UNIST's Web Browser Security Vulnerability Technology Wins Top Prize at International Symposium... First-Ever Award for Korea

Professor Seil Wi’s Computer Science Team Wins Outstanding Paper Award

A domestic technology that identifies security vulnerabilities occurring when users open or close tabs or move links in web browsers has drawn attention at an international computer security symposium.

UNIST announced on the 16th that a paper by the research team led by Professor Seil Wi of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering received the Internet Defense Prize at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium, hosted by the USENIX Association in the United States.

The Internet Defense Prize is an outstanding paper award sponsored by the global company Meta. Since its establishment in 2014, this is the first time a research team from a Korean institution has received the award. This year, out of 3,028 submitted papers, only 362 papers were accepted, and among them, just three were selected as prize winners.

Researcher Jeong Minki presenting at a conference held in Baltimore, USA.

The technology developed by the research team is called 'BUIzz.' Unlike previous approaches that examined webpages themselves, BUIzz automatically detects security policy errors that can arise during actual browser usage.

It checks processes such as opening links in new tabs or split screens, dragging and dropping links into the address bar, and reopening closed tabs, in order to uncover flaws where security policies fail to operate as intended.

Such errors can lead to the leakage of login cookies that should not be transmitted to external sites or the execution of malicious scripts that should be blocked. This could ultimately result in account information theft or the exposure of keyboard input data.

The research team applied BUIzz to six major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, discovering 35 security bugs and 3 functional errors. The identified vulnerabilities were reported to the respective browser vendors, and the research team received a total of 14,700 dollars (approximately 21 million won) in rewards last year.

Among this sum, Professor Seil Wi and Minki Jeong, the first author of the paper, donated 10 million won to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering's development fund last year.

With this award, the research team will also receive 25,000 dollars (approximately 35 million won) in research funding. The team was also recognized as a runner-up in the 'Distinguished Paper Award,' which evaluates academic novelty and societal impact.

(From left) Professor Seongil Wi, Professor Mijeong Kim, Researcher Mingi Jeong (first author), Researcher Donggyu Kim.

Minki Jeong, a master's student and first author, explained, "Unlike previous web browser security studies, which mainly analyzed issues within webpages, our research delved into security vulnerabilities arising as users actually interact with browsers—for example, opening and closing tabs or moving links to other windows— which seems to have been highly regarded."

Professor Seil Wi stated, "The value of security research lies not only in publishing papers but also in solving real-world problems. We intend to continue research that tackles practical security and safety issues in web browsers and artificial intelligence."

This research project also involved Professor Mijeong Kim and integrated master's and doctoral student Donggyu Kim from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The results were presented at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium, held in Baltimore, USA, from August 12 to 14.

USENIX Security is regarded as one of the leading international conferences in the field of computer security. This year, the symposium accepted 362 papers out of 3,028 submissions.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.