Three Short Papers accepted at TheWebConf (WWW) 2025 from Professor Simon S. Woo’s Lab (DASH Lab)

The Data-driven AI & Security HCI Lab (DASH Lab, Advisor: Simon S. Woo) has had three short papers accepted for publication at the International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), a top-tier international conference in BK Computer Science, covering web technologies, internet advancements, data science, and artificial intelligence. The papers will be presented in April in Sydney, Australia. 1. Towards Safe Synthetic Image Generation On the Web: A Multimodal Robust NSFW Defense and Million Scale Dataset, WWW 2025 Authors:Muhammad Shahid Muneer (Ph.D. Student, Department of Software), Simon S. Woo (Professor, Department of Software, Sungkyunkwan University) 2. Fairness and Robustness in Machine Unlearning, WWW 2025 Authors: Khoa Tran (Integrated M.S./Ph.D. Student, Department of Software), Simon S. Woo (Professor, Department of Software, Sungkyunkwan University) Machine unlearning addresses the challenge of removing the influence of specific data from a pretrained model, which is a crucial issue in privacy protection. While existing approximated unlearning techniques emphasize accuracy and time efficiency, they fail to achieve exact unlearning. In this study, we are the first to incorporate fairness and robustness into machine unlearning research. Our study analyzes the relationship between fairness and robustness based on fairness conjectures, and experimental results confirm that a larger fairness gap makes the model more vulnerable. Additionally, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art approximated unlearning methods are highly susceptible to adversarial attacks, significantly degrading model performance. Therefore, we argue that fairness-gap measurement and robustness metrics should be essential evaluation criteria for unlearning algorithms. Finally, our findings show that unlearning at the intermediate and final layers is sufficient while also improving time and memory efficiency. 3. SADRE: Saliency-Aware Diffusion Reconstruction for Effective Invisible Watermark Removal, WWW 2025 Authors: Inzamamul Alam (Ph.D. Student, Department of Software), Simon S. Woo (Professor, Department of Software, Sungkyunkwan University) To address the robustness limitations of existing watermarking techniques, this study proposes SADRE (Saliency-Aware Diffusion Reconstruction), a novel watermark removal framework. SADRE applies saliency mask-guided noise injection and diffusion-based reconstruction to preserve essential image features while effectively removing watermarks. Additionally, it adapts to varying watermark strengths through adaptive noise adjustment and ensures high-quality image restoration via a reverse diffusion process. Experimental results demonstrate that SADRE outperforms state-of-the-art watermarking techniques across key performance metrics, including PSNR, SSIM, Wasserstein Distance, and Bit Recovery Accuracy. This research establishes a theoretically robust and practically effective watermark removal solution, proving its reliability for real-world web content applications.

One paper accepted at EuroS&P 2025 from Professor Simon S Woo's (DASH Lab)

The Data-driven AI & Security HCI Lab (DASH Lab, Advisor: Simon S. Woo) has had one System of Knowledge (SoK) paper accepted for publication at the 10th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (Euro S&P), a prestigious international conference covers Machine Learning Security, System & Network Security, Cryptographic Protocols, Data Privacy. The papers will be presented in July in Venice, Italy. SoK: Systematization and Benchmarking of Deepfake Detectors in a Unified Framework, EuroS&P 2025 Authors: Binh Le and Jiwon Kim (Ph.D. Student, Department of Software), Simon S. Woo (Professor, Department of Software, Sungkyunkwan University) This work is jointly performed with CSIRO Data61 as an international collaboration. Paper Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.04364

Sungkyunkwan University: The Undisputed Leader in SW and AI RISE Team Wins Grand Prize at 2024 SW Talent Festival

Sungkyunkwan University: The Undisputed Leader in SW and AI RISE Team Wins Grand Prize at 2024 SW Talent Festival

[Prof. Hyoungshick Kim] secLab, Wins Top Prize in Financial Security Institute

[Prof. Hyoungshick Kim] secLab, Wins Top Prize in Financial Security Institute ▲ (From left) Researcher Sang-Yoon Seok, President Chul-Woong Kim of the Financial Security Agency, Graduate Student Hyunmin Choi, and Student Jihoon Kim Jihoon Kim and Hyunmin Choi, members of the Security Engineering Lab (supervised by Professor Hyungshick Kim) in the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering, collaborated with Sang-Yoon Seok, a researcher at Naver Cloud, to win the top prize at the 8th Financial Security Institute’s Paper Contest. The award ceremony was held on Thursday, November 7, at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul. Hyunmin Choi is currently conducting research on privacy protection at Naver Cloud. The annual paper competition, hosted by the Financial Security Institute, invites submissions on topics such as changes in the financial environment, new technologies, and improvements to laws and regulations. Eight outstanding papers are selected each year, and winners receive preferential benefits when applying to the Financial Security Institute. Hyunmin Choi, the corresponding author and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, stated, “With the mandatory use of financial MyData APIs, the importance of data privacy technology is increasing. Our paper focused on enhancing security through homomorphic encryption and enabling data combination technologies.” Jihoon Kim, the first author and an undergraduate student in the Department of Mathematics, shared, “This research was a valuable learning experience, and I hope to continue contributing to advancements in security technology.” Professor Hyungshick Kim added, “This project provided students with a meaningful opportunity to apply the latest security technologies in real-world settings through collaboration with Naver Cloud.”