What’s New

What's New

(9/2023) One paper accepted to Applied Economics Letters!
(8/2023) Our VICEROY Virtual Institute/Center is funded by GI!. See UCCS Communique news article here.
(8/2023) Our first paper on Space Cybersecurity is accepted to IEEE CNS’2023! This marks the starting point of an exciting research journey! Congratulations to my students Ekzhin, Jose and Antonia!
(7/2023) Our exciting new course CS 3920 Introduction to Defensive Cyber Operation is to be offered starting Fall 2023, and CS 4915/5915 Defensive Cyber Operations will be offered starting Spring 2024. See UCCS Communique news article here.
(7/2023) One paper accepted to IEEE/ACM ASE’2023!
(7/2023) One paper accepted to IEEE CDC’2023!
(6/2023) Three papers accepted to SciSec’2023!
(5/2023) Our paper published in 2022 won AAMI Best Research Article Award! See UCCS Communique news article here and AAMI new article here.
(5/2023) One grant funded by NSF! See UCCS Communique news article here.
(4/2023) Congratulations to Mark for winning USCYBERCOM Analyst Award at Cyber Recon’2023! See UCCS Communique news article here.
(4/2023) One paper on cyber range accepted to IEEE CSR’2023!
(4/2023) One paper on adversarial malware detection accepted to IEEE TDSC!
(3/2023) One international grant funded!
(1/2023) One paper on Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan (NUIT) Attack and Defense accepted to Usenix Security’2023! The UCCS Communique article is here and the UTSA Today article is here. Public Media Reports include (all links checked on 4/24/2023): English Media Reports: Yahoo! News; Hackster.io; BleepingComputer; DataBreaches.net; DarkReading; Malwarebytes Blog; Gizmodo; Jessica Lyons Hardcastle; Chinese Media Reports: Baidu; CSDN Blog; Hetian Lab; Newtalk; German Media Reports: MSN Nachrichten; Spanish Media Reports: Cuadernos de Seguridad; El Confidencial; Russian Media Reports: SecurityLab; PortalTele; 4PDA; Portuguese Media Reports: Security Magazine; Japanese Media Reports: ITmedia.
(1/2023) One paper accepted to Economics Letter—my first paper on economics approach to cybersecurity!
(12/2022) UCCS Communique: 14th Annual Mountain Lion Research Day
(10/2022) I will serve as an Associate Editor of Scientific Reports starting 10/2022.
(7/2022) Eric Ficke successfully defended his PhD Dissertation! Congrats Dr. Ficke!
(6/2022) Active Cyber Interview: Learn How Advances in Cybersecurity Metrics Research Moves Holistic Approach for Cyber Defenses Forward in This Active Cyber Interview
(6/2022) UCCS Communique: New CU Cyber Range aims to make UCCS, CU Denver national leaders in cybersecurity education and workforce development
(4/2022) Mir Pritom successfully defended his PhD Dissertation! Congrats Dr. Pritom!
(3/2022) UCCS Communique: What do you know about cybersecurity at UCCS?
(3/2022) UTSA Today: Our research on cyber threats forecasting is reported by UTSA Today
(1/2022) UCCS Communique: UCCS selected to join U.S. Cyber Command Academic Engagement Network
(1/2022) One paper accepted to IEEE TDSC (on software system vulnerability analysis)!
(1/2022) One paper accepted to JPDC (on blockchain for cybersecurity)!
(12/2021) I’m honored to receive an inaugural Excellent Editor Award for IEEE TNSE (IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering)!
(12/2021) One paper accepted to ICSE’2022!
(10/2021) Huashan Chen successfully defended his PhD Dissertation! Congrats, Dr. Chen!
(8/2021) Our paper on systematizing arms race in adversarial malware detection is accepted to ACM Computing Survey.
(8/2021) Our first paper on Uncertainty Quantification in malware detection is accepted to ACSAC’2021.
(8/2021) Our paper on quantifying the cybersecurity effectiveness of dynamic diversity is accepted to IEEE TDSC.
(8/2021) Deliver a Keynote at SciSec’2021 entitled “SARR: A Framework for Cybersecurity Metrics and Quantification”, which reflects our new progress in this thrust of research.
