2020
- (Dec 12) Paper accepted to CODASPY 2020
- CRAPE: A Privacy-Enhanced Crash Reporting System.
- Kiavash Satvat, Mahshid Hosseini, Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena
- In ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), March 2020.[pdf]
2019
- (Mar 15) Runner Up, The Mark Weiser Best Paper Award
- The SPIES lab’s paper at Percom 2019 was a runner up for the prestigious Mark Weiser Best Paper Award:
- Quantifying the Breakability of Mobile Assistants
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Summer Vo and Nitesh Saxena
- (Apr 18) Prakash Shrestha Honored with the Dean’s Award
- Prakash Shrestha wins the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduating PhD Student at the Honors Convocation. Congratulations!
- (Jun 21) 4 papers accepted to PST 2019
- Stethoscope: Crypto Phones with Transparent & Robust Fingerprint Comparisons using Inter Text-Speech Transformations
- Maliheh Shirvanian, and Nitesh Saxena
- ZEMFA: Zero-Effort Multi-Factor Authentication based on Multi-Modal Gait Biometrics
- Babins Shrestha, Manar Mohamed and Nitesh Saxena
- Compromising Speech Privacy under Continuous Masking in Personal Spaces
- S Abhishek Anand, Payton Walker and Nitesh Saxena
- Brain Hemorrhage: When Brainwaves Leak Sensitive Medical Conditions and Personal Information
- Ajaya Neupane, Kiavash Satvat, Mahshid Hosseini and Nitesh Saxena
- (Aug 02) Paper accepted to ISPEC 2019
- CATCHA: When Cats Track Your Movements Online
- Prakash Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, Ajaya Neupane and Kiavash Satvat
- (Aug 23) Two papers accepted to ACSAC 2019
- Challenge-Response Behavioral Mobile Authentication: A Comparative Study of Graphical Patterns and Cognitive Games
- Manar Mohamed, Prakash Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena.
- Defeating Hidden Audio Channel Attacks on Voice Assistants via Audio-Induced Surface Vibrations
- Chen Wang, Abhishek Anand, Jian Liu, Payton Walker, Yingying Chen and Nitesh Saxena
- (Sep 10) Research grant funded from Microsoft Research
- SPIES lab has a research grant funded from Microsoft Research to study security warnings via the Neuro Security methodology introduced at the SPIES lab, September 2019
- (Oct 05) A $550,000 supplement on NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) Grant We have a $550,000 supplement on our ongoing grant NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) Grant, 2016/17.
- This funding expands our program, and adds more students and admin support.
- (Nov 08) Paper accepted to NDSS 2019
- Acceptance rate as low as 17% (89/521):
- The Crux of Voice (In)Security: A Brain Study of Speaker Legitimacy Detection
- Ajaya Neupane, Nitesh Saxena, Leanne Hirshfield and Sarah Bratt
- (Nov 11) Prakash Shrestha defends his PhD dissertation
- Prakash Shrestha successfully defended his PhD dissertation today (“New Authentiation and Privacy Paradigms in Mobile and Wearable Computing”). Great work, hard problems, many top papers (1 CCS, 1 NDSS, 2 Wisec, ACSAC, CSUR and more), Dean’s award, etc.
- (Dec 04) Mohammed Jubur passes PhD Qualifiers
- Mohammed Jubur passes his PhD qualifier with flying colors. His literature survey critically questions the regular advice from security experts to use current password managers (and two factor authentication).
- (Dec 12) Paper accepted to Percom 2019
- Quantifying the Breakability of Mobile Assistants
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Summer Vo and Nitesh Saxena
2018
- (Feb 28) Paper accepted to CNS 2018
- Home Alone: The Insider Threat of Unattended Wearables and A Defense using Audio Proximity.
- Prakash Shrestha, Babins Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena
- (Mar 28) Journal paper accepted to TDSC
- Noisy Vibrational Pairing of IoT Devices
- Abhishek Anand, and Nitesh Saxena
- (Apr 10) Paper accepted to WiSec 2018
- Listening Watch: Wearable Two-Factor Authentication using Speech Signals Resilient to Near-Far Attacks .
- Prakash Shrestha, and Nitesh Saxena
- (Apr 11) Maliheh Shirvanian Honored with the Dean’s Award
- Maliheh Shirvanian received the College Dean’s Award for the outstanding graduating PhD student in the whole college and the outstanding graduating student in the CS department. Congratulations!
- (May 07) Journal paper accepted to IEEE TMC
- Sensor-based Proximity Detection in the Face of Active Adversaries
- Babins Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, Hien Truong and N. Asokan.
