Other publications

• Metaverse as a Service: Megascale Social 3D on the Cloud. Andreas Haeberlen, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, and Morgan McGuire. 14th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '23), Oct 2023.
  
  × @inproceedings{haeberlen-2023-metaverse,
    author = {Andreas Haeberlen and Linh Thi Xuan Phan and Morgan McGuire},
    title = {Metaverse as a Service: Megascale Social 3D on the Cloud},
    booktitle = {14th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '23)},
    month = oct,
    year = 2023
  }
  ×

  We present a vision for the future of an emerging category of cloud service: the metaverse of 3D virtual worlds. Today, hundreds of millions of users are active daily in such worlds, but they are partitioned into small groups of at most a few hundred players. Each group joins a different virtual world instance, and players can only interact in 3D with others players in the same group during that session. Current platforms are designed in ways that simply cannot scale much further, and solutions from other cloud services do not generalize to the more interactive, bidirectional, and latency-sensitive interactive 3D domain. We outline some of the technical challenges that currently stand in the way of a metaverse without inherent technical limitations on the number of users in a shared experience. We argue that, although these obviously touch on many other areas of Computer Science such as computer graphics and numerical simulation, the core challenges lie squarely within the systems domain.

  PDF BibTeX Abstract Slides
• The Synchronous Data Center. Tian Yang, Robert Gifford, Andreas Haeberlen, and Linh Thi Xuan Phan. 17th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS '19), Bertinoro, Italy, May 2019.
  
  × @inproceedings{yang-2019-sync,
    author = {Tian Yang and Robert Gifford and Andreas Haeberlen and Linh Thi Xuan Phan},
    title = {The Synchronous Data Center},
    booktitle = {17th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS '19)},
    location = {Bertinoro, Italy},
    month = may,
    year = 2019
  }
  ×

  Today, distributed systems are typically designed to be largely asynchronous. Designers assume that the network can drop or significantly delay messages at unpredictable times, that there is no way to know how quickly a node might process a message, or how soon it might respond, and that the clocks of different nodes are at most loosely synchronized. These assumptions are certainly safe, but they come at a price: many applications really do need predictable performance, which, on top of an asynchronous system, has to be approximated at great cost and with lots of redundancy, and many distributed protocols for asynchronous systems are much more complex and expensive than their synchronous counterparts.

  The goal of this paper is to start a discussion about whether the asynchronous model is (still) the right choice for most distributed systems, especially ones that belong to a single administrative domain. We argue that 1) by using ideas from the CPS domain, it is technically feasible to build datacenter-scale systems that are fully synchronous, and that 2) such systems would have several interesting advantages over current designs.

  PDF BibTeX Abstract Slides
• DeDoS: Defusing DoS with Dispersion Oriented Software. Henri Maxime Demoulin, Tavish Vaidya, Isaac Pedisich, Bob DiMaiolo, Jingyu Qian, Chirag Shah, Yuankai Zhang, Ang Chen, Andreas Haeberlen, Boon Thau Loo, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, Micah Sherr, Clay Shields, and Wenchao Zhou. 2018 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '18), San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dec 2018.
  
  × @inproceedings{demoulin-2018-dedos,
    author = {Henri Maxime Demoulin and Tavish Vaidya and Isaac Pedisich and Bob {DiMaiolo} and Jingyu Qian and Chirag Shah and Yuankai Zhang and Ang Chen and Andreas Haeberlen and Boon Thau Loo and Linh Thi Xuan Phan and Micah Sherr and Clay Shields and Wenchao Zhou},
    title = {{DeDoS}: {D}efusing {DoS} with Dispersion Oriented Software},
    booktitle = {2018 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '18)},
    location = {San Juan, Puerto Rico},
    month = dec,
    year = 2018
  }
  ×

  This paper presents DeDoS, a novel platform for mitigating asymmetric DoS attacks. These attacks are particularly challenging sinceeven attackers with limited resources can exhaust the resources of well-provisioned servers. DeDoS offers a framework to deploy code in a highly modular fashion. If part of the application stack is experiencing a DoS attack, DeDoS can massively replicate only the affected component, potentially across many machines. This allows scaling of the impacted resource separately from the rest of the application stack, so that resources can be precisely added where needed to combat the attack. Our evaluation results show that DeDoS incurs reasonable overheads in normal operations, and that it significantly outperforms standard replication techniques when defending against a range of asymmetric attacks.

  PDF BibTeX Abstract
• Dispersing Asymmetric DDoS Attacks with SplitStack. Ang Chen, Akshay Sriraman, Tavish Vaidya, Yuankai Zhang, Andreas Haeberlen, Boon Thau Loo, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, Micah Sherr, Clay Shields, and Wenchao Zhou. 15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets '16), Atlanta, GA, Nov 2016.
  