(8/2021) A new NSA grant is funded as co-PI! Congrats to my PI Gedare and fellow co-PI Philip!
(7/2021) A new NSF grant is funded as PI! Congrats to my co-PIs Charles and Yanyan. Here is the media report.
(6/2021) Our paper on preventive and reactive cyber defense dynamics with the weakest assumption so-far made in the literature is accepted to IEEE TNSE!
(4/2021) Our paper on leveraging dependence to cope with data sparsity in cyber threats forecasting is accepted to IEEE T-IFS.
(4/2021) John Charlton successfully defended his PhD Dissertation. Congrats, Dr. Charlton!
(4/2021) I delivered a talk at DATAWorks’2021 on Cybersecurity Metrics and Quantification.
(3/2021) Our VulDeeLocator (vulnerability detection with high precision) paper is accepted to IEEE TDSC!
(2/2021) Our paper on leveraging human-physical behaviors to detect cyber attacks is accepted to IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
(1/2021) Our SySeVR paper is accepted to IEEE TDSC!
(1/2021) The full version of our challenge-winning AICS’2019 paper is accepted to IEEE TNSE!
(1/2021) Our paper on leveraging dependence to tackle the problem data sparsity in cybersecurity time series forecasting is accepted to IEEE T-IFS!
(1/1/2021) After being on the UTSA faculty for almost 18 years, I’m now joining UCCS. Excited about the ways ahead!
(11/2020) It’s exciting to give an outreach talk to kids on Cybersecurity and Robotics, which is part of the seminar series organized by the TechnoWizards robotics team. There were 35 attendees! I hope my talk has inspired some kids to solve some of the most challenging cybersecurity problems their generation may have to solve!
(10/2020) Our paper on interpreting/explaining the decision of vulnerability detector is accepted into ACM TOSEM! Congratulations to my collaborators!
(10/2020) 3 papers accepted into IEEE ISI’2020! Congratulations to Mir and Eric!
(7/2020) I’m invited to write a paper for ACM MTD’2020 entitled ”The Cybersecurity Dynamics Way of Thinking and Landscape”, which is an even more systematic treatment of Cybersecurity Dynamics than my 2019 paper.
(6/2020) Our paper on systematizing Human Cognition through the Lens of Social Engineering Cyberattacks has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Psychology, section Cognition. Congratulations to Rosa!
(4/2020) We have been conducting 1-day ahead and 7-day ahead forecasting for COVID-19 confirmed cases and death cases. Please
click the links or here to check out.
(4/2020) Fifthdomain.com published our perspective article entitled Coronavirus as a case study for Cybersecurity.
(3/2020) Our first patent, on malware detection, was finally approved after several years!
(3/2020) Our paper on systematizing Ethereum Systems Security was accepted to ACM Computing Survey. Congratulations to Huashan!
(1/2020) Our first paper related to applying Psychology to solve cybersecurity problems has been accepted to Perspectives on Behavior Science!
(12/2019) Our paper (KCRS: A Blockchain-Based Key Compromise Resilient Signature System) will receive a Best Paper Award at BlockSys’2019 (only two papers out of 130 submissions) are awarded — Big congratulations to my collaborators! This paper rejuvenates my research on mitigating the damage caused by the compromise of cryptographic private signing keys or functions before the compromise can be detected by any other kinds of intrusion detection systems, which represents a significant gap between cr yptographic provable security and real-world cybersecurity (and this gap actually serves as the original motivation on inventing Cybersecurity Dynamics!). I published a sequence of papers between 2002 (i.e., key-insulated cryptography) and 2012 (e.g., exploiting social trust to mitigate the damage). More results will come!
(9/2019) One paper on vulnerability detection accepted to IEEE TDSC!
(8/2019) I’m honored to serve as the Steering Committee Chair of The International Conference on Science of Security (SciSec)! We the Steering Committee look forward to working with researchers from the many disciplines to foster a research community to build the Science of Cyber Security on firm Foundations!
(8/2019) Two papers accepted to IEEE Milcom’2019 — Congratulations to Gabe and Eric!
(7/2019) Congratulations to Richard for successfully defending his PhD Dissertation! Richard will join the DoD.
