Assoc Professor Serdar Boztas

Position

Program Director

School /
Work Unit

Math & Geospatial Sciences

Contact Details

+(61 3) 9925 2285

serdar.boztas@rmit.edu.au

Location

Building: 8
Level: 9
Room: 9

City Campus

College/Portfolio

Science, Engineering & Health

Serdar Boztas

Key Activities

  • Teaching: Information Theory, Smartcard Cryptosystems, Practical Security.
  • Research in Coding and Information Theory, Cryptology, Information Security, Anti-Malware, Biometrics and Complex Networks
  • Associate Professor of Information Security

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, MIT, 1983
  • Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1986
  • Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1990

Professional Interests

Links to Industry

Work experience includes a Research Engineer position in Telstra Research Labs, as well as being a consultant to various companies in the areas of telecommunications, error-correction coding, machine learning, and image compression.

Accomplishments and Awards

  • 2010: RMIT Science Engineering and Health College Teaching Citation
  • 2008: Invited Lecturer at a summer school attended by more than 60 international researchers on Codes over Rings, supported by UNESCO, CIMPA (France) and TUBITAK(Turkey)
  • 2007-2011: Advisory Board Member, SECIA, The Victorian eSecurity Cluster
  • 2007: RMIT Research Award
  • 2007-2009: Elected as Alternate Member to the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board, a worldwide body which advises the IEEE Executive.

Research Overview

Investigation of real-world problems using algebraic, probabilistic and combinatorial tools spanning pseudorandom sequences, coding and information theory, complex networks, and cryptography.

  • Sequence Design: Settled a 20 year old open problem—later adopted into 3G standards and cited more than 200 times.
  • Guessing Theory: Renyi entropy for determining password strength—adopted by NIST in their randomness testing algorithms.
  • Digital Rights Management: Invented delta nonlinear codes to address the problem of traitor tracing against powerful adversaries.
  • Complex Networks: Used to identify unusual clusters and develop anti-malware and anti-insider threat techniques.
  • Research Grants: Total external grant income of $1.8 Million, including 3 ARC Linkage Grants and an Australia-China Science Linkages Grant, in cryptography, information security and communication sequence design.
  • Supervision: 3 PhD and 3 MSc Students and 14 minor thesis students all successfully completed.
  • General Chair: Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP), Melbourne 2011
  • Program co-Chair: Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms and Error Correcting Codes (AAECC), Bangalore 2007 and Melbourne 2001. AMSI Workshop on Sequences and Codes and Their Applications, Melbourne 2008.
  • Program Committee Member: Sequences and Their Applications 2010 and 2004, IEEE IWSDA (International Workshop on Signal Design and Analysis) 2011 and 2007, IEEE ICCASS 2007, ISC 2011 and 2007.

Selected Publications

Books

  • S. BOZTAS and H-F. LU (editors): Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms and Error Correcting Codes, 17th International Symposium, Proceedings, Bangalore, India, December 2007, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag.
  • S. BOZTAS and I.E. Shparlinski (editors): Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms and Error Correcting Codes, 17th International Symposium, Proceedings, Bangalore, India, December 2007, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag.

Invited Plenary Lectures

  • S. BOZTAS: Advances in Secure Communications, delivered at the IT Security and Risk Management Summit, Park Hyatt Hotel, Melbourne, May 5-6, 2010; Sponsor: Australian Information Security Association.
  • S. BOZTAS: Partial and Aperiodic Correlations of Pseudorandom Sequences for Communications and Cryptology, a series of 3 invited lectures at the UNESCO-CIMPA Summer School on Sequences and Codes over Rings, Ankara, Turkey, August 2008. Sponsor: UNESCO.
  • S. BOZTAS: Applications of Coding Theory in Cryptology and Information Security, delievered at the Information Security and Cryptology Conference, Ankara, Turkey, December 13-14, 2007. Sponsor: Turkish Telecommunications Authority
  • S. BOZTAS: Randomness and Pseudo-randomness in Secure and Robust Communications, invited lecture in the International Conference on Advances in Infrastructure for E-Business, Science and Education on the Internet, at the Scuola Superiore G. Reiss Romoli, L'Aquila, Italy, August 2000. Sponsor: Telecom Italia.

