News | tj-oconnor

2022

(Nov 18, 2022) I am excited to announce that my students (Kourtnee Fernalld, Joshua Connolly, Blake Janes, Logan Suarez, Stephen Brustowicz, Alexander Schmith, and Curtice Gough) placed 1st nationally at the National Cyber League Team Tournament, moving to the #1 position in the Cyber Skyline Cyber Power Rankings

(Oct 18, 2022) SpaceCoast Daily published an article on my student, Chandler Hake. Chandler balances Lacrosse, Army ROTC, and excels in the field of cyber operation in computer science.

(Oct 13, 2022) I am excited to announce four of my students ( Isaiah Thomas, Dylan Jessee, Stephen Brustowicz, and Louie Orcinolo) placed 2nd nationally at the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Bowl competition.

(Oct 7th, 2022) I was honored to give the keynote the Central Florida Cybersecurity Summit.

(Sept 14th, 2022) I enjoyed briefing some previous colleagues at 1st Special Forces Command about the cyber warfare lessons learned from the Ukrainian conflict.

(Sept 12 2022) Four of my students (Dylan Jesse, Stephen Brustowicz, Louis Orcinolo, and Isaiah Thomas) advanced to the 2022 US Cyber Challenge Cyber Bowl Championships.

(July 17th, 2022) I enjoyed working with my colleagues at the US Naval Academy, University of North Georgia, Dakota State, Battelle, and Research Innovations Inc. to develop challenges for the 2022 US Cyber Games Open.

(July 11th, 2022) I enjoyed presenting our recent paper, "Toward an Automatic Exploit Generation Competition for an Undergraduate Binary Reverse Engineering Course" at the ACM ITiCSE conference in Dublin, Ireland.

(June 17th, 2022) I was excited to coach the US Cyber Games team to a Bronze Medal finish at the International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC) in Athens, Greece.

(June 1st, 2022) My student, Curtice Gough, was selected as a National Cyber Scholar from the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation.

(May 1st, 2022) Cyberskyline ranked our cybersecurity program #2 in the nation, and #1 in all CAE schools after our team finished second in the Spring 2022 NCL Team Tournament. The Space Coast Daily published a story about the team's accomplishment.

(April 20, 2022) My first PhD Student, Ahmed Alhazmi, defended his dissertation before Dr. Kepuska, Dr. Parenteua, Dr. Subasi and myself.

(April 11, 2022) I was awarded the Student Government Association Professor of the Year Award at our 2022 Honors Convocation. My student, Tiffanie Petersen earned Outstanding Undergraduate Computer Scientist award.

(April 8, 2022) My students ran the Remote Controlled CTF this past weekend at BSides Oklahoma. The event implemented a cybersecurity competition entirely on remote controlled cars. We will publish the source code to Github shortly.

(April 4, 2022) My students ran the very successful Space Heroes CTF this past weekend. 2,077 competitors participated in the event. We published the source code for the challenges to Github.

(March 2022) I'm excited that Ahmed Alhazmi and I had a paper accepted at IEEE COMPSAC 2022.

(March 2022) I'm excited to have another paper accepted at Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) that discuses our Reverse Engineering Course in our Florida Tech Cyber Operations concentration.

(February 21, 2022) Brevard Business News published a story about our team leading the US Cyber Games.

(February 2022) Florida Tech published a story about our work bringing cybersecurity education to high school students.

2021

(December 14, 2021) The Honorable Mr. Posey recognized our cyber operations concentration and victory in the National Cyber League on the congressional record.

(Nov 7, 2021) Florida Tech published an article about how our FITSEC Cybersecurity Team Tops in the Nation After Major Competition Victory

(Oct 27, 2021) I published a blog post on Scythe.Io about The Risks of Supply Chain Corruption from IoT Devices.

(Sept 23, 2021) Florida Tech published an article about our recent work that identified Apps for Popular Smart Home Devices Contain Security Flaws.

(August 25, 2021) I was quoted in an article by Capital.com on the upcoming WhiteHouse Cybersecurity Summit.

(July 1, 2021) Our Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab had two papers accepted at The USENIX Cyber Security Experiment and Test Workshop.

(July 1, 2021) Our Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab is excited to announce we were awarded a grant for $746,929.00 to identify "Educational Approaches and Curriculum to Engage and Educate a More Diverse Cybersecurity Workforce" for the Office of Naval Research. I am particularly excited to be able to fully sponsor my PhD Student, Zhenee Brown as we pursue this important work.

(June 18, 2021) I was interviewed on WESH 2 about the recent cyber attack on Carnival Cruise.

(June 15, 2021) I am excited four of our students competed in the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Quest eastern regionals and earned a spot in the top 3 teams, allowing them to advance to the finals.

(June 9, 2021) I was recently interviewed on CyberScoop about Amazon's roll-out of the SideWalk protocol.

(May 11, 2021) I was interviewed on Fox35 about the DarkSide Ransomware attack.

