Abstract: People use their mobile devices anywhere and anytime to run various apps, and the information shown on their device screens can be seen by nearby unauthorized parties, referred to as shoulder surfers. To mitigate this privacy threat, techniques have been developed utilizing human vision and optical system properties to hide the users' on-screen information from the shoulder surfers. Specifically, the proposed techniques discretize the device screen into grid patterns to neutralize the low-frequency components so that the on-screen information will “blend into” the background when viewed from the outside of the designed visible range.

Abstract: An important new vulnerability was discovered and is applicable to several in-vehicle networks including Control Area Network (CAN), the de facto standard in-vehicle network protocol. Specifically, a bus-off attack exploits the safe mode of CAN to disconnect or shut down uncompromised (healthy) ECUs. This is an important attack that must be thwarted, since once the attacker compromises an ECU, it is easy to mount the attack on safety-critical ECUs while its prevention/detection is very difficult. Based on analysis and experimental results, a mechanism to detect and/or prevent a bus-off attack is proposed and evaluated.

Abstract: Mobile devices are only as useful as their battery lasts. Unfortunately, the operation and life of a mobile device's battery degrade over time and usage. The state-of-health (SoH) of batteries quantifies their degradation, but mobile devices' support for its estimation is very poor due mainly to the limited hardware and dynamic usage patterns, causing various problems such as shutting off the devices unexpectedly. To remedy this lack of support, a low-cost user-level SoH estimation service is developed for mobile devices based only on their battery voltage, which is already available on all commodity mobile devices. The design of the estimation service is inspired by an empirical observation that the relaxing voltages of a device battery fingerprint its SoH, and is steered by extensive measurements with 13 batteries used for various devices, such as Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Xperia Z5, Galaxy S3, iPhone 6 Plus, etc.

Abstract: Research efforts to detect and prevent possible attacks on vehicles have led to various defense schemes that are capable of preventing attacks and/or determining the presence/absence of an attack on the in-vehicle network. However, these efforts still cannot identify which Electronic Control Unit (ECU) on the in-vehicle network actually mounted the attack. Moreover, they cannot detect attacks by an adversary that impersonates ECUs injecting in-vehicle messages aperiodically. Identifying the source of an attack is essential for efficient forensic, isolation, security patch, etc. To fill these gaps, a method is presented for detecting and identifying compromised ECUs in a vehicle network.

Abstract: Driver fingerprinting using sensor data was known to be feasible only with access to in-car data. This disclosure presents a novel technique for identifying a vehicle driver from only one vehicle turn and using zero-permission sensors residing in the mobile device. Through extensive evaluations, extracted features are shown to reflect only the drivers unique turning style and thus functions as the core of driver fingerprinting.

Abstract: ForcePhone is a novel system for enabling phones to recognize the force applied to their touchscreen and/or body. ForcePhone uses built-in sensors to measure the applied force via a physical property called structure-borne sound propagation. The phone plays an inaudible sound through the phone's speaker. When the phone is free to vibrate, the sound from the speaker easily travels through its body to the phone's microphone. When a force is applied to the phone, vibration is restricted and the sound traveling through the pathway is degraded. ForcePhone estimate the amount of applied force by monitoring the change in sound degradation.

Abstract: An user-interactive charging paradigm is presented that tailors the device charging to the user's real-time needs. The core of approach is a relaxation-aware charging algorithm that maximizes the charged capacity within the user's available time and slows down the battery's capacity fading. The approach also integrates relaxation-aware charging algorithm existing fast charging algorithms via a user-interactive interface, allowing users to choose a charging method based on their real-time needs. The relaxation-aware charging algorithm is shown to slow down the battery fading by over 36% on average, and up to 60% in extreme cases, when compared with existing fast charging solutions. Such fading slowdown translates to, for instance, an up to 2-hour extension of the LTE time for a Nexus 5X phone after 2-year usage, revealed by a trace-driven analysis based on 976 charging cases collected from 7 users over 3 months.

Abstract: Studies have shown that using smartphones while walking increases the probability of pedestrians colliding with obstacles. Techniques are presented for providing real-time warnings to distracted users of smartphones. The techniques are implemented by an application which makes use of sensors commonly found in most smartphone. By estimating distances to nearby objects using acoustic signals, a generalized solution is achieved without requiring any prior knowledge of the user's environment. The process can be enhanced by using images acquired from the phone's rear camera.

Abstract: Data in vehicle networks has been treated as proprietary assets, due to car makers' concern of potential IP infringement via extraction of confidential vehicular data. To address this concern, an intermediate gateway in between internal and external networks translates proprietary in-vehicle data to rich type data, thus preventing the exposure of raw in-vehicle data. The translation relies solely on the gateway which can be a direct target of cyberattacks, making it difficult to trust the data through the gateway. This, in turn, requires authentication of the translated data. A communication protocol is presented that provides secure communications between the vehicle's internal components and external entities. The protocol enables authorization of external servers for in-vehicle ECUs as well as authentication and proof of messages between internal and external components to combat a compromised gateway.

Abstract: A method includes estimating, for a given battery cell of a plurality of battery cells, an internal resistance, estimating, for the given battery cell, an open-circuit voltage, determining a target output voltage for the given battery cell, determining a target discharge current for the given battery cell, determining a target internal resistance for the given battery cell based on the estimated open-circuit voltage for the given battery cell, the target output voltage for the given battery cell, and the target discharge current for the given battery cell, determining a target cell temperature for the given battery cell based on the target internal resistance for the given battery cell, and controlling a flow of coolant adjacent to the given battery cell based on the target temperature for the given battery cell.