- In IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), [pdf]
- (Aug 23) Paper accepted to ACSAC 2018
- Do Social Disorders Facilitate Social Engineering? A Case Study of Autism and Phishing Attacks.
- Ajaya Neupane, Kiavash Satvat, Nitesh Saxena, Despina Stavrinos and Haley J. Bishop
- (Dec 14) Paper accepted to PKC 2018
- Two-Factor Authentication with End-to-End Password Security.
- Stanislaw Jarecki, Hugo Krawczyk, Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena
- (Dec 01) Paper accepted to Oakland 2018
- Congratulations to the SPIES team for “securing” a paper at the top conference in security. A comprehensive demonstration of a hard negative result: mobile motion sensors may not pose a threat to speech privacy, unlike claimed by recent prominent work (e.g., Gyrophone).
- Speechless: Analyzing the Threat to Speech Privacy from Smartphone Motion Sensors. Abhishek Anand, and Nitesh Saxena. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P; Oakland), May 2018.
- (Dec 02) Paper accepted to CODASPY 2018
- Keyboard Emanations in Remote Voice Calls: Password Leakage and Noise(less) Masking Defenses.
- Abhishek Anand and Nitesh Saxena
- (Dec 15) Paper accepted to the Journal of Computer Security
- Extension of our “Wiretapping via Mimicry” paper from CCS 2014:
- Short Voice Imitation Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Crypto Phones: Defeating Humans and Machines
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Dibya Mukhopadhyay and Nitesh Saxena
2017
- (Jan 14) Paper accepted to FC 2017
- PEEP: Passively Eavesdropping Private Input via Brainwave Signals
- Ajaya Neupane, Md. Lutfor Rahman and Nitesh Saxena
- (Jan 24) A $2.15 Million NSF SFS Grant Led by Dr. Saxena
- sfs-certDr. Saxena, as the lead investigator, has been awarded a $2.15 million grant from the
- The grant will support, via highly paid scholarships (about $50K, a year per student, in tuition, stipends and perks), several Masters students pursuing cyber security degrees, especially the MS CFSM program (which Dr. Saxena has been co-directing for many years now) over the next 5 years. Co-investigators include: Drs. Bangalore, Zheng and Walker.
- NSF SFS is a highly competitive program, and with this grant UAB joins an elite group of universities doing cutting-edge work to prepare a US cyber workforce ready to fight out and (hopefully) win cyber wars with malicious attackers out there in the wild!
- Congratulations!
- (Mar 01) Paper accepted to ICDCS 2017
- SPHINX: A Password Store that Perfectly Hides Passwords from Itself.
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Stanislaw Jarecki, Hugo Krawczyk and Nitesh Saxena
- (Mar 09) Launching the UAB CyberCorps SFS Web Site
- Actively soliciting applications.
- The eligible candidates can apply directly to the MS CFSM program, but should note that they are interested in the UAB SFS program in their statement of career goals and objectives. The deadline to apply for Fall 2017 is June 1, 2017. However, the sooner you apply the better.
- (Mar10) Ajaya Neupane Wins Competitive NIJ Fellowship
- Fellowship
- (Apr 01) Ajaya Neupane awarded Outstanding CIS PhD Student
- Ajaya Neupane has been recognized by UAB as the outstanding graduating PhD student in CIS. He received this award at the Honors Convocation, Mar, 2017. Congratulations!
- (Apr 17) Paper accepted to the Journal of Computer Security
- Manar Mohamed, Song Gao, Niharika Sachdeva, Nitesh Saxena, Chengcui Zhang, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru and Paul van Oorschot. On the Security and Usability of Dynamic Cognitive Game CAPTCHAs.
- (May 02) Two papers accepted to WiSec 2017
- The SPIES group has two full papers accepted to WiSec 2017:
- YELP: Masking Sound-based Opportunistic Attacks in Zero-Effort Deauthentication
- Prakash Shrestha, Abhishek Anand and Nitesh Saxena
- Coresident Evil: Noisy Vibrational Pairing in the Face of Co-located Acoustic Eavesdropping
- Abhishek Anand, and Nitesh Saxena
- (May 30) SPIES research wins high school student accolades
- Summer Vo, a high school student from the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA), who worked with Dr. Saxena and Maliheh Shirvanian on security research this past entire year, won the third place at the 2017
- in the Computer Science and Mathematics category. At the same competition, she was awarded the INTEL Excellence in Computer Science Outstanding Achievement.
- Summer is joining the MIT EECS program this Fall, majoring in Computer Science.
- Congratulations on all round great achievements!
- (Jun 13) Journal paper accepted to TDSC
- TDSC is a top journal in the area.
