Xiaojing Liao, assistant professor of Computer Science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, continues to make a difference in the academic world. This time it involves privacy and data protection in an ever more complex technological environment.
Liao has won a National Science Foundation CAREER award for her project, “Privacy-Accountable Mobile Software Supply Chain.” Her research targets privacy protection, which is a key requirement in contemporary data protection regulations. It will study innovative approaches to enforce accountability throughout the mobile software development process.
“I’m very excited about this award,” Liao said. “I envision this project could contribute to the advancement of privacy accountability in the mobile software supply chain. It would enable mobile apps to handle personal and private data in a responsible and transparent manner, thereby enhancing user trust and privacy protection.”
This continues Liao’s six-year, Luddy School work that centers on teaching, researching, battling cybercrime and proposing mitigation strategies.
Privacy accountability places responsibility on data controllers to proactively enhance privacy protection. Liao said challenges include the prevalence of third-party code modules, particularly third-party libraries, whose privacy and data handling practices are often significantly obscure.
“The ultimate goal is to establish a more privacy-conscious and accountable mobile software ecosystem, benefiting both users and data controllers,” Liao said.
The research aims to advance thesocio-technical understanding of privacy non-compliance risks and accountability challenges within the mobile software supply chain.
Liao said the goal is to design novel technical foundations that seamlessly integrate various methodologies and disciplines.
“This includes program analysis, formal methods, natural language processing, and human subject research, culminating in a privacy-accountable disclosure framework and continuous privacy accountability enforcement mechanism,” she said. “These innovations are designed to be easily adoptable within the mobile software supply chain.”
The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 U.S. states as well as U.S. territories.
The CAREER program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers prestigious awards in support of early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
This award follows the publication of Liao’s children book, “Lorie in Cybersecurity Wonderland: The Fun of Camping and Mobile Security," to aid Luddy’s educational outreach efforts about cybersecurity.
Liao and XiaoFeng Wang, Luddy associate dean for research and James R. Rudy Professor of Computer Science, co-authored a study about nasty AI-fueled chatbots such as “BadGPT” and “FraudGPT” used by cybercriminals to create fake websites, write malware and generate email fraud and deepfakes. A story on their research -- Welcome to the Era of BadGPTs -- was recently published in the Wall Street Journal.
Yuzhen Ye, chair of Computer Science and professor of Informatics and Computer Science, said Liao’s impact extends to preparing future scholars for difference-making research.
“The department is lucky to have Dr. Liao. Her CAREER project is particularly crucial as privacy concerns continue to grow with the increasing complexity of mobile software ecosystems. It also allows her to integrate her cutting-edge research in security and privacy into classroom teaching to better prepare our students.”