CS Colloquium
Sima (Tahereh) Jafarikhah
Title: Publicly Evaluatable Perceptual Hashing
Host: Holly Rushmeier
Abstract:
Robust Perceptual Hash (PH) allows social media platforms to prevent uploading explicit multimedia files of their users without their consent. Using PH algorithms raise a vital privacy concern; If users are aware that an explicit image of theirs is in another’s possession and want to prevent such an image from being posted, they have to provide the image to the social media platform so that the PH can be evaluated on it and added to the blacklist. Is it possible to have robust and publicly evaluatable perceptual hash functions? With three undergraduate students at the City University of New York, we answered this question in an affirmative.
Bio:
Sima (Tahereh) Jafarikhah is a Ph.D. candidate of Computer Science at the City University of New York under the supervision of Rosario Gennaro and expect to complete her Ph.D. degree requirements by Spring 2021. Prior to this, she earned her first Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tehran. Her research lies at the intersection of cryptography, network security, and, more in general, theoretical computer science. She served as the main lecturer of various computer science and Math courses at graduate, undergraduate levels. She also taught at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.