DATE:

Friday, November 17, 2023

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 314

SPEAKER:

Kai Li, Computer Science, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

Recent years have witnessed growing investments in cryptocurrencies in the global market. Blockchain, the underlying technology supporting cryptocurrencies, is believed to be secure and privacy-preserving due to its open membership, decentralization, and anonymity natures. However, despite the advantages, these natures have triggered new challenges and security risks in the blockchain ecosystem. First, the open membership nature allowing everyone to join the blockchain peer-to-peer network has opened new attack surfaces, enabling adversaries to join the network and launch Denial-of-Service attacks against critical blockchain infrastructures. Second, the anonymity nature that allows people to trade assets without releasing their real identity has created an ideal place for criminals to conduct various digital crimes, such as cryptocurrency scams, enabling them to abuse the blockchain to steal assets from victims without worrying about being held accountable.

In this talk, I will discuss my two recent research projects in the blockchain ecosystem. The first project focuses on discovering DoS vulnerabilities in critical infrastructures inside the blockchain peer-to-peer network. The second project aims to measure and detect prevalent cryptocurrency scams disseminated on various online social networks.

Bio: Kai Li is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at San Diego State University. He received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in May. 2022. His research interests are broadly in system security and network security, with the current focus on Blockchains. His research is widely recognized by the research and industry communities, including publications at various cyber-security and system conferences such as ACM SIGMETRICS, IEEE Blockchain, ACM CCS, NDSS, ACM IMC, ESEC/FSE, ACM Middleware, and research grants supported by Ethereum Foundation. In addition, his research findings are acknowledged by various bug bounty programs in the blockchain developer community. He also had several industry experiences in leading tech companies, including Amazon AWS, IBM Research, etc.

HOST:

Bryan Donyanavard

VIDEO: