Thanks to SICSA Cybersecurity theme, I had the opportunity to attend the Usenix Network and Distributed Systems Security conference (NDSS) and present my paper Hardfuzz: DataFlow-Guided On-Device Fuzzing for Microcontrollers, which was accepted to the International Fuzzing Workshop. The journey did not get off to a great start. My flight was repeatedly cancelled because of the storm in New York, which meant I had to spend an extra night at the airport. Once I arrived in San Diego, though, everything went much more smoothly.
San Diego itself was a pleasure to visit, and the sunshine was a welcome contrast to the difficult start of the trip. At NDSS and the co-located fuzzing events, I had the chance to speak with researchers at different career stages and to introduce SICSA and the work we are doing in Scotland. The trip was valuable not only for keeping up with current research, but also for building connections that could lead to future talks and collaborations in Glasgow.
One of the most encouraging parts of the visit was the positive response to SICSA. On the first day of the conference, Professor Luyi Xing from UIUC announced the launch of the Center for Security and Privacy Assurance and Conformance in IoT Standards and Systems (SafeIoT Center). During our conversation, he said he would like to see more universities from SICSA involved in its governance. Dr Rujia Li from Tsinghua University also said he would be interested in visiting Scotland. I had good discussions as well with Dr Ram Sundara Raman at UC Santa Cruz and Dr Lichao Wu at the University of Bristol, both of whom would be excellent people to stay in touch with for future SICSA activities.
I also spoke with several PhD students, including Fangzhou Dong from Arizona State University, Jinbo Du from the University of Pittsburgh, and Paschal Amusuo from Purdue, as well as a number of other students from US institutions. These conversations were useful in a different way, giving me a better sense of how early career researchers currently see the field and which topics are attracting the most attention.
Overall, the visit was an excellent opportunity to promote SICSA, raise awareness of Scotland as a place for security research, and begin conversations that could turn into concrete seminar opportunities in the coming months.
And, in the end, San Diego also gave me some beautiful views to remember.