Technology is reshaping the foundations of democratic society, from the notion of privacy to freedom of expression to the way we choose who will lead.  While these changes raise new challenges for computer security, they also present opportunities to create new technologies that reflect and support democratic values.  In this talk, Prof. Halderman will discuss how his work studying computer voting machines and Internet voting has exposed critical weaknesses and also suggested new ways that technology can be applied to safeguard elections.  He will also discuss state-sponsored Internet censorship and new censorship resistance tools developed at U-M.

Dr. Halderman's research focuses on computer security and privacy, with an emphasis on problems that impact society and public policy.  He is well known for developing the “cold boot” attack against disk encryption, which altered widespread thinking on security, influenced computer forensics practice, and inspired the creation of the subfield of theoretical cryptography.  A noted expert on electronic voting security, he helped lead the first independent review of the election technology used by 500 million voters in India, which prompted the Indian government to undertake major technical reforms.  In recent work, he exposed widespread flaws that compromised the security of 5-10% of secure Internet web servers.

Please check the OLLI web site for additional lectures in the 6-week series, “Computers, the Internet, and Big Data: Benefits and Dangers”, Thursdays, February 19-April 2:

http://www.olli-umich.org/programs_activities/lectures/4th_Lecture_Series.pdf