Kentrell Owens

PhD Student (2020 - present)

Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington, USA
[my first name]@cs.washington.edu
[CV under construction]

My pronouns are he/him.
Twitter: @KentrellOwens

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About Me

I'm a third year PhD student at the University of Washington in the Security & Privacy Research Lab. My advisors are Franziska Roesner and Tadayoshi Kohno. My research area is computer security and privacy. My research interests include usable security and privacy, mobile/IoT security and privacy, and web security and privacy. I'm specifically interested in the computer security and privacy needs of underserved communities.

I earned my M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) where I worked with Lorrie Cranor, and my B.S. from Rice University (Houston, TX). I grew up in rural northern Louisiana, and I'm a first-generation college student. I owe the victories in my life to all the investments my friends, family, teachers, and communities have made in me. If you're reading this, you might be one of those people; thank you!

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Updates

09/12/2022 - Last month I returned from spending a summer in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, studying Bangla (aka Bengali, the 7th most spoken language in the world) on a Critical Language Scholarship. It was a great experience, and my Bangla has significantly improved! I recently presented our work at USENIX Security in Boston, attended the Tapia Conference in DC, and at the end of the month I'm going to Germany to present at EuroUSEC. Lots of travel ahead!

05/14/2022 - I passed my Qualifying Examination! This is the first of three major milestones in my PhD, and I'm glad to have made it through the first.

01/20/2022 - Our paper on the risks of electronic monitoring smartphone applications was (conditionally) accepted into USENIX Security 2022! More details to come soon!

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Publications

2022

• Exploring Deceptive Design Patterns in Voice Interfaces [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Pardis Emami-Naeini, Tadayoshi Kohno, Franziska Roesner
  European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC 2022). September 2022.
  BibTeX


• Electronic Monitoring Smartphone Apps: An Analysis of Risks from Technical, Human-Centered, and Legal Perspectives [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Anita Alem, Franziska Roesner, Tadayoshi Kohno
  31st USENIX Security Symposium. August 2022.
  BibTeX
  Press: NewScientist

2021

• User Perceptions of the Usability and Security of Smartphones as FIDO2 Roaming Authenticators [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Olabode Anise, Amanda Krauss, Blase Ur
  17th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2021). Online, August 2021.
  BibTeX


• "You Gotta Watch What You Say": Surveillance of Communication with Incarcerated People. [pdf, html]
  Kentrell Owens, Camille Cobb, Lorrie Cranor.
  ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021). Online, May 8–13, 2021.
  [One pager for ACJ]
  BibTeX
  Honorable Mention Award
  

2020

• A Framework For Evaluating the Usability and Security of Smartphones as FIDO2 Roaming Authenticators
  Kentrell Owens, Blase Ur, Olabode Anise.
  Who Are You?! Adventures in Authentication 2020 Workshop (WAY 2020). Online, August 2020.

2019

• Studying Passwords to Create Domain-Specific Blocklists (Poster). [Extended abstract]
  Kentrell Owens, Mengchen Yong, Neha Sridhar, Ziheng Ni, Joshua Tan, Lorrie Cranor.
  15th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2019). August 2019.


• pico-Boo: How to avoid scaring students away in a CTF competition.
  Kentrell Owens, Alexander Fulton, Luke Jones, Martin Carlisle.
  Journal of The Colloquium for Information System Security Education (CISSE 2019). June 2019.
  Best Student Paper Award