Computer science professor receives Google Faculty Research Award

Hong-Sheng Zhou, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Computer Science, has received a 2018 Google Faculty Research Award.

Each proposal for these highly competitive awards goes through a rigorous review process, and only 15 percent of applicants receive funding. Google established the awards program to identify and strengthen long-term collaborative relationships with faculty working on problems that will affect how future generations use technology. These awards are structured as seed funding to support exceptionally innovative work by top researchers in world-class universities.

Zhou’s research project, titled “Secure Computation against Kleptographic Attacks,” was one of 10 selected in the Privacy category. The goal of Zhou’s project is to investigate how to carry out secure multiparty computation in the presence of strong but realistic attacks in which the adversaries are capable of entering a computer and modifying the user’s protocol codes without being detected. The study defines a novel simulation-based security model for capturing kleptographic attacks in interactive protocols and analyzes the feasibility of constructions in the model.

“Kleptography is the study of stealing information subliminally from software/hardware implementations. Security and privacy can be lost on a very large scale, even when traditional cryptography is in place, if kleptography is not taken into consideration,” Zhou said. “My project has an ambitious goal to defend against these attacks, and eventually help people to regain their right to freedom and privacy.”