(7/2019) Our first-ever cyber agility framework has received an amount of media attention, including UTSA Today , Army , Federal computer Week , GCN.com , ACM , ScienceDaily , Secureworldexpo , Cyber-Consult , NatureWorldNews , EurekAlert , Defense R&D Outlook (p. 58-61).
(5/2019) Two papers accepted to IJCAI’2019! Thanks to my collaborators for the fruitful collaborations!
(5/2019) Gabe Fernandez successfully defended his MS Thesis! Congrats to Gabe!
(5/2019) I received our Department’s Research Achievement Award! Thanks to my students and collaborators for their contributions!
(3/31/2019) Our paper, which introduces and proves that a large class of unified preventive and reactive cyber defense dynamics is still globally convergent, is accepted to IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking! Congrats to ZongZong!
(3/30/2019) Our paper introducing the first cybersecurity agility metrics is accepted to IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics & Security! Congrats to Joe and Eric!
(3/2019) A new grant on using blockchains to manage cybersecurity is funded by AFRL!
(2/14/2019) See media Q&A interview report on our Cybersecurity Dynamics research!
(1/2019) See media report on our AICS’2019 work (Eurek Alert) and at UTSA News (UTSA Today).
(11/2018) We won the adversarial malware classification challenge organized by MIT Lincoln Lab at the AAAI-19 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (AICS’2019)!
(11/2018) One paper accepted to Journal of Complex Networks! Congrats to Richard!
(10/2018) One paper accepted to AAAI’2019! Congrats to Lin!
(10/2018) Our paper titled ”Modeling and predicting extreme cyber attack rates via marked point processes” is one of the two Highly Commended Finalists for the Best Paper Prize among ALL of the papers published in the Journal of Applied Statistics in year 2017! I thank my statistician collaborators for the joyful endeavor! The way ahead is exciting!
(9/2018) Our project on Adversarial Malware Detection is funded by NSF SaTC program! See media reports here (UTSA Today) and here
(Eurek Alert) and indexed by the Cyberwire at here and San Antonio Express-News reports at here.
(9/2018) Our STRAM framework paper is accepted by ACM Computing Survey! We systematize Trustworthiness into four aspects: Security, Trust, Resilience, and Agility.
(7/2018) Three papers on cybersecurity metrics and data analytics are accepted into Milcom’2018! Congratulations to my students Eric, John, and Richard!
(6/1/2018) Our grant proposal — Enhancing Safety and Security of Clinical Alarm Systems: An interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical-Human Analysis — is awarded by SALSI (San Antonio Life Sciences Institute: Clusters in Research Excellence).
(4/2018) Our paper — Modeling and Predicting Cyber Hacking Breaches — is accepted into IEEE T-IFS.
(4/2018) Our paper — Statistical Estimation of Malware Detection Metrics in the Absence of Ground Truth — is accepted into IEEE T-IFS.
(2/2018) Our paper on quantifying the security effectiveness of firewalls and DMZs is accepted to HotSoS’2018. Congrats to Huashan! A full version on quantifying the security effectiveness of preventive defense mechanisms, including but going beyond firewalls and DMZs, will be available soon.
(2/2018) I will also serve as a Program Committee Co-Chair for ICICS’2018.
(2/2018) Our paper on modeling multivariate cybersecurity risks is accepted to Journal of Applied Statistics!
(11/2017) Congratulations to Marcus for successfully defending his PhD Dissertation! He will join the AFRL!
(11/2017) Co-initiated a new conference: International Conference on Science of Cyber Security (SciSec) and will serve as a Program Committee Co-Chair for its inaugural edition in 2018 (SciSec 2018).
(11/2017) Joined the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (IEEE TNSE)!
(10/2017) A paper on using Deep Learning to detect software vulnerabilities is accepted to NDSS’18!
(10/2017) A paper on building Blockchains for lightweight users is accepted to SEARIAL’17!
(8/2017) A paper on using multi-context features to detect malware is accepted to Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques. Congratulations to Moustafa!
(7/2017) Joe Mireles successfully defended his MS Thesis on cybersecurity data analytics. Congratulations to Joe!
(7/2017) Grant on MTD Dynamics is funded by ARO!
(7/2017) Grant on Predictive Cybersecurity Data Analytics is funded by ARL!
(7/2017) Our paper on proving that Preventive and Reactive Cyber Defense Dynamics Is Globally Stable in the entire parameter universe is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.
