Three funded security research projects for 2015

Dr Julio Hernandez-Castro has secured funding for three projects starting in 2015.

The first, Improving cyber security using realistic synthetic face generation, has secured funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This project will be looking at the applications of facial recognition to cyber security, in particular authentications and captchas based on face generation and recognition. The project leads are Stuart Gibson and Chris Solomon from the School of Physical Sciences in conjunction with Orr Dunkelman and Rita Osadchy from the University of Haifa. The funding of £195k starts in March 2015 with £64K coming to the School of Computing.

The second, Authenticated Self, has funding for 18 months, from InnovateUK. The project will develop a prototype for a security authentication system using 'tokens' such as ID cards or jewellery as identification. The project will research a system where two of three tokens need to be present for authentication. The project will also use distance bounding protocol to ensure that a person is physically present for authentication which will stop relaying attacks.

Julio said: ‘Hopefully once a prototype has been developed and real-life applications can be seen, we will be able to generate more funding and deploy this technology commercially.’

The project lead is John Batchelor from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts and the funding of £115,958 (£47K for the School of Computing) will begin in April 2015.

The third, Cryptanalysis of ubiquitous computing systems (CRYPTACUS) is European Union COST Program. Julio is the Vice-Chair and Management Committee Member. The project is funded for four years starting in January 2015 and has secured around €500K in total.