Abstract: A vehicle maneuver detection application is proposed for driving assistant systems. The application can accurately and inexpensively detect and differentiate vehicle steering maneuvers by utilizing built-in sensors on smartphones or other portable computing device residing in a vehicle. By leveraging an effective bump detection algorithm and studying the nature of steering, the application is capable of differentiating various steering patterns, such as lane change, turn, and driving on curvy roads. Practicality of the application is demonstrates by two use cases: careless steering detection and fine-grained lane guidance. Thus, the application provides new functionalities without relying on cameras to provide a broader range of driving assistance.

Abstract: An active indoor location sensing technique is presented for smartphones and other types of mobile devices without requiring any additional sensors or pre-installed infrastructure. The main idea is to actively generate acoustic signatures by transmitting a sound signal with a phone's speakers and sensing its reflections with the phone's microphones. This active sensing achieves finer-grained control of the collected signatures than the widely-used passive sensing.

Abstract: An anomaly-based intrusion detection system is presented for use in vehicle networks. The intrusion detection system measures and exploits the intervals of periodic in-vehicle messages for fingerprinting electronic control units. Fingerprints are then used for constructing a baseline of clock behaviors, for example with a Recursive Least Squares algorithm. Based on the baseline, the intrusion detection system uses cumulative sum to detect any abnormal shifts in the identification errors—a clear sign of an intrusion. This approach allows quick identification of in-vehicle network intrusions with low false positive rates.

Abstract: Lithium-ion cells are widely used in various platforms, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and mobile devices. Complete and fast charging of cells has always been the goal for sustainable system operation. However, fast charging is not always the best solution, especially in view of a new finding that cells need to rest/relax after being charged with high current to avoid accelerated capacity fading. A user aware charging algorithm is proposed which maximizes the charged capacity within a user-specified available charging time (i.e., user-awareness) while ensuring enough relaxation (i.e., cell-awareness) and keeping cell temperature below a safe level.

Abstract: ForcePhone is a novel system for enabling phones to recognize the force applied to their touchscreen and/or body. ForcePhone uses built-in sensors to measure the applied force via a physical property called structure-borne sound propagation. The phone plays an inaudible sound through the phone's speaker. When the phone is free to vibrate, the sound from the speaker easily travels through its body to the phone's microphone. When a force is applied to the phone, vibration is restricted and the sound traveling through the pathway is degraded. ForcePhone estimate the amount of applied force by monitoring the change in sound degradation.

Abstract: The privacy threat of unregulated aggregation is addressed from a new perspective by monitoring, characterizing and reducing the underlying linkability across apps. This allows one to measure the potential threat of unregulated aggregation during runtime and promptly warn users of the associated risks. It was observed how real-world apps abuse OS-level information and IPCs to establish linkability. A practical countermeasure provides runtime monitoring and mediation of linkability across apps, introducing a new dimension to privacy protection on mobile device. An evaluation on real users has shown that proposed countermeasures are effective in reducing the linkability across apps and only incurs marginal overheads.

Abstract: Although GPS has become a standard component of smartphones, providing accurate navigation during the last portion of a trip remains an important but unsolved problem. Despite extensive research on localization, the limited resolution of a map imposes restrictions on the navigation engine in both indoor and outdoor environments. To bridge the gap between the end position obtained from legacy navigation services and the real destination, a “last-mile” navigation system is proposed to enable plug-and-play navigation in indoor and semi-outdoor environments. The system exploits the ubiquitous, stable geomagnetic field and natural walking patterns to navigate the users to the same destination taken by an earlier traveler. Unlike existing localization and navigation systems, the proposed system is infrastructure-free, energy-efficient and cost-saving.

Abstract: A technique is presented for controlling behavior tracking by mobile apps executing on a mobile computing device. A set of profiles are managed by a privacy manager, where each profile represents a different isolated execution environment on the mobile computing device and defines a set of privacy rules governing an application while executing in an associated execution environment. Prior to launching the app, a user of the app is prompted by the privacy manager to select a profile for the app from the set of profiles. The privacy manager in turn applies the set of privacy rules associated with the selected profile to the app during execution of the app on the mobile computing device.

Abstract: An efficient way of predicting the power requirements of electric vehicles is proposed based on a history of vehicle power consumption, speed and acceleration as well as road information. By using this information and the operator's driving pattern, a model extracts the vehicles history of speed and acceleration, which in turn enables the prediction of the vehicle's future power requirements. That is, the power requirement prediction is achieved by combining a real-time power requirement model and the estimation of vehicle's acceleration and speed.

Abstract: A vehicle maneuver detection application is proposed for driving assistant systems. The application can accurately and inexpensively detect and differentiate vehicle steering maneuvers by utilizing built-in sensors on smartphones or other portable computing device residing in a vehicle. By leveraging an effective bump detection algorithm and studying the nature of steering, the application is capable of differentiating various steering patterns, such as lane change, turn, and driving on curvy roads. Practicality of the application is demonstrates by two use cases: careless steering detection and fine-grained lane guidance. Thus, the application provides new functionalities without relying on cameras to provide a broader range of driving assistance.