College of Engineering Professors Receive Best Paper Nomination from DATE for IoT Security Research
Researchers in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis, received a Best Paper Award nomination at the 2023 Design, Automation and Test in Europe, or DATE, conference in Antwerp, Belgium.
The annual conference is the preeminent scientific event in microelectronics and embedded systems design, automation and testing.
Houman Homayoun, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Satereh Rafatirad, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, led a team of UC Davis researchers on the collaborative paper with George Mason University. Gaureve Kolhe, Ph.D. '22 in electrical and computer engineering, also worked on the project.
Entitled "Federated Learning with Heterogenous Models for On-device Malware Detection in IoT Networks," the project seeks to address security issues brought forward by the emergence of Internet of Things, or IoT, the system of physical objects that communicate with other devices over the Internet. These can range from modern thermostats to smartwatches and self-driving cars.
Internet of Things devices are particularly vulnerable to malware attacks due to often lacking basic security features like encryption. The team proposed using federated learning — a decentralized machine learning distributed over several devices — with a homogenous cloud-based model for prompt and efficient malware detection and containment.
The team’s proposed solution may significantly impact IoT network security design.