Selected Journal Articles

  • A. ARAKALA, K.J. HORADAM, J. JEFFERS, and S. BOZTAS: Protection of minutiae-based templates using biocryptographic constructs in the set difference metric, Security and Communication Networks, 4(5): 563-576, 2011.
  • S. BOZTAS: On influences of variables and their computation', in Finite Fields and Applications, Contemporary Mathematics, American Mathematical Society, USA, vol. 461, pp. 21-31, 2008.
  • S. S. DRAGOMIR and S. BOZTAS: Estimation of Arithmetic Means and Their Applications in Guessing Theory, Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 28(10):31-43, 1998. [8 google scholar citations]
  • S. BOZTAS: Comments on An Inequality on Guessing and Its Application to Sequential Decoding, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 43(6): 2062-2063, 1997. [13 google scholar citations, 129 ISI Web of Science citations]
  • S. BOZTAS: A robust multi-priority topology-independent transmission schedule for packet radio networks, Information Processing Letters, 55: 291-295, 1995. [9 google scholar citations]
  • S. BOZTAS and P. V. KUMAR: Binary Sequences with Gold-like Correlation Properties but Larger Linear Span, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 40(2):532-537, 1994. [59 google scholar citations, 46 ISI Web of Science citations]
  • S. BOZTAS, A. R. HAMMONS, and P. V. KUMAR: Four-phase Sequences with Near Optimum Correlation Properties, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 38(3):1000-1012, 1992. [205 google scholar citations, 129 ISI Web of Science citations]

Selected Conference Proceedings and Springer LNCS Chapters

  • L. SUN, S. VERSTEEG, S. BOZTAS, and T. YANN: Pattern recognition techniques for the classification of Malware packers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6188:370-390, 2011.
  • S. BOZTAS and PARAMPALLI, U. , On the Relative Abundance of Nonbinary Sequences with Perfect Autocorrelations, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp.464-468, 2011.
  • PARAMPALLI, U., TANG X. and S. BOZTAS, On the construction of binary sequence families with low correlation and large sizes, Proceedings IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp.1300-1304, 2010.
  • S. BOZTAS and PARAMPALLI, U., Nonbinary sequences with perfect and nearly perfect autocorrelations, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp.1300-1304, 2010.
  • A. ARAKALA, J. S. CULPEPPER, J. JEFFERS, A. TURPIN, S. BOZTAS, K.J. HORADAM and A. M. McKENDRICK: Entropy of the Retina Template, in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Biometrics, pp. 1250-1259, 2009.
  • S. BOZTAS, S. PUGLISI and A. TURPIN: Testing Stream Ciphers by Finding the Longest Substring of a Given Density, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5594:122-133, 2009. [2 google scholar citations]
  • S. BOZTAS: Fast Computation of Boolean Influences, in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp.1641-1645, 2008.
  • T. EBRINGER, L. SUN and S. BOZTAS: A Fast Randomness Test That Preserves Local Detail, in the Proceedings of the Virus Bulletin Conference VB2008, pp. 34-42, 2008. [4 google scholar citations]
  • L. SUN, T. EBRINGER and S. BOZTAS: Hump and Dump: Efficient Generic Unpacking Using an Ordered Address Execution Histogram, in the Proceedings of the 2nd International CARO Workshop, 2008. [9 google scholar citations]
  • L. SUN, T. EBRINGER and S. BOZTAS: An Automatic anti-anti-VMWARE Technique Applicable for Multi Stage Packed Malware, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Malware Conference, pp.17-21, 2008.
  • A. ARAKALA, K.J. HORADAM and S. BOZTAS: Practical considerations for secure minutiae based templates, in the Proceedings of the IEEE Biometrics Symposium, BYSYM '08, pp. 53 – 58, 2008. [5 google scholar citations]
  • PARAMPALLI, U. and S. BOZTAS: On Partial Correlations of Various 4 Z Families, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5203:332-344, 2008.
  • M.S. TURAN, A. DOGANAKSOY and S. BOZTAS: On Independence and Sensitivity of Statistical Randomness Tests, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5203:18-29, 2008 [4 google scholar citations]
  • S. MEDOS and S. BOZTAS: Montgomery Residue Representation Fault Tolerant Computation in GF( ), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5107:419-432, 2008.
  • S. MEDOS and S. BOZTAS: Fault-Tolerant Finite Field Computation in the Public Key Cryptosystems, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4851:120-129, 2007.
  • S. McNICOL, S. BOZTAS and A. RAO: Traitor Tracing Against Powerful Attacks Using Combinatorial Designs, Lecture notes in Computer Science, 3857:215-224, 2006.
  • PARAMPALLI, U. and S. BOZTAS, On the Aperiodic Correlation Function of Galois Ring m-sequences, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2227:229-238, 2001.
  • S. BOZTAS, New Lower Bounds on the Periodic Cross-correlation of QAM Codes with Arbitrary Energy, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1719:121-130, 1999. [4 google scholar citations]

Current externally funded research projects

  • 2011-2014: A fast and effective automated insider threat detection and prediction system (ARC Linkage Project, $255,000, Chief Investigators S. Boztas, A. Rao, K. J. Horadam)
  • 2010-2013: Fusion of networked data from multivariate sources in the presence of uncertainty (Department of Defence, $180,000, Chief Investigators K. J. Horadam, S. Boztas, A. Rao)

Professional Website

Associate Professor Serdar Boztas