I am Director of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, recognised by NCSC as one of the UK's Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research. I joined the Department of Computer Science in September 2004 and was Head of Department 2004-2010. I was Associate Dean Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences from 2015-2019.
I was previously in the Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London over the period 1994-2004. I gained my doctorate from the University of Oxford, and held post-doctoral positions there prior to joining Royal Holloway.
Areas of specialism
Secure Electronic Voting; Distributed Ledger Technologies; Rail and Automotive Security; Security and Privacy; Formal modeling and verification
University roles and responsibilities
Director of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security
Previous roles
2004 - 2010
Head of Department of Computer Science
University of Surrey
2015 - 2019
Associate Dean (Research and Innovation), Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
I have been working in the area of Secure Electronic Voting since 2004. Since then I have been involved in the design and development of the Prêt à Voter verifiable voting system including its implementation for use in the vVote system used in the 2014 State Election in the State of Victoria, Australia. I am interested in more general approaches to secure electronic voting, and the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies in this domain, and more generally.
I am also researching in security and privacy in the transportation domain. In Rail, we are focusing on the challenges around customer data privacy in the context of increased use of customer information to support journeys. Other work in rail has focused on the application of formal modelling approaches to establishing safety requirements within rail networks.
In the Automotive domain we are focusing on security within vehicle-to-vehicle communications,
These interests are grounded in earlier work in formal methods and in security around modelling and verification of security protocols, and in non-interference. In particular this has focused on methods for analysis of protocols between agents interacting in an insecure environment, and proving that they provide critical authentication and confidentiality properties.
My formal methods work originated in concurrency theory, specifically the process algebra Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), and its timed version Timed CSP. I also work with the B-Method and with Event-B, their relationship to CSP, and their application to safety and security verification.
A collaboration between the University of Surrey and King's College London, together with industrial partners Monax Industries, Crowdcube Limited, and Electoral Reform Services.
The project aims to explore applications of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) in domains involving voting and collective decision making. There are many domains in which some form of balloting is required, such as voting on proposals or electing in charities, professional organisations, clubs, trades unions, political parties, and private companies. It is important to run such ballots in a way to ensure that the result is trusted. The project also focuses on management of more complex voting rights, for example in the context of company shareholdings, and the role that can be played by smart contracts.
Secure Electronic Voting
I am currently working on secure electronic voting (see video), in particular on the Prêt à Voter secure verifiable electronic voting system. I lead the Surrey e-voting group, which produced the first prototype implementation of Prêt à Voter, awarded `best design' at the voting systems competition conference VoComp 2007.
I led an international collaboration to provide secure electronic voting to the State of Victoria, Australia for their November 2014 State election. I was also an investigator on the 2009-2014 EPSRC grant `Trustworthy Voting Systems'.
Research collaborations
I work with Helen Treharne and collaborators in Swansea on developing new methods and tools for formally verifying safety for railway track plans. I am interested in scalability of the methods, enabling them to manage the complexity of real track plans.
I have a longstanding collaboration with Peter Ryan of the University of Luxembourg and Vanessa Teague of the University of Melbourne in the area of Secure Electronic Voting.
Indicators of esteem
My work on secure electronic voting has led to the development of a verifiable voting system used in the November 2014 State election in the State of Victoria, Australia.
Talking about the challenges of implementing and verifying electronic voting systems.
Teaching
I am currently teaching the module COM2031 Advanced Algorithms to our undergraduate level 5 students. In 2020 this was delivered in hybrid form.
The B-Method: an Introduction, Steve Schneider, Palgrave Cornerstones in Computer Science. 2001
Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols (PDF), Peter Y.A. Ryan, Steve Schneider, Michael Goldsmith, Gavin Lowe & Bill Roscoe,Pearson Education, 2000. The book also has a companion website
Concurrent and Real Time Systems: the CSP Approach (PDF), Steve Schneider, John Wiley, 1999. The book also has a companion website
Verifiable Voting Systems (PDF), Thea Peacock, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Steve Schneider & Zhe Xia, Chapter 69 of Computer and Information Security Handbook, 2nd Edition, John R. Vacca (ed), Elsevier 2013.
Prêt à Voter: the Evolution of the Species, Peter Y.A, Ryan, Steve Schneider & Vanessa Teague, Chapter 12 in Real World Electronic Voting: Design, Analysis and Deployment, Feng Hao & Peter Y.A. Ryan (eds), 2016.
vVote: a Verifiable Voting System , Chris Culnane, Peter Y.A. Ryan, Steve Schneider & Vanessa Teague, ACM Transactions on Information Systems Security, 18(1), 2015.
Faster Print on Demand for Prêt à Voter ,Chris Culnane, James Heather, Rui Joaquim, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Steve Schneider & Vanessa Teague,USENIX Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS) Volume 2 Issue 1, and Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, EVT/WOTE'14.
Testing Voters' Understanding of a Security Mechanisms used in Verifiable Voting ,Morgan Llewellyn, Steve Schneider, Zhe Xia, Chris Culnane, James Heather, Peter Y. A. Ryan & Sriramkrishnan Srinivasan,USENIX Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS) Volume 1 Issue 1, and Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, EVT/WOTE'13.
On key sizes for electronic voting,Sriramkrishnan Srinivasan, Chris Culnane, James Heather, Steve Schneider & Zhe Xia, 7th Chinese Conference on Trusted Computing and Information Security, 2013.
OnTrack: An Open Tooling Environment for Railway Verification,Phillip James, Matthew Trumble, Helen Treharne, Markus Roggenbach & Steve Schneider, 5th NASA Formal Methods Symposium, NFM 2013.
Software Design for VEC vVote System, Chris Culnane, James Heather, Steve Schneider and Zhe Xia, Technical Report CS-13-01, 26 March 2013, Department of Computer Science, University of Surrey.
Using Prêt à Voter in Victoria State Elections,Craig Burton, Chris Culnane, James Heather, Thea Peacock, Peter Y.A. Ryan, Steve Schneider, Sriram Srinivasan, Vanessa Teague, Roland Wen & Zhe Xia, Electronic Voting Technology/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, EVT/WOTE 2012.
Anonymity and CSP for Voting Systems,Murat Moran, James Heather & Steve Schneider, Cryptoforma Workshop on Formal Methods and Cryptography, Limerick,2011
Authentication Codes,Chris Culnane, David Bismark, James Heather, Steve Schneider, Sriram Srivinasan & Zhe Xia, EVT/WOTE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, San Francisco, 2011
Focus Group Views on Prêt à Voter 1.0,Steve Schneider, Morgan Llewellyn, Chris Culnane, James Heather, Sriramkrishnan Srinivasan & Zhe Xia, RE-Vote: International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Electronic Voting Systems, Trento, 2011
Prêt à Voter with write-ins,Steve Schneider, Sriramkrishnan Srivinasan, Chris Culnane, James Heather & Zhe Xia, Vote-ID: International Conference on e-Voting and Identity, Tallinn, Estonia, 2011
The Prêt à Voter Verifiable Election System,Peter Ryan, David Bismark, James Heather, Steve Schneider & Zhe Xia, IEEE Transactions in Information Security and Forensics, 2009
May testing, non-interference, and compositionality,Steve Schneider, Electronic Notes in Computer Science 40, 2001.
How to drive a B machine,Helen Treharne & Steve Schneider, 2nd International conference of Z and B Users, LNCS, 2000. Winner of the conference best paper award.
