Topic Deep Dive

Your task is to take a deep dive into a topic not covered in detail in this class. Working in groups of 2, you and your teammate will identify a topic, three related papers on that topic, and prepare a presentation to both explore current research and potential future directions. You will also additionally identify a fourth paper that will be added to the reading list for the class. If you are a PhD student, you should complete this assignment individually.

Presentations will be 15 minutes long, 10 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions.

Note that this is a group assignment and you must join a group to complete it on blackboard. This group can be the same as your project group, but doesn’t necessarily have to be.

When submitting your assignment on blackboard, upload a single PDF file that is the slides from your presentation.

Topic Selection

As the purpose of the deep dive is to add breadth to the classroom presentation, it’s important that groups do not all present on the same topic. When forming your group, you should submit three topics with a short description of the theme you want to explore on that topic. You should also include one paper that is an exemplar of that theme that you will include in your presentation. The topics should be ranked in terms of preference so that if there is overlap between groups, we can determine the next preferred topic.

Note that many of these topics are general and there could be multiple deep dives without overlapping content. Be sure to be specific about the theme you want to cover within this topic.

• Mobile Authentication (e.g., PINs)
• Sharing Economy (e.g., rideshare, airbnb, etc.)
• Digitial Currency / Bitcoin
• Anonymous Communication (e.g., Tor)
• IoT
• Developers
• Children and teens
• Voting
• Accessibility (blind, low vision, hard of hearing, etc.)
• International and multicultural perspectives
• Data breaches and compliance
• Social Media
• Privacy management
• Privacy Policies
• Victims of Intimate Partner Violence
• USEC for Unique user groups (e.g., journalist, sex workers, cyber operators, women, LGBTQ, etc.)
• Remote exam proctoring
• Scams and scam prevention
• Cryptocurrency and digital wallets
• Secure messaging and communication
• Security advice and understanding
• Survey result generalization
• Trust, safety, and privacy of LLM/AI usage

There could also be many topics beyond what is included above. Feel free to check in about other ideas you may have.

Reference material

For each of your topics, you should identify three relevant articles published a top conference or journal in the field in the last few years (~5-7 years) as part of presentation, and one additional article to add to the class readings. When selecting the papers to include, you should consider using a a single article as a starting point and identifying two/three related articles that either cite this article or this article cites.

Here’s a list of those top venues include in your search for relevant articles:

• USENIX Security (Sec) (USENIX)
• Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS)
• IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) (Oakland)
• ACM Conference on Communication Systems (CCS)
• ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI)
• ISOC Network and Distributed System Symposium (NDSS)
• Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETS)
• Annual Computer Applications Conference (ACSAC)
• IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroSP)
• Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC)
• European Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (EuroUSEC)
• ACM Asian Conference on Communication Systems (AsiaCCS)
• IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroSP)
• ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW)

You may find papers outside of these venues, and you should check with the instructor if they are appropriate to use.

Once you have identified the articles for presentation, you should confirm your selection with your instructor.

Presentation Requirements

Your presentation should be 10 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. A total of 15 minutes. The organization of your presentation should be as follows

• Topic Motivation and Background (2-3 minutes)
  • This section of your presentation should outline what is the major topic space and why it is an intersting research area.
  • You should consider providing some background, potentially referencing seminal paper or other articiles, that help motivate this area.
  • Wrap up this part by brielfy introducing the three related articles you will discuss and how they relate to each other
• Paper 1-3 (10 minutes)
  • For each paper
    • Describe the motivation and research questions
    • Describe the methods and analysis
    • Offer one primary result
    • Connect the conclusions of the paper back to larger themes
• Conclusions and Future Directions (2-3 minutes)
  • Summarize the findings and connections between the papers and implications for the larger usable security and privacy community
  • Provide reference to the fourth paper that you think others should read

Note all members of the team should present for roughly equal amounts.

Grading

Your grade for the presentation will be the average sum of the following items using the scale outlined above.

• Content (30%)
  • Are all aspects of the presentation covered
• Organization (20%)
  • Are the details presented in a reasonable way with logical flow from one section to the next?
• Conclusions/Summaries (30%)
  • Are the results properly summarized and implications given?
• Visual Aids (10%)
  • Are there sufficient visual aids to support your presentation without being distracting?
• Q&A Session (10%)
  • Are the presenters able to properly answer questions about their project?

And we will use the following scores

We will use the following grading scheme for all project topics:

• Beyond Expectations: 100%
  • Meets all requirements with high quality details and descriptions beyond expectations
• Meets Expectations: 95%
  • Meets all requirements at a high level
• Satisfactory: 90%
  • Meets all requirements with minor areas for improvement.
• Needs Improvement: 85%
  • Significant portions should be improved
• Needs Significant Improvement: 75%
  • Notable portions are incomplete and require significant improvement
• Unsatisfactory: 50%
  • Does not meaningful satisfy the requirements of the assignment