  × @inproceedings{chen-2016-splitstack,
    author = {Ang Chen and Akshay Sriraman and Tavish Vaidya and Yuankai Zhang and Andreas Haeberlen and Boon Thau Loo and Linh Thi Xuan Phan and Micah Sherr and Clay Shields and Wenchao Zhou},
    title = {Dispersing Asymmetric {DDoS} Attacks with {SplitStack}},
    booktitle = {15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets '16)},
    location = {Atlanta, GA},
    month = nov,
    year = 2016
  }
  ×

  This paper presents SplitStack, an architecture targeted at mitigating asymmetric DDoS attacks. These attacks are particularly challenging, since attackers can use a limited amount of resources to trigger exhaustion of a particular type of system resource on the server side. SplitStack resolves this by splitting the monolithic stack into many separable components called minimum splittable units (MSUs). If part of the application stack is experiencing a DDoS attack, SplitStack massively replicates just the affected MSUs, potentially across many machines. This allows scaling of the impacted resource separately from the rest of the application stack, so that resources can be precisely added where needed to combat the attack. We validate SplitStack via a preliminary case study, and show that it outperforms naive replication in defending against asymmetric attacks.

  PDF BibTeX Abstract Ang's slides
• Cloud-Based Secure Logger for Medical Devices. Hung Nguyen, Bipeen Acharya, Radoslav Ivanov, Andreas Haeberlen, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, Oleg Sokolsky, Jesse Walker, James Weimer, William Hanson, and Insup Lee. 1st Workshop on Security, Privacy, and Trustworthiness in Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MedSPT '16), Washington, DC, Jun 2016.
  
  × @inproceedings{nguyen-2016-logger,
    author = {Hung Nguyen and Bipeen Acharya and Radoslav Ivanov and Andreas Haeberlen and Linh Thi Xuan Phan and Oleg Sokolsky and Jesse Walker and James Weimer and William Hanson and Insup Lee},
    title = {Cloud-Based Secure Logger for Medical Devices},
    booktitle = {1st Workshop on Security, Privacy, and Trustworthiness in Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MedSPT '16)},
    location = {Washington, DC},
    month = jun,
    year = 2016
  }
  ×

  A logger in the cloud capable of keeping a secure, time-synchronized and tamper-evident log of medical device and patient information allows efficient forensic analysis in cases of adverse events or attacks on interoperable medical devices. A secure logger as such must meet requirements of confidentiality and integrity of message logs and provide tamper-detection and tamper-evidence. In this paper, we propose a design for such a cloud-based secure logger using the Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The proposed logger receives medical device information from a dongle attached to a medical device. The logger relies on SGX, TPM and standard encryption to maintain a secure communication channel even on an untrusted network and operating system. We also show that the logger is resilient against different kinds of attacks such as Replay attacks, Injection attacks and Eavesdropping attacks.

  BibTeX Abstract
• TrustForge: Flexible access control for collaborative crowd-sourced environment. Jian Chang, Peter Gebhard, Andreas Haeberlen, Zachary G. Ives, Insup Lee, Oleg Sokolsky, and Krishna K. Venkatasubramanian. 11th International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST '13), Tarragona, Spain, Jul 2013.
  
  × @inproceedings{chang-2013-trustforge,
    author = {Jian Chang and Peter Gebhard and Andreas Haeberlen and Zachary G. Ives and Insup Lee and Oleg Sokolsky and Krishna K. Venkatasubramanian},
    title = {{TrustForge}: {F}lexible access control for collaborative crowd-sourced environment},
    booktitle = {11th International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST '13)},
    location = {Tarragona, Spain},
    month = jul,
    year = 2013
  }
  ×

  Observing the success of the open source software movement, the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) is a program run by the Defense Advanced Project Agency (DARPA) with the goal of applying crowd-sourced and component-based engineering to the design of military vehicles. In this paper, we present a credentialing system called TrustForge, which enables effective and flexible access control for the AVMcrowd-sourced repository. Credentialing systems are essential in crowdsourcing to ensure quality, since it is potentially open to contributions made by anyone. The open source software community has developed elaborate manual approaches of managing its contributor community, which are often very labor-intensive and inefficient. Our aim with TrustForge is to improve the automation of the credentialing and access control process in the context of component-based systems, where users contribute components at various levels of abstraction. TrustForge takes a hybrid approach that combines trust policy and reputation to address this problem. In TrustForge, a policy language is used to specify the access control rules for users in the system to contribute components. In addition, reputation values computed for users based on the quality of their past component contributions are used to tune the static policies to enable flexibility and adaptiveness. The contributions of this work are as follows: (1) the design of TrustForge - an effective and flexible access control mechanism that combines policy and reputation approaches; (2) the identification of heuristics for component quality measurement and a novel reputation computation algorithm for evaluating user trustworthiness; (3) a data model based on provenance graphs that allows efficient repository information storage and retrieve. We have implemented TrustForge system and integrate it with the VehicleForge repository system to support the operation of the AVM challenge program. The evaluation results based on realworld deployment and systematic simulation demonstrate that TrustForge can effectively discern the trustworthiness of users within the crowd-sourced system.

