EPFL researchers at the Security and Privacy Engineering (SPRING) Lab, School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC), have developed a ‘Datashare Network’ that allows investigative journalists to exchange information securely and anonymously. A detailed paper on the subject will be presented by the scientists at the 29th Usenix Security Symposium (USENIX Security ’20), which will be held online from August 12 to 14. The event, which brings together specialists in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks, will undoubtedly draw worldwide attention to the EPFL research.

The paper “Enabling Optimal Power Generation of Flow Cell Arrays in 3D MPSoCs with On-Chip Switched Capacitor Converters” is a collaborative research by Halima Najibi, Alexandre Levisse, Marina Zapater, and David Atienza, who are associated with EPFL’s Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL). Considering the reputation of the symposium, built over a period of three decades, it is no mean achievement to have a paper accepted and then selected as the Best Paper. Many congratulations to the EPFL authors for their singular academic triumph.

As a CYD Doctoral Fellow, Dina will conduct research on vulnerabilities and backdoors in heterogeneous hardware platforms, for protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of cyber and cyber-physical systems.

This is an important breakthrough because high-frequency bands are prone to logjams because of high demand. On the other hand, microwave photonics offers high bandwidth, low transmission loss, and immunity to electromagnetic interference.

The first coronavirus digital contact-tracing app using OS updates from Google and Apple is now in a large-scale pilot test. Dubbed as SwissCovid, the app is based on the decentralized protocol, where operations that have data privacy implications are not stored or conducted through a centralized server, but on the phone of individual users. Employees at EPFL, ETH Zurich, the Swiss Army, and select hospitals and cantonal administrations can now download the app for tracing contacts at risk of transmission of COVID-19.

Mathias Payer and Hui Peng have developed a USB software security tool called USBFuzz. The researchers plan to release USBFuzz on GitHub as an open source project following their presentation at Usenix.

As the name implies, the international Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing project (DP3T) focuses on data privacy and negates any chance of data being misused by hackers.

The research paper “Who is listening? Spokesperson Effect on Communicating Social and Physical Distancing Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic” is authored by Andreas Spitz and Ahmad Abu-Akel (Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne) and Robert West (School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL).

A group of five researchers at EPFL’s Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) have developed an artificial intelligence-based system that allows you to record your cough and have it analyzed almost instantly to indicate whether you have COVID-19. In a few weeks’ time, the team will release an app, aptly named Coughvid, which will be available for free and direct download to your devices.

JEDI has appointed a high-profile scientific committee to run the ‘Billion Molecules against COVID-19’ challenge, including Babak Falsafi and Bryan Ford from EPFL’s School of Computer and Communication Sciences.