On Oct22,2014, at the invitation of Researcher Zhimin Zhang, Dr. Yier Jin, an assistant professor in the EECS Department at the University of Central Florida, gave a talk entitled “Computer System Protection through Hardware-Software Collaboration” in Room 446.
Yier Jin is currently an assistant professor in the EECS Department at the University of Central Florida. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering in 2012 from Yale University after he got the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University, China, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. His research focuses on the areas of trusted embedded systems, trusted hardware intellectual property (IP) cores and hardware-software co-protection on computer systems. He proposed various approaches in the area of hardware security, including the first hardware Trojan detection methodology relying on local side-channel information, the first post-deployment hardware trust assessment framework, and the first proof-carrying hardware IP protection scheme. He is also interested in the security analysis on Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices with particular emphasis on information integrity and privacy protection in the IoT era.
During the report, Dr. Jin introduced his research area firstly. He pointed out that, in modern computer system, software needs to be loaded to hardware by the driver during the execution. Thus, the operating system provides the driver access to the kernel, which brings security risks. Through research, Dr. Jin’s team proposed that by defining specific instructions and loading piles, which can mark the kernel extension, it will be possible to detect these piles in hardware. Once being detected, the access authority of the kernel extension will be limited. Therefore, the kernel will be protected against the attack. In this method, specific modules are added to the existing computer hardware to check the memory access memory instructions and pipeline is reused during the calculation of access address. Based on that, the security of the system is enhanced with little payment.
Throughout the report, Dr. Jin not only emphasized on the presentation of his own academic achievement, but also focused on the communication with the participants. After the talk, Dr. Jin answered all the questions raised patiently and engaged in academic discussion actively. At last, Dr. Jin invited the teachers and students for further discussion. 10月22日上午，应中国科学院计算所张志敏研究员的邀请，美国佛罗里达大学EECS系助理教授金意儿博士在计算所446会议室做了题为“Computer System Protection through Hardware-Software Collaboration”的学术报告。 金博士现于美国中佛罗里达大学EECS系担任助理教授，他在2012年获得耶鲁大学电子工程博士学位，分别于2007年和2005年在浙江大学获得硕士和学士学位。金博士的主要研究方向是可信的嵌入式系统和硬件IP核以及计算机系统的软硬件协同保护。他在硬件安全领域首次提出依赖于局部侧信道信息的硬件木马检测方法、部署后的硬件可信性评估框架，以及证明携带硬件IP核的保护方案。此外，金博士对物联网系统的安全以及可穿戴设备尤其是物联网时代的信息完整性和隐私保护方面也有深入研究。
报告中，金博士首先介绍了自己的研究领域。他指出，在现有的计算机系统中，软件的执行需要通过驱动程序加载至硬件单元上，此时，操作系统提供了驱动程序对kernel的访问权限，这样会带来一定的安全隐患。通过研究，金博士的团队提出通过定义特定指令并加载桩，标记kernel extension，在硬件上对这些桩进行检测。如果检测到是kernel extension的 地址，则对其访问权限进行一定的限制，从而达到保护kernel的目的。在此方法中，可以在现有计算机硬件基础上增加专用模块对“对内存进行访问的指令”进行检查，并复用流水线中访存指令的地址计算部分来进行硬件实现。在节省开销的前提下，提高了系统的安全性。
在整个报告过程中，金博士不仅着力于自己学术成果的分享，更注重和参会老师学生之间的交流。报告结束后他耐心解答大家提出的疑问，积极和在场的师生进行学术探讨，并诚邀各位师生进行会后进一步的交流。
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