As Internet-based crimes become increasingly prevalent in today’s society, Stony Brook University’s Professor Long Lu is leading the charge against cyber criminals. His research project, known as MALDIVES, is aiming to obtain a better understanding of malware delivery mechanisms that are currently used to spread malicious and dangerous materials online.

Professor Lu’s latest award was given as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program, also known as the SaTC Program. Researchers at Stony Brook University collectively received the most awards this year from this program, with all of their awards combining to total over $1.4 million. Over his career as a researcher, Long Lu has also totaled just over $1.4 million in grants and awards after this latest addition of $400,000.

This new project has its sights on developing a new technology to provide deeper insights into how certain malware distribution systems are used, how they function, and how they interlink with open web sources. Through a sequence of five attack observation lablets known as ATOLLs, the project will acquire an in-depth understanding each step in current malware dissemination mechanisms.

Long Lu has been dedicated to stopping online security threats since he was an undergraduate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, where he majored in information security. He went on to receive his PhD in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and did his thesis on Securing Systems and Software Against Attacks Targeting Unwary Users.

Here at Stony Brook, Lu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and conducts research focusing on continually thwarting these cyber threats. The MALDIVES project began on October 1st, and is expected to be completed in 2019. More information can be found on his website http://www.longlu.org