More appropriate and efficient security solutions against system trespassing incidents can be developed once the attack threat is better understood. However, few empirical studies exist to assess the attack threat. Our proposed research applies “soft science” models (i.e. sociological psychological and criminological) in effort to better understand the threat of system trespassing. The proposed research will draw on data collected on attackers who gain illegitimate access to computers by finding the correct combination username/password on SSH to a computer running Unix, during a randomized experiment. Once an attacker has access to the computer, he/she can build the attack over a period of 30 days. Previous research has shown that a warning banner does not have an effect when attackers launch an attack but does when deciding which computer to use to develop an attack.
Michel Cukier is the director for the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) undergraduate Honors College program. He is a professor of reliability engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
His research covers dependability and security issues. His latest research focuses on the empirical quantification of cybersecurity. He has published more than 70 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings in those areas.
He was the program chair of the 21st IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2010) and the program chair of the Dependable Computing and Communication Symposium of the IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN-2012).
Cukier is the primary investigator of a National Science Foundation REU Site on cybersecurity in collaboration with Women in Engineering, where more than 85 percent of the participants are female students. He co-advises the UMD Cybersecurity Club, which has a membership of more than 400 students.
He received a degree in physics engineering from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, in 1991, and a doctorate in computer science from the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, France, in 1996. From 1996 to 2001, he was a researcher in the Perform research group in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He joined the University of Maryland in 2001 as an assistant professor.