Exploring Unanticipated Functionality in the Mobile Ecosystem and Beyond

ABSTRACT

Telecommunication networks form the backbone of our connected society, enabling global voice and data communication. Yet, beneath their seamless operation lies a complex interplay of signaling protocols, legacy systems, and evolving technologies that, over the decades, have exposed both opportunities for innovation and significant security challenges. While these networks have changed over the past 50 years and complexity has migrated outwards to devices, one enduring challenge has been a lack of accessibility. This talk will cover our efforts to better assess security in the mobile device ecosystems, from platforms to core cellular infrastructure. The theme of unanticipated functionality - and the consequences of such functionality on users - is common in security, which I will discuss this theme in the context of marginalized and vulnerable users, whose security needs have been largely unaddressed.

BIOGRAPHY

Kevin Butler is the Director of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research and a UF Research Foundation Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Kevin's research focuses on the security of computer systems as well as the security and privacy of users. He is the PI of a National Science Foundation Frontiers center-scale project on privacy and security for marginalized and vulnerable populations (PRISM). He received an NSF CAREER award in 2013 and was co-chair of the International Telecommunication Union's Security, Infrastructure, and Trust Working Group within the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative from 2016-2022. His work has received multiple awards including from ACM CCS, USENIX Security, ACM CODASPY, and other venues. Kevin is an Executive Committee member of the CRA's Community Computing Consortium and was named to a PCAST review working group.