Ruhr-Uni-Bochum

Brad Reaves (North Carolina State University)

"Who's Calling? Characterizing and Addressing Telephone Network Abuse"

Copyright: Brad Reaves

Abstract. The global telephone network is a critical communications resource, especially in times where reliable syncronous communication is required. In contrast to the Internet, the global telephone network is more closed, less flexible, and provides fewer security mechanisms. As a consequence, characterizing, detecting, and preventing telephone network abuse is a challenging, interesting, and important problem.  In this talk, we will discuss findings from the largest study to-date that characterizes telephone network abuse and also how we can detect and prevent telephone abuse in spite of the structural factors that make the problem singularly difficult to address.

Biography. Brad Reaves is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. He is broadly interested in measuring and improving the security and privacy of computer systems, with a particular emphasis on telephone networks, enterprise networks, and secure software development practices. His work has provided the first characterization of distinct robocall campaigns, quantified the vast scale of credential leakage in public code platforms, and identified systemic risks in emerging mobile money systems in Africa and East and Southeast Asia. His integrates knowledge from fields as diverse as signal processing and digital communications; data science, machine learning, and statistics; natural language processing; qualitative methods; cryptography; program analysis; reverse engineering; and Internet and telephone networks. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida in 2017 and is the recipient of the 2020 First Place Internet Defense Prize.

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