  BibTeX Abstract
• The NEBULA Future Internet Architecture. Tom Anderson, Ken Birman, Robert Broberg, Matthew Caesar, Douglas Comer, Chase Cotton, Michael J. Freedman, Andreas Haeberlen, Zachary G. Ives, Arvind Krishnamurthy, William Lehr, Boon Thau Loo, David Mazieres, Antonio Nicolosi, Jonathan M. Smith, Ion Stoica, Robbert van Renesse, Michael Walfish, Hakim Weatherspoon, and Christopher S. Yoo. Chapter in The Future Internet, LNCS 7858, Springer Verlag, Alex Galis and Anastasius Gavras, Eds., 2013.
  
  × @incollectionanderson-2013-nebula,
    author = {Tom Anderson and Ken Birman and Robert Broberg and Matthew Caesar and Douglas Comer and Chase Cotton and Michael J. Freedman and Andreas Haeberlen and Zachary G. Ives and Arvind Krishnamurthy and William Lehr and Boon Thau Loo and David Mazieres and Antonio Nicolosi and Jonathan M. Smith and Ion Stoica and Robbert van Renesse and Michael Walfish and Hakim Weatherspoon and Christopher S. Yoo},
    title = {The {NEBULA} Future Internet Architecture},
    booktitle = {The Future Internet, LNCS 7858},
    publisher = {Springer Verlag},
    editor = {Alex Galis and Anastasius Gavras},
    year = 2013
  }
  BibTeX Book
• Challenges in Experimenting with Botnet Detection Systems. Adam J. Aviv and Andreas Haeberlen. 4th USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET '11), San Francisco, CA, Aug 2011.
  
  × @inproceedings{aviv-2011-botnets,
    author = {Adam J. Aviv and Andreas Haeberlen},
    title = {Challenges in Experimenting with Botnet Detection Systems},
    booktitle = {4th USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET '11)},
    location = {San Francisco, CA},
    month = aug,
    year = 2011
  }
  ×

  In this paper, we examine the challenges faced when evaluating botnet detection systems. Many of these challenges stem from difficulties in obtaining and sharing diverse sets of real network traces, as well as determining a botnet ground truth in such traces. On the one hand, there are good reasons why network traces should not be shared freely, such as privacy concerns, but on the other hand, the resulting data scarcity complicates quantitative comparisons to other work and conducting independently repeatable experiments.

  These challenges are similar to those faced by researchers studying large-scale distributed systems onlya few years ago, and researchers were able to overcome many of the challenges by collaborating to create a global testbed, namely PlanetLab. We speculate that a similar system for botnet detection research could help overcome the challenges in this domain, and we briefly discuss the associated research directions.

  PDF BibTeX Abstract
• Practical Robust Localization over Large-Scale 802.11 Wireless Networks. Andreas Haeberlen, Eliot Flannery, Andrew M. Ladd, Algis Rudys, Dan S. Wallach, and Lydia E. Kavraki. 10th ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '04), Philadelphia, PA, Sep 2004.
  
  × @inproceedings{haeberlen-2004-localization,
    author = {Andreas Haeberlen and Eliot Flannery and Andrew M. Ladd and Algis Rudys and Dan S. Wallach and Lydia E. Kavraki},
    title = {Practical Robust Localization over Large-Scale 802.11 Wireless Networks},
    booktitle = {10th ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM '04)},
    location = {Philadelphia, PA},
    month = sep,
    year = 2004
  }
  × We demonstrate a system built using probabilistic techniques that allows for remarkably accurate localization across our entire office building using nothing more than the built-in signal intensity meter supplied by standard 802.11 cards. While prior systems have required significant investments of human labor to build a detailed signal map, we can train our system by spending less than one minute per office or region, walking around with a laptop and recording the observed signal intensities of our building's unmodified base stations. We actually collected over two minutes of data per office or region, about 28 man-hours of effort. Using less than half of this data to train the localizer, we can localize a user to the precise, correct location in over 95% of our attempts, across the entire building. Even in the most pathological cases, we almost never localize a user any more distant than to the neighboring office. A user can obtain this level of accuracy with only two or three signal intensity measurements, allowing for a high frame rate of localization results. Furthermore, with a brief calibration period, our system can be adapted to work with previously unknown user hardware. We present results demonstrating the robustness of our system against a variety of untrained time-varying phenomena, including the presence or absence of people in the building across the day. Our system is sufficiently robust to enable a variety of location-aware applications without requiring special-purpose hardware or complicated training and calibration procedures.
  PDF BibTeX Abstract Slides Video Software Dataset

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