(May 2021) Excited that five students in our FITSec Cybersecurity qualified at the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Quest to attend the Eastern Regionals Camp.

(May 2021) Excited that students in our FITSec Cybersecurity Club placed 3rd at the National Cyber League tournament.

(April 24th, 2021) Our Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab just reported two new vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-31793, CVE-2020-28713) in the Night OWL Doorbell Camera sold at Walmart.

(April 2nd, 2021) Florida Tech published a news story about our FITSec Cybersecurity Team and the Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab.

(March 9th, 2021) I was recently interviewed on devicesecurity.io about the state of IoT Security.

(March 1st, 2021) I'm excited to have two papers accepted at Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) that discuss two courses in our Florida Tech Cyber Operations concentration.

(February 10th, 2021) I was interviewed on Fox35 about the Water Treatment Plant Hack in Oldsmar, FL. Link to first and second interview.

(February 4th, 2021) Our recent vulnerability disclosures in security cameras and wireless doorbells were reported on by the Washington Post and Florida Today. Read the technical details on our blog post at ReFirm Labs.

(January 6th, 2021) I talked on the ITSP podcast about the development of our cybersecurity lab and the direction of our cyber operations concentration at Florida Tech.

(January 1st, 2021) I've been selected to serve on the CSET '21 USENIX program committee

2020

(December 1st, 2020) Our FITSec Cyber Security Team was just ranked #21/300 by the National Cyber League.

(November 21st, 2020) Our IoT Security and Privacy Lab informed MITRE of 4 significant vulnerabilities in Wireless Geeni and Merkury Doorbells and cameras are were assigned CVE-2020-28998, CVE-2020-28999, CVE-2020-29000, CVE-2020-29001

(August 1st, 2020) The Office of Naval Research awarded funding for a Florida Tech and the IoT Security and Privacy Lab for Multidisciplinary Approach to Internet-of-Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Research for $249,946

(May 26th, 2020) Florida Tech published a press release about our latest work in identifying flaws in IoT devices

(April 30th, 2020) I was recognized as "Best Faculty" by the International Student Community of Florida Tech.

(April 20th, 2020) My students in our FITSec Cyber Security Club placed 8th overall (out of 936) at the National Cyber League tournament.

(April 6th, 2020) My student, Josh Connolly, just placed 3rd in his division (out of 1,536) at the National Cyber League tournament.

(March 31st, 2020) My student, Blake Janes, was just paid a bug bounty of $3,133.70 by Google for disclosing the bug identified in our work.

(March 4th, 2020) My student, Blake Janes, had our paper: "Never Ending Story: Authentication and Access Control Design Flaws in Shared IoT Devices" accepted for publication at the IEEE SafeThings Workshop.

(March 1st, 2020) My students in our FITSec Cybersecurity club took 2nd Place (out of 25 teams) at the B-Sides Tampa Capture the Flag Competition.

(February 1st, 2020) I've been asked to serve on the SCYTHE Advisory Council to aid SCYTHE as they release an innovative new product in threat emulation.

(January 27 2020) My student, Micah Oltmann, has been selected for a student scholarship to attend the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) conference.

(January 2020) I've been selected to serve on the CSET '20 USENIX program committee.

(January 2020) I've been asked to co-chair our The Human Element in Autonomous Cyber Security conference at Florida Tech.

(January 10, 2020) Our students put together a site for our FITSec Cybersecurity club.

2019

(November 21, 2019) I represented Florida Tech at the CAE Community Cyber Security Symposium in Phoenix, AZ.

(November 16, 2019) Students in our FITSec Cyber Security Club served as Red Team for the DoE CyberForce Competition at Argonne National Laboratory.

(November 1, 2019) Students in our FITSec Cyber Security Club participated in the HiveStorm competition.

(October 26, 2019) Students in our FITSec Cyber Security Club competed in the Florida Cyber Capture the Flag event.

(October 19, 2019) I attended the Raymond James Capture the Flag competition with our Florida Tech FITSec security club.

(October 12, 2019) I attended the Southeast regional round of the Collegiate Penetration Test Competition held at the Georgia Cyber Center, where our Florida Tech FITSec security club competed.

(September 26, 2019) I attended the invitation-only New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW) in San Carlos, Costa Rica.

(September 13, 2019) I represented Florida Tech at the 2019 Southeast CAE Cyber Security Forum in Pensacola, FL.

(August 15, 2019) I joined the team at Florida Tech where I will serve as the Graduate Program Chair for our Information Assurance And Cybersecurity program and an assistant professor in the Computer Engineering and Sciences Department.

(May 17, 2019) Our paper, "Blinded and Confused: Uncovering Systemic Flaws in Device Telemetry for Smart-Home Internet of Things" was selected as Best Paper for WiSec 2019.

(May 10, 2019) I graduated after defending my Ph.D. dissertation, "Network Access Control through Host and Application Analysis" under the direction of Dr. Will Enck in the Wolfpack Security and Privacy Lab at NC State University.

(May 2, 2019) NC State University published a press release about our smart-home sensor blinding work.