Sam Small

Information Security Institute
Department of Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University

Please note: This page is infrequently maintained and some information may not be up to date.

From 2010 to 2012 I was a Lecturer and Assistant Research Scientist in the computer science department at Johns Hopkins University. I continue to teach courses occasionally. I am currently Chief Technology Officer and Principal with Independent Security Evaluators (ISE). I also provide expert litigation consultation through Harbor Labs.

I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. My primary research interest is systems and network security. I have worked with Professors Avi Rubin, Fabian Monrose, and Adam Stubblefield as a member of both the Security and Privacy Applied Research (SPAR) lab and the Health and Medical Security (HMS) lab in the Information Security Institute (ISI). Additionally, I was a member of the RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy (RFID-CUSP).

Prior to arriving at Hopkins, I earned an undergraduate degree at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While there, Professor Bruce Lowekamp was my research advisor. In 2003, I spent the summer as a research fellow at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). I also held a research internship with the advanced development group at VMware in 2008. While a graduate student, I worked as a campus representative for Apple and as a security consultant for Independent Security Evaluators (ISE).

Teaching

Winter 2013:
- 600.220.13 Malware: Past and Present [Course Quality: 4.45/5.0, Teaching Effectiveness: 4.55/5.0]

Fall 2010, 2011:
- 600.443 Security & Privacy in Computing (materials via Blackboard) [Course Evaluation]

Spring 2010:
- 600.424 Network Security [Course Evaluation]

Publications

J. Chow, D. Lucchetti, T. Garfinkel, G. Lefebvre, R. Gardner, J. Mason, S. Small, P. M. Chen. Multi-stage Replay with Crosscut. In the proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), Pittsburgh, PA. March 2010.

J. Mason, S. Small, F. Monrose, G. MacManus. English Shellcode. In the proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Chicago, IL. November 2009. [PDF]

S. Small, J. Mason, R. MacArthur, F. Monrose. Masquerade: Simulating a Thousand Victims. In ;login: The USENIX Magazine. December 2008.

S. Small, J. Mason, F. Monrose, N. Provos, A. Stubblefield. To Catch a Predator: A Natural Language Approach for Eliciting Malicious Payloads. In the proceedings of the 17th USENIX Security Symposium, San Jose, CA. July 2008.

K. Szlavecz, A. Szalay, A. Terzis, R. Musaloiu-E, S. Small, J. Cogan, R. Burns, J. Gray. Building an End-to-end System for Long Term Soil Monitoring. AGU 2006 Joint Assembly, Baltimore, MD. May 2006.

K. Szlavecz, J. Cogan, R. Musalouiu-E., S. Small, A. Terzis, A. Szalay. A Wireless Sensor for Soil Monitoring. 2005 AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA. December 2005. Poster.

S. Small, A. DeSimone, B. Doshi, F. Monrose, and A. Terzis. Large-Scale Dynamic Virtual Private Networks for the Global Information Grid. In the proceedings of the IEEE MILCOM 2005 conference, Atlantic City, NJ. October 2005.

S. Small and B. B. Lowekamp. Topology-based Clique Organization for Distributed Resource Monitoring. In the proceedings of the IEEE/ACM SC2002 conference, Baltimore, MD. November 2002. Poster.

Manuscripts

L. Abts, J. Morrison, E. Lewandowski, S. Small, et al. Broader Impact from Graduate Students Transferring Engineering Principles to K- 12 Education. Report for the NSF. 2007.

K. Szlavecz, A. Terzis, R. Musaloiu-E, J. Cogan, S. Small, S. Ozer, R. Burns, J. Gray, A. Szalay. Life Under Your Feet: An End-to-End Soil Ecology Sensor Network, Database, Web Server, and Analysis Service. Microsoft Research Technical Report. June 2006.

S. Small. Practical Covert Channel Analysis. Masters Project. 2007.

S. Small. Scalable VPN Provisioning for the Global Information Grid. Masters Project. 2006.

S. Bono and S. Small. Exposing User-space IP Covert Channels. Technical Report. 2005.

S. Small and P. Toomey. Agreement Without Coordination. Technical Report. 2005.

S. Qiu and S. Small. Towards BGP Route Advertisement Validation. Technical Report. 2004.

S. Small. Perceived Bandwidth and Topology-based Clique Selection for Network Monitoring. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. May 2003.

Personal

In my free time I enjoy playing the drums, swimming, and playing tennis.

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