Stephen Checkoway
Ph.D. Candidate
Computer Science & Engineering
University of California San Diego

Contact

Email – <s | cs ucsd edu>
Office – CSE 3258

Job Application

I am currently in the process of applying to academic jobs. Here is the latest version of my application material.

Research Interests

My primary research interests are in systems security and voting—particularly in voting security and post-election auditing. Beyond those, I am interested in a number of topics such as tech policy—particularly 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as it relates to computers—modern algebra, category theory, cryptography, programming languages, compilers.

I think research is a social activity and I enjoy collaboration with researchers both inside and outside of UCSD.

I am currently working with my advisor Hovav Shacham and Stefan Savage on embedded system security. I am a member of the Security and Cryptography group at UCSD as well as the Center for Automotive Embedded System Security—a collaboration between UC San Diego and the University of Washington. I am also working with Anand Sarwate on post-election auditing methods. At any given time, I have a host of other projects that I am working on or wish to be working on. I'm always looking for another interesting collaborative project, time permitting.

Professional Activities

I was a member of the EVT/WOTE 2011 program committee.
I was a member of the WOOT 2011 program committee.

Papers

A. Sarwate, S. Checkoway, and H. Shacham. Risk-limiting Audits for Nonplurality Elections. Technical Report CS2010-0967, UC San Diego, Jun. 2011.
S. Checkoway, D. McCoy, B. Kantor, D. Anderson, H. Shacham, S. Savage, K. Koscher, A. Czeskis, F. Roesner, T. Kohno. Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces. In D. Wagner, ed. Proceedings of USENIX Security 2011. USENIX, Aug. 2011.
S. Meiklejohn, K. Mowery, S. Checkoway, and H. Shacham. The Phantom Tollbooth: Privacy-Preserving Electronic Toll Collection in the Presence of Driver Collusion. In D. Wagner, ed. Proceedings of USENIX Security 2011. USENIX, Aug. 2011.
C. Kanich, S. Checkoway, and K. Mowery. Putting Out a HIT: Crowdsourcing Malware Installs. In D. Brumley and M. Zalewski, eds. Proceedings of WOOT 2011. USENIX, Aug. 2011.
S. Checkoway, D. McCoy, B. Kantor, D. Anderson, H. Shacham, S. Savage, K. Koscher, A. Czeskis, F. Roesner, T. Kohno. Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces. Report prepared for the NAS Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration, Mar. 2011.
S. Checkoway, L. Davi, A. Dmitrienko, A.-R. Sadeghi, H. Shacham, and M. Winandy. Return-Oriented Programming without Returns. In A. Keromytis and V. Shmatikov, eds., Proceedings of CCS 2010, pages 559–572. ACM Press, Oct. 2010.
S. Checkoway, A. Sarwate, and H. Shacham. Single-Ballot Risk-Limiting Audits Using Convex Optimization. In D. Jones, J.-J. Quisquater, and E. Rescorla, eds., Proceedings of EVT/WOTE 2010. USENIX/ACCURATE/IAVoSS, Aug. 2010.
S. Checkoway, H. Shacham, and E. Rescorla. Don’t take LaTeX files from strangers In R. Farrow, ed., ;login: The USENIX Magazine, pages 17–22. USENIX, Aug. 2010.
K. Koscher, A. Czeskis, F. Roesner, S. Patel, T. Kohno, S. Checkoway, D. McCoy, B. Kantor, D. Anderson, H. Shacham, and S. Savage. Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile. In D. Evans and G. Vigna, eds., Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (“Oakland”) 2010, pages 447–462. IEEE Computer Society, May 2010.
S. Checkoway, H. Shacham, and E. Rescorla. Are Text-Only Data Formats Safe? Or, Use This LaTeX Class File to Pwn Your Computer. In M. Bailey, ed., Proceedings of LEET 2010. USENIX, Apr. 2010.
S. Checkoway and H. Shacham. Escape From Return-Oriented Programming: Return-oriented Programming without Returns (on the x86). Technical Report CS2010-0954, UC San Diego, Feb. 2010.
S. Checkoway, A.J. Feldman, B. Kantor, J.A. Halderman, E.W. Felten, and H. Shacham. Can DREs Provide Long-Lasting Security? The Case of Return-Oriented Programming and the AVC Advantage. In D. Jefferson, J.L. Hall and T. Moran, eds., Proceedings of EVT/WOTE 2009. USENIX/ACCURATE/IAVoSS, Aug. 2009.
S. Checkoway. Methods of Post-election Confidence-level Auditing. Research examination, written report, Sep. 2008.
W. Zhang, S. Checkoway, B. Calder, and D.M. Tullsen. Dynamic Code Value Specialization Using the Trace Cache Fill Unit. In K. Rudd and C. Pixley, eds., Proceedings of ICCD 2006, pages 10–16. IEEE Computer Society, Oct. 2006.

Election Data

This technical report used data from real IRV elections. This data is collected in a common format, along with the scripts that generate the data from a more verbose format used by some counties. In addition, the code used to generate the results in the report is available here.

Teaching

Buffer Overflows. A lecture showing how to perform a buffer overflow on the stack, focusing on using gdb and helper exploit programs to find return addresses in the target program and debugging the exploit. The lecture was given as part of UCSD’s CSE 127, Computer Security taught by Hovav Shacham. Apr. 2010.
The Security Mindset. An introductory lecture describing computer science and beyond with a security mindset. The lecture was given as part of UCSD’s CSE 91 Perspectives in Computer Science taught by George Varghese. Feb. 2010. Slides

Teaching Assistant (+/-)

Summer 2008
- CSE 130 – Programming Languages
- CSE 21 – Mathematics for Algorithm and Systems Analysis
Spring 2008
- CSE 105 – Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Winter 2008
- CSE 105 – Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Fall 2007
- CSE 20 – Discrete Mathematics
Summer 2007
Spring 2007
- CSE 20 – Discrete Mathematics
Winter 2007
- CSE 105 – Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Fall 2006
- CSE 8A – Introduction to Computer Science with Java
Summer 2006
Spring 2005 (UW)
- CSE 378 – Machine Organization and Assembly Language
Winter 2005 (UW)
- CSE 373 – Data Structures and Algorithms
Fall 2004 (UW)
- CSE 378 – Machine Organization and Assembly Language

Musings

Wiretapping email or: When is email delivered? When is email legally considered delivered and thus not covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act? Last updated, 2011-10-03.
Appearing in the news and hitting people in the head. My first time appearing in the news. Last updated, 2011-07-02.
More LATEX Hacking. A small case of hubris. Last updated, 2011-03-22.
The TSA Grope: A Response to Benjamin Wittes. The main criticism of the TSA in recent days is not that they are not like the Israelis, it's that the TSA has overstepped its authority or has too much authority. Last updated, 2010-11-22.
On Disassembling Embedded Code. Musings on properties of embedded code which make it more or less difficult to disassemble based on personal experience. Last updated, 2010-04-18.