Paper Title: Towards Data Protection in Flash-based Storage Media

Paper Abstract: Modern mobile computing devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets, IoT devices) usually use NAND flash as external storage. Compared to traditional mechanical disk drives, NAND flash has some special characteristics: a write operation can be performed only after an erasure has been performed; reading/programming operations can be performed on the basis of small pages, but erase operations can only be performed on the basis of large blocks; flash memory cells can be programmed/erased for a limited number of times; etc. Protecting critical data stored in flash memory while being able to accommodate its special nature is very challenging. This talk will introduce our recent research advance on protecting sensitive data stored in computing devices using flash memory as external storage. It will mainly discuss two questions: 1) How to ensure that data deleted by a device owner are completely removed from the flash storage? 2) How to allow efficient data recovery in flash storage when the device is compromised by the malware.

Paper Author: Bo Chen, Associate Professor, Michigan Tech

Author Bio: Dr. Bo Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Michigan Technological University. He has been working on data security since 2010. One of his recent focuses is to protect sensitive data stored in flash storage media. Dr. Chen has published extensively (50+ publications) in prestigious academic conferences, journals, books, etc. These include top-tier security and privacy conferences like ACM CCS, NDSS, ACSAC, DSN, ESORICS, AsiaCCS, etc. Dr. Chen received an Outstanding Paper Award from ACM CODASPY 2013, a Distinguished Paper Award from ACSAC 2017, and a Best Paper Award from EAI AC3 2021. He was the founding general chair of the EAI International Conference on Applied Cryptography in Computer and Communications. His projects on cybersecurity have been funded by US National Science Foundation and National Security Agency as Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator (total funding amount exceeds 4 Million USD). He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2014.