William A. Arbaugh Associate Professor Emeritus

Associate Professor Emeritus

My research interests are evolving at the moment. I am very interested in developing methods and techniques to combat the increasing malware problem. This is a multi-disciplinary problem involving:

- Education - We have to teach our students.

- Control - Improved or new operating system and hardware techniques.

- Awareness - IT managers are clueless as to the operational “state” of their information systems.

- Architecture - We have to design and build systems in a more assured manner (see Education above).

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack, attack and attack some more.

Gen. George S. Patton

Against those skilled in attack, the enemy does not know where to defend. Against those skilled in defense, the enemy does not know where to attack.

Sun Tzu

Research Interests

I retired from the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland College Park in 2012 after twelve years. Previously, I served sixteen years with the U.S. Department of Defense. During the sixteen years, I served in several leadership positions in diverse areas ranging from tactical communications to advanced research.

In 2004, I founded Komoku, Inc. Komoku furthered research, Semantic Integrity, developed by myself and my students into a product to detect sophisticated malware. Komoku was purchased by Microsoft in 2008. Komoku technology currently runs on over 500 million hosts.

I received a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a M.S. in computer science from Columbia University, and PhD in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.