Envisioning and Implementing Horizontal Security
Cybersecurity has its origin in military, which typically exhibits a very
hierarchical structre. But what would cybersecurity look like in a democractic,
horizontal entity? How do actvist groups, worker cooperatives, and other
horizontal groups design security? What technology could we create to facilitate
horizontal security policy creation, implementation, and enforcement?
COLBAC: Shifting Cybersecurity From Hierarchical to Horizontal Designs was
published in NSPW 2021.
- Study the security practices of horizontal organizations.
- Develop a technological solution to allow activists organizations, NGOs,
and other more horizontal groups to avoid “password wars,” or, the occurance of
a malicious insider denying the group access to their third party accounts.
- Identify necessary changes in traditional cybersecurity concepts and
technologies to facilitate horizontality, and implementing them.
- Work towards applying a COLBAC-like solution to the Portuguese Parliament’s
insider attack threat model.
- Presented COLBAC, a collective based access control system, to
Measuring Tor’s User Experience
The Tor Browser is the currently the best low-latency anonymity solution on the
Internet. However, users of the Tor Browser often come across issues. What
isuses do users face when using Tor? Why do users use Tor? How do they
understand what Tor is providing them? What can developers do better to provide
a better experience on their site for Tor Browser users?
Submitted Scanning the Web for Tor Friendliness to PETS 2022.
- Implement recommendations from my previous publications and evaluate their
- Create plugins that allow for easy Tor Browser friendly site development.
- Measured user perceptions of the Tor anonymity network, and why they use Tor.
- Measured what issues new users may face if they were to adopt the Tor Browser
as their default Browser.
- Created a scanner to scan the Internet and provide useful feedback to web
developers on how to improve the Tor Browser Friendliness of their site.
Determining the Practices of People Search Websites
People Search Websites aggregate and publicize users’ Personal Identifiable
Information (PII), previously sourced from data brokers and make it available to
customers who wish to access that information. In this project we study how
people can interact with People Search Websites, how effective data removal from
these People Search Websites are, and dark patterns in the operation of these
``It Feels Like Whack-a-mole’’: User Experiences of Data Removal from People Search Websites was accepted to PETS 2022.
- Study the effectiveness of different methods of data removal from People
Search Websites through an empircal, controled study.
- Studied people’s perceptions of people search websites, their experiences
trying to remove data from them, and their motivations for doing so.
- Worked with Kejsi T. and others to publish ``It Feels Like Whack-a-mole’’
in PETS 2022.
Measuring the User Experience of Generating Deepfakes
Many news articles state that Deepfaked media could erode trust in online media,
and that soon the average person would be able to create a deepfaked video that
could fool others and lead to serious political consequences. But is this true?
What issues stand between the common person and the ability to generate deepfake
media? If they can already generate deepfaked media, how believable are the
media they create?
How Easily Can Novice Users Create Deepfakes? was submitted to SOUPS 2022.
- Figure out next steps.
- Developed study protocol to determine what user experience issues people face
when generating Deepfake media.
- Piloted study protocol with masters students, Ph.D. students, and research
staff to identify and repair flaws.
- Submitted the study propsal to the IRB for approval.
- Performed our study with participants from many different backgrounds.
- Analyzed results.