Speaker:

Dr. Long Cheng, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Clemson University

Abstract:

Today’s voice personal assistant (VPA) services have been largely expanded by allowing third-party developers to build voice-apps and publish them to marketplaces (e.g., the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms). Such an open VPA ecosystem inevitably provides unscrupulous or inexperienced developers with an opportunity to publish buggy or dangerous voice-apps, which could lead to user frustration, stir up negative effects on engagement, and even place end users in a vulnerable position. In an effort to maintain the quality and trustworthiness of voice-apps, VPA platform providers have implemented a set of policy requirements to be adhered to by third-party developers. New voice-apps must undergo a certification process to verify that they meet the necessary content and privacy policies.

In this talk, I will introduce our series of efforts to ensure policy compliance of voice-apps on leading VPA platforms. Specifically, I will first present our measurement studies aimed at understanding the trustworthiness of the voice-app certification process and the effectiveness of privacy policies provided by third-party developers. Then, I will introduce our tools designed to identify existing policy-violating voice-apps and facilitate the development of policy-compliant voice-apps.

Biography:

Dr. Long Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Clemson University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His current research focuses on IoT/CPS security, online abuse detection, and cybersecurity education. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Transportation, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, U.S. Army VIPR-GS Program, and South Carolina Research Authority. He received the Distinguished Paper Award from Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) in 2020, and Best Paper Award from ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS) in 2022. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award.