The Information Security Group (ISG) Alumni, London Chapter is delighted to invite you to our first seminar in 2016. Dr. Lorenzo Cavallaro, will introduce us to CopperDroid. An automatic VMI-based dynamic analysis system that reconstruct the behaviors of Android malware, developed within the Systems Security Research Lab at Royal Holloway, University of London.

CopperDroid novelty lies in its agnostic approach to identify interesting OS- and high-level Android-specific behaviors. It reconstructs these behaviors by observing and dissecting system calls and, therefore, is resistant to the multitude of alterations the Android runtime is subjected to over its life-cycle. CopperDroid’s analysis generates detailed behavioral profiles that abstract a large stream of low-level—often uninteresting—events into concise, high-level semantics, which are well-suited to provide insightful behavioral traits and open the possibility to further research directions. To this end, Dr. Cavallaro will show current efforts to investigate the efficacy of behavioral profiles of different abstractions to differentiate between families of malware.

Dr. Lorenzo “Gigi Sullivan” Cavallaro was raised in a fantastic epoch where information and knowledge was meant for those who were just curious enough. He grew up on pizza, spaghetti, Phrack (do “smashing the stack for fun and profit” and “IP spoofing demystified” ring a bell to you?), and W. Richard Stevens’ TCP/IP illustrated masterpieces. Underground and academic research interests followed shortly thereafter and he has never stopped wondering and having fun ever since.
Dr. Lorenzo is currently a Senior Lecturer of Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London. Prior joining the ISG, he proudly spent time at Stony Brook University as a visiting PhD scholar from University of Milan, and UC Santa Barbara and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as a PostDoc Researcher. Dr. Lorenzo’s research focuses largely on systems security. To this end, he has founded and is leading the recently-established Systems Security Research Lab (S2Lab) within the ISG, which focuses on devising novel techniques to protect systems from a broad range of threats, including those perpetrated by malicious software. He is Principal Investigator and co-Investigator on a number of UK EPSRC- and EU-funded research projects, sits in technical program committee of top and well-established information security academic conferences and workshops, and has published in top and well-known venues.

The Program:

18.00 – 18.20: Guest arrival and welcome drinks

18.20 – 18.30: Expedia welcome note and short introduction to ISG Alumni, London Chapter

18.30 – 19.30: ‘CopperDroid’ by Dr. Lorenzo Cavallaro

19.30 – 19.45: Q&A

20.00 – 20.30: Networking and Drinks.