Alan Marshall of University of Liverpool

Abstract

A particular research focus concerns investigations into security and machine trust mechanisms for IoT devices. The talk will focus on threat modelling of wireless networks and successfully disclosed the world’s first “WiFi virus” (Chameleon) and has developed multi-parameter frameworks for mitigating attacks against reputation and trust in IoT networks.

The talk will present results in automatic key generation from wireless channels, device authentication using radio frequency fingerprinting (RFFI) and device-free wireless sensing. Much of this research is underpinned by a deep understanding of the physical and MAC layers combined with machine learning techniques, e.g. adversarial and reinforcement machine learning, CNN, RNN etc applied to real-world wireless IoT systems including WiFi, BT, ZigBee, LoRa and 5G+. The research combines new security theory with experimental testbeds using these technologies.

Recent research has involved an investigation into the impact of human body shadowing and device stressing (over time) on the ability of RFFI to correctly identify body worn IoT devices such as insulin pump systems.

Biography:

Dr. Alan Marshall holds the chair in Communications Networks at the University of Liverpool where he is director of the Advanced Networks Research Group (ANRG). He was also Head of Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics from 2015-2024. He is a senior member of IEEE and a Fellow of the IET. He has spent over 28 years working in the Telecommunications and Defense Industries, and in Academia. He was involved in the development and standardization of 2G and 3G cellular systems throughout Europe. He has published over 270 scientific papers and holds a number of joint patents in the areas of communications and network security.

His research interests include mobile and wireless network architectures and protocols; machine-to-machine communications and machine Trust systems; network security and multisensory communications including haptics and olfaction.

He is the UK secretariat for the “UK-Jiangsu World Class Universities” initiative the largest collaborative research programme between the UK and China. In 2003 he recorded the world’s first long distance collaborative haptic communication over the Internet. In 2013 he discovered and reported the world’s first airborne virus for wifi networks, termed ‘Chameleon’, which has received significant press throughout the world. He formed the spin-out company Traffic Observation & Management (TOM) Ltd specializing in intrusion detection & prevention for public access and open wireless networks in 2007. He has supervised 34 successful PhD and 1 MPhil theses.

In the School of Electrical Engineering and Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, the ANRG group has established track research record in real-time embedded communications, trust frameworks for M2M communications, physical and network level security, next generation networks, and in multisensory communications. The group also has a long history of collaboration with colleagues in Rice University.

Email:

Address:Dept of Electrical Engineering & Electronics, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L69 3GJ