ICSSA 2018–Seoul, South Korea

For the second year in a row, Penn State Altoona faculty and students participated in the International Conference on Software Security and Assurance, technically sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The 2017 conference had been hosted by Penn State Altoona. In July 2018 the fourth annual ICSSA conference was held in Seoul, South Korea. Jungwoo Ryoo, division head for Business, Engineering, and Information Sciences and Technology [BEIST] and professor of information sciences and technology, along with students Ryan Pipetti, Nicholas McIntyre, Jonathan Todd, and Adam Brogdon, made the 17-hour trip for a week that included a summer school, a full two-day conference, a little touring, and even reconnecting with former Penn State Altoona student Bill Aiken, who is working on his master’s degree in Seoul.

With each annual conference both attendance and countries represented grows. This year students, faculty, and business leaders came from Canada, Austria, Finland, and New Zealand, in addition to the United States and Korea. Pipetti, McIntyre, Todd, and Syed Rizvi (associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State Altoona) had a completed paper accepted for the conference, titled “An Attack Vector for IoT Networks.” Brogdon was awarded first place for his lightning-round talk. And during the “Capture the Flag” game held to help the students warm up their computer skills, the Altoona group came in second.

Ryoo believes the students “got a lot out of this experience. They learned more about being in academia, they learned about what we do at conferences,” he says. “They got to meet with faculty from Korea and Austria as well and some are considering doing their master’s in Korea.” Ryoo was also pleased with the students’ reactions to Korean culture and food, both of which they enthusiastically embraced.

As part of their class requirements, the students created a website for blogging and posting pictures. In the following entry, Pipetti describes his impressions of the field trip to a government agency and a company exhibition space in South Korea:

Our first stop was about an hour away at the Korean Internet & Security Agency (KISA). We listened to a short presentation which was really eye-opening in a sense; I was unaware of all the work that went into this field of work. After the presentation had concluded, we got to see the raw numbers and data that analysts view every day. I loved this part of the trip as I enjoy statistics/graphs/data etc. Our next stop was to the Samsung D’light exhibition space, where we were taken on a guided tour. My only reaction to this place was “amazing!” I really enjoyed looking at the forefront of technology and Internet of Things (IoT) devices that were released or soon to be released into the marketplace. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!