Computer Science | Grinnell College

Thursday, September 27, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

Antonio Bianchi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at The University of Iowa, presents this Thursday Extra.

Mobile application markets, such as the Google's Play Store and the Apple's App Store, receive thousands of new applications every day. Ideally, all these apps should be properly vetted to find both security-relevant programming mistakes. Unfortunately, the sheer amount of the submitted code rules out the possibility of using human experts to analyze it. Consequently, researchers have proposed and implemented different techniques to analyze automatically mobile applications.

In this talk, Bianchi will talk about his research using automated analysis techniques to detect security issues in existing Android applications. In particular, he will present his work in detecting Android applications implementing vulnerable authentication schemas. He will also discuss some of the currently open problems in the field and future research directions.

In the CS Table on April 18, 2017, we will discuss the role of technology in the workforce, specifically at benefits and downsides of automation. There is one reading for this week:

• Claire Cain Miller. The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It's Automation. The New York Times, Upshot. December 21, 2016.

For a little context, here is a twitter feed that regularly features impressive manufacturing robots. These videos are fascinating to watch and can give you a sense of just how disruptive technology can be, particularly in fields that involve significant manual labor.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00-1:00pm in JRC 224B. Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department.

Our topic at this week's Computer Science Table will be software vulnerabilities in cars, as described in this article:

Gallagher, Sean. Highway to Hack: Why We're Just at the Beginning of the Auto-Hacking Era. Ars Technica, August 13, 2015.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/highway-to-hack-why-were-just-at-the-beginning-of-the-auto-hacking-era/

Computer Science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00 to 12:45 in Rosenfield 224C. Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department.