Full Title: Attacking the Brain: Security and Privacy Case Studies in Online Advertising, Misinformation, and Augmented Reality

Franziska Roesner gave this talk as part of the ViSP Distinguished Lecture Series (https://visp.wien/lecture-series)

Abstract: People who use modern technologies are inundated with content and information from many sources, including advertisements on the web, posts on social media, and (looking to the future) content in augmented or virtual reality. While these technologies are transforming our lives and communications in many positive ways, they also come with serious risks to users’ security, privacy, and the trustworthiness of content they see: the online advertising ecosystem tracks individual users and may serve misleading or deceptive ads, social media feeds are full of potential mis/disinformation, and emerging augmented reality technologies can directly modify users’ perceptions of the physical world in undesirable ways. In this talk, I will discuss several lines of research from our lab that explore these issues from a broad computer security and privacy perspective, leveraging methodologies ranging from qualitative user studies to systematic measurement studies to system design and evaluation. What unites these efforts is a key question: how are our brains "under attack" in today's and tomorrow's information environments, and how can we design platforms and ecosystems more robust to these risks?