security in general. With just under 100 attendees, it was a good size for talking with people and … [Read more...] about APWG eCrime – Finalist for Best Paper
Alain Forget, PhD
We are pleased to announced that today Alain Forget successfully defended his PhD thesis - A World With Many Authentication Schemes. Congratulations Dr. Alain! Alain started a post-doctoral fellowship at Carnegie-Mellon University earlier this month, continuing work in usable security. … [Read more...] about Alain Forget, PhD
ELearn paper accepted
We were happy to hear that our paper has been accepted at AACE ELearn 2012. The conference will be held in Montreal October 9-12. Supporting Learning of an Unfamiliar Authentication Scheme Alain Forget, Sonia Chiasson, Robert Biddle … [Read more...] about ELearn paper accepted
APWG eCrime paper accepted
Our paper on users' understanding and responses to security warnings was just accepted at APWG eCrime. The eCrime summit will be held in Puerto Rico on October 23-24, 2012. The paper is entitled: Does Context Influence Responses to Firewall Warnings? By Muhammad Mahmoud, Sonia Chiasson, and Ashraf Matrawy … [Read more...] about APWG eCrime paper accepted
Usenix Security 2012 paper on captchas posted
Our Usenix Security paper: Security and Usability Challenges of Moving-Object CAPTCHAs: Decoding Codewords in Motion is now available … [Read more...] about Usenix Security 2012 paper on captchas posted
ACSAC paper accepted
We received the happy news that our ACSAC 2012 paper was accepted. Tapas: Design, Implementation, and Usability Evaluation of a Password Manager Daniel McCarney, David Barrera, Jeremy Clark, Sonia Chiasson, P.C. van Oorchot … [Read more...] about ACSAC paper accepted
ISSNet Summer School – Halifax version
The 4th ISSNet Summer School was held at Dalhousie University in Halifax this year. Each year, ISSNet graduate students from across Canada get together for a week of workshops about computer security. It is an opportunity to network with other security researchers and to learn about aspects of security that they may not have previously studied. This year, they learnt about a variety of topics from operating systems, to Canadian privacy laws, data mining and visualization, and industry security … [Read more...] about ISSNet Summer School – Halifax version
SOUPS and U-PriSM
Several people from our usable security research group went to SOUPS in Washington, DC this year. Gerardo presented a poster about our upcoming USENIX Security Captcha paper. He also presented a talk about some on-going captcha work on mobile devices at the U-PriSM workshop. The U-PriSM workshop was a success, with over 80 people attending. We kept the presentations short to allow for discussion, and this seems to have worked well. The audience had many questions, comments, and suggestions … [Read more...] about SOUPS and U-PriSM