Alumni Profile: Researcher
What is it that inspires research? For researcher Soon Hin Khor (INI, '07), his motivation comes from attracting the interest of others. His current research at the University of Tokyo is on mitigating distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), an extension of work he began at Carnegie Mellon Japan. Khor is a 2007 graduate of the Master of Science in Information Technology–Information Security program in Kobe.
DDoS is method of attacking a Web-based service that involves breaking into multiple computers and using them to disable a Web server by sending it more traffic than it can handle. An attack could cause services such as e-banking or e-commerce to shut down for a period of time. DDoS has evolved into a serious threat to businesses and organizations, with criminals going so far as to offer DDoS resources for hire.
"I did not intend to extend my work on DDoS unless I could solicit feedback from the research, preferably from the industry community," said Khor.
As it turned out, his work first piqued the interest of his professors, who influenced him to pursue the topic further and take new approaches. The topic is applicable to any company that offers services over the Internet.
"My experience as a security architect and consultant, together with the education from my master's program gives me a balanced perspective," said Khor. "My work to mitigate DDoS is neither too superficial nor too academic."
Khor wrote a paper stemming from his graduate work, with support from Dr. Nicolas Christin, Associate Director of the INI, and Dr. Akihiro Nakao from the University of Tokyo, and it was accepted in the 2007 ACM SIGCOMM Large Scale Attack and Defense Workshop.
Khor values highly the experience of writing a technical paper for a conference because he has learned it is essential to be able to articulate one's work. Khor credits faculty, staff and his fellow graduate students for giving him constant encouragement.
"Carnegie Mellon is a top school for information networking and information security, not least of all due to the quality of the professors who are constantly aiming to be on top of their work," said Khor. "They bring their latest knowledge and experience into the classroom, which is something which you cannot buy from bookstores."