Dr Yuval Yarom, a Research Fellow within the School of Computer Science, leads our CyberSecurity research program, working with undergraduate and postgraduate students to produce world leading advances in the area.

Recent results include the discovery of a security issue within USBs, where untrusted devices could spy on keystrokes, as discussed by Yuval “if a malicious device or one that’s been tampered with is plugged into adjacent ports on the same external or internal USB hub, this sensitive information can be captured.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2017/08/15/usb-ports-could-be-silently-leaking-your-personal-data-to-a-malicious-device/#4e7bf3461083).

As part of their work to strengthen cryptographic libraries, Yuval’s team routinely discover and fix vulnerabilities, recently helped fixing two vulnerabilities in libgcrypt – a popular cryptographic library. See https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/04/gnupg_crypto_library_cracked_look_for_patches/ for further information.

Together with researchers from Melbourne and from Canada, Yuval’s team undertook a review of the iVote system used for the WA election and identified possible security and privacy issues with it, as described here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/06/western_australian_online_votes_security_concerns/