Restoring trust in the cyber space: a systems security proposal
Fueled by a string of high profile attacks and recent revelations
about unprecedented cyber surveillance, interest in systems security
is rising-not just among industry and governments, but even among
individual citizens across Europe. Corporate organizations worry about
the viability of their businesses, nation states about cyber attacks
by other nation states or terrorist groups, and citizens about the
trustworthiness of the ICT infrastructures. 
The long list of recent security incidents is eroding people's trust
in the digital economy and shows that more research is needed.

Unfortunately, expertise is fragmented  across many places, while the
exchange of knowledge is lacking. If one group specializes in
code-reuse attacks and another in embedded systems, ideally they
should team up to detect code-reuse vulnerabilities in embedded
devices. Today, however, the flow of ideas is limited to publications
and ad-hoc collaborations. A more efficient exchange would occur if a
researcher temporarily joins the other group to collaborate directly on-site.

Over the past few years Europe has created 
several world-class research centers in systems security. They
publish in the most prestigious venues and have a significant impact
on both the scientific community and society at large. Nevertheless,
in terms of numbers, most top groups are still  in the US and the ability to
collaborate with them would be a tremendous boost for security
research in Europe.


We plan to foster such collaborations by supporting researchers from
European institutes to spend time with their American counterparts in
top universities. We will gather the research results in a repository
that links all the exchanges and provides a valuable input for
collaborative projects in itself.  We will focus our research efforts
on both advanced attacks (e.g., exploits, malware, and exfiltration
techniques), and defenses (e.g., developing secure software and
protecting resource-constrained devices).