Individualized Cybersecurity Research Mentoring (iMentor) Workshop 2023

Title: Streamlining Security Property Assessment for Advancing Cyber Threat Intelligence

Abstract: Real-world malicious cyber activity, or cybercrime, not only endangers public safety but also poses severe threats to national and economic security. As per Cybersecurity Ventures, the global cost of cybercrime is projected to reach an alarming $8 trillion USD in 2023, underlining the urgency of this issue. Cybercrime has long been a critical concern for security practitioners, posing complex challenges that demand constant vigilance and innovative countermeasures.

In this talk, I will unfold the story of my research group's dedicated fight against cybercrime, sharing vital insights and lessons learned along our journey. Our research spans a broad spectrum, focusing on cyber threat intelligence in diverse domains such as web, mobile, cloud, blockchain, and AI systems (including Large Language Model-based systems). I will discuss our group's research agenda, highlighting our innovative approaches and breakthroughs in these areas.

Furthermore, I will present our vision for where our cybercrime research is heading to: emphasizing strategies to enhance protection for large-scale systems and elevating threat/risk awareness among end-users.

Bio: Xiaojing Liao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Grant Thornton Scholar at Indiana University Bloomington. She earned her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include data-driven security and privacy, with specific focuses on system security, cybercrime, as well as privacy compliance analysis. She has published papers on leading system security venues such as S&P (Oakland), Usenix Security, CCS, and NDSS. She is the recipient of the Meta Privacy-enhancing Technology Research Award (2021),  NDSS Distinguished Paper Award (2019), CCS Best Paper Award Runner-up (2021) and ACM SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Award Runner-up (2018).