Usable Cryptography for Everyday Applications

Strong cryptography fails in practice when people can't use it correctly under normal conditions. This project redesigns encryption prompts and key-management flows for ordinary applications, then tests the redesigns against the defaults most software ships with.

Research Question

Strong cryptography fails in practice when people can't use it correctly under normal conditions.

Project Timeline

Concept

2022-11

Investigation

2023-04

Prototype

2023-09

Evaluation

2024-02

Publication

2024-07

Deployment

2024-12

Student Involvement

3 graduate researchers; findings published with two undergraduate co-authors from CSC306.

Related Research

PrototypeCybersecurity

Adaptive Intrusion Detection for IoT Networks

Home and campus IoT devices are cheap, numerous, and rarely patched. This project builds a lightweight detection layer that learns a device's normal behavior and flags deviations without needing constant vendor updates. A working prototype is deployed on a segment of the campus residence network under controlled conditions.

Secure Systems Group Marcus Webb

Lead Researcher

Nadia Petrov

Research Group

Secure Systems Group

Started

November 1, 2022

Current Stage

Publication