Robert Walls

Many technical mechanisms across computer security for attribution, identification, and classification are neither sufficient nor necessary for forensically valid digital investigations; yet they are often claimed as useful or necessary. Similarly, when forensic research is evaluated using the viewpoints held by computer security venues, the challenges, constraints, and usefulness of the work is often misjudged. In this talk, Dr. Walls will discuss key aspects of digital forensics with the goal of ensuring that research seeking to advance the discipline will have the highest possible adoption rate by practitioners. He will enumerate general legal and practical constraints placed on forensic investigators that set the field apart. Dr. Walls will also discuss several of his projects in this space, including his work on extracting evidence from NAND flash.

Biography:

Robert Walls is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Walls' interests lie at the intersection of security and digital forensics. In part, he seeks to analyze and secure the large-scale, complex, inter-connected systems underpinning critical internet services.  His past efforts have focused on multiple aspects of this problem, including the development of novel data collection methodologies,  the analysis of partially structured data, and  the transition of research results into practical tools and techniques. Before joining WPI, Dr. Walls worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State University. While there his research focused on developing a science of systems security. Previously, he attended the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts. In 2011, he received the Yahoo Key Scientific Challenges Award for his work in Security & Privacy.

Robert Walls

Biography: