2022-06-21: Hands-On Experience with CyberExL Program

It was a great pleasure that my proposal was selected for CyberExL (CybersecurityGraduate Experiential Learning Program) in 2022.

CyberExL, a COVA CCI graduate experiential learning program, is designed to provide graduate students with opportunities to gain vital experience and mentorship in various areas of cybersecurity by working directly with companies, faculty, researchers, and university administrators.

In this program, both the placement proposals and student applications are reviewed by a committee of faculties from CCI member institutions. Then an awardee faculty or industry mentor and a selected graduate student work together on an innovative cybersecurity project. The program started on January 10, 2022 and ended on May 6, 2022. I highly encourage students to participate in the program.

Keming Wu, who is pursuing a master’s degree in business analytics at William & Mary, worked on “Crowdsourced Review Manipulation Attacks” to identify the fake reviews on the Amazon marketplace.

Some tasks on the crowdsourced sites lead users to leave dis-informed and fraudulent reviews on various online platforms.  Therefore, detecting these fraudulent reviews and review writers directed from crowdsourced results is vital and should be considered as a way to protect online communities.

Our paper titled “Towards Undeceived: Fake Review Detection Models Comparison” has been accepted at IRI 2022 and will be presented on August 9-11 during the conference.

Acknowledgment: This work is supported by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, an investment in the advancement of cyber R&D, innovation, and workforce development. For more information about CCI, visit cyberinitiative.org.

Faryaneh Poursardar (@Faryane)