(7/2017) Two papers are accepted to Milcom’2017. Congratulations to Marcus and Moustafa!
(4/2017) Our paper on modeling robustness of (non)interdependent networks against dependent and adaptive attacks is accepted to Physica A. The attacks are realistic and defy analytic treatment at this point.
(2/2017) One paper on maximizing the spectral radius of interdependent networks with a given number of interdependence edges is accepted into Physical Review E.
(12/2016) I got UTSA College of Sciences Dean’s Research Achievement Award!
(10/2016) Our paper on using a novel statistical dependence structure to predict the effectiveness cyber defense early-warning is accepted to Technometrics.
(10/2016) Our paper on using Marked Point Processes to predict extreme attack rates is accepted to Journal of Applied Statistics.
(10/2026) Our paper on characterizing and optimizing multiple cyber attacks against a target with observation errors and dependence outcomes is accepted to Reliability Engineering & System Safety.
(10/2016) Our paper on systematizing security metrics is to appear in ACM Computing Survey.
(8/2016) One paper on detecting software vulnerability is accepted to ACSAC’2016.
(8/2016) One paper on attack narratives accepted to The 1st International Conference on Cyber Conflict in the U.S. (CyCon U.S. ‘2016).
(7/2016) One paper on security metrics is accepted to Milcom’2016.
(5/2016) A new grant on “Metrics Framework of Trustworthy Systems: Systematization, Ontologies, Measurements, Properties and Theory
” is funded by ARO/ARL.
(5/2016) In Fall 2016, I will create and teach a new course on Security Metrics. This is exciting as Security Metrics has become one dimension of our X-Y-Z-t “coordinate system ” in our cybersecurity research (see more information on my Cybersecurity Dynamics page at here ).
(4/2016) Moustafa Saleh successfully defended his PhD Dissertation. He actually started working as a full-time Security Engineer at Microsoft in 9/2015. Congrats Moustafa!
(4/2016) I delivered an invited talk on “Grey-Box Cybersecurity Data analytics ” at USAF RATPAC working group in Tampa, Florida.
(12/15/2015) One paper accepted to the journal of Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences.
(12/11/2015) I got UTSA College of Sciences Dean’s Research Achievement Award!
(10/9/2015) Congratulations to my PhD student Richard Garcia-Lebron for winning the Best Graduate Presentation Award in the category of Computer Science and Cyber Security at UTSA’s 2015 College of Science Research Conference!
(4/2015) One paper accepted to IEEE T-IFS and one paper accepted to PLoS One.
(4/2015) Yes, our paper won Taylor & Francis Mathematics & Statistics Readers’ Award 2015!
(3/2015) Our paper entitled Cyber Epidemic Models with Dependences published in Internet Mathematics is shortlisted for Taylor & Francis Mathematics & Statistics Readers’ Award 2015! Only one paper is selected from each of the Mathematics & Statistics journals published by Taylor & Francis.
(2/2015) One paper accepted to HotSoS’15!
(11/2014) The website for our Laboratory for Cybersecurity Dynamics (LCD) is finally up!
(11/2014) Our Cybersecurity Posture paper accepted to InTrust’14!
I will serve as a PC co-Chair for NSS’15 in New York City !
Several papers to appear in various venues.
I will be promoted to Full Professor effective on 9/1/2014!
(6/2014) One paper accepted to IEEE CNS 2014.
(5/2014) Li Xu successfully defended his PhD Thesis. His first employment: Security Engineer, Yahoo! Labs. Congrats!
(5/2014) Zhenxin Zhan successfully defended his PhD Thesis. His first employment: Security Researcher, Junipers Networks. Congrats!
(4/2014) Qingji successfully defended his PhD Thesis. His first employment: Staff Researcher, Huawei Research Center in San Jose. Congrats!
(3/2014) Two papers and two posters accepted to HotSoS’14.
(3/2014) Qingji Zheng won UTSA’s Graduate Research Award. Congrats, Qingji!
(3/2014) One paper accepted to Internet Mathematics.
(2/2014) I was invited to join the Editorial Board of IEEE TIFS (term: 3/16/2014 — 3/15/2017).
(1/2014) I was re-appointed to the Editorial Board of IEEE TDSC for the 2nd term.