- Emerging-Image Motion CAPTCHAs: Vulnerabilities of Existing Designs, and Countermeasures
- Song Gao, Manar Mohamed, Nitesh Saxena, and Chengcui Zhang
- (Aug 03) Two papers accepted to CCS 2017
- The SPIES lab and collaborators have two papers accepted to ACM CCS 2017. Extremely fierce competition with only 151 papers making it to the program out of 836 submissions (an acceptance of just about 18%).
- CCCP: Closed Caption Crypto Phones to Resist MITM Attacks, Human Errors and Click-Through
- Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena
- VibWrite: Towards Finger-input Authentication on Ubiquitous Surfaces via Physical Vibration.
- Jian Liu, Chen Wang, Yingying Chen and Nitesh Saxena
- (Aug 05) Most recent SPIES graduate
- Ajaya Neupane is the most recent PhD. graduate of the SPIES lab. Groundbreaking research http://spies.cs.uab.edu/neuro-security (top-tier papers, NDSS14 best paper, NIJ/DoJ fellow). He is taking on a post-doctoral research scientist position at UC Riverside, working on UCR/CMU/PSU CyberSecurity Research Alliance project funded by ARL.
- Congratulations and very best wishes for a bright future 🙂
- (Aug 19) Journal paper accepted to ACM CSUR
- A comprehensive survey paper on the nuts and bolts of the security of wearable computing. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) is a reputed venue publishing comprehensive, readable tutorials and survey papers that give guided tours through the literature and explain topics to those who seek to learn the basics of areas outside their specialties.
- An Offensive and Defensive Exposition of Wearable Computing
- Prakash Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena
- (Aug 20) Paper accepted to ACSAC 2017
- Great conference, acceptance rate 19.7% (48/244):
- On the Pitfalls of End-to-End Encrypted Communications: A Study of Remote Key-Fingerprint Verification.
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Nitesh Saxena and Jesvin James George.
- (Dec 15) Dr. Saxena to Receive the Dean’s Excellence in Mentorship Award
- Dr. Saxena will be receiving the Dean’s Excellence in Mentorship Award at the April 2017 ceremony.
- A mentor is not just an educator. A mentor is a person who inspires and motivates. A mentor is committed to excellence. The Dean’s Excellence in Mentorship Award recognizes full-time regular UAB faculty members who have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments as mentors of graduate students and/or postdoctoral fellows.
- Congratulations!
2016
- (Jan 15) Journal paper accepted to Brain Connectivity
- Task-dependent Changes in Frontal-Parietal Activation and Connectivity during Visual Search
- Jose O Maximo, Ajaya Neupane, Nitesh Saxena, Robert M Joseph, and Rajesh K Kana
- This neuroscience paper studies visual search, a crucial component of many user-centered security tasks.
- (Feb 02) Paper accepted to ASIACCS 2016
- Device-Enhanced Password Protocols with Optimal Online-Offline Protection.
- Stanislaw Jarecki, Hugo Krawczyk, Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena
- Acceptance rate for full papers = 20.9% (73/350)
- (Feb 25) News coverage of our NDSS’16 paper
- Based on work done in collaboration with researchers at Aalto University, Finland.
- (Apr 03) Manar Mohamed awarded outstanding graduating PhD student
- Manar Mohamed has been recognized by the College of Arts and Sciences as the outstanding graduating PhD student in CIS. She will be receiving this award at the Honors Convocation in April end. Congratulations!
- (Apr 20) Journal paper accepted to IEEE TIFS
- Neural Markers of Cybersecurity: An fMRI Study of Phishing, and Malware Warnings
- Ajaya Neupane, Nitesh Saxena, Jose O Maximo, and Rajesh K Kana
- (May 02) Open Instructor Position
- UAB CIS is currently hiring an instructional faculty member (open to all ranks and many core CS areas).
- (May 27) Two papers accepted to WiSec 2016
- SPIES lab has two papers accepted to WiSec, 2016, a premium venue for mobile and wireless security research.
- Slogger: Smashing Motion-based Touchstroke Logging with Transparent System Noise
- Prakash Shrestha, Manar Mohamed and Nitesh Saxena
- Vibreaker: Securing Vibrational Pairing with Deliberate Acoustic Noise
- S Abhishek Anand, and Nitesh Saxena
- (Jul 23) Paper accepted to CCS 2016
- The Sounds of the Phones: Dangers of Zero-Effort Second Factor Login based on Ambient Audio. Babins Shrestha, Maliheh Shirvanian, Prakash Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena. ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), October 2016.
- Fierce competition: only 16% papers accepted (137 out of 831).
- (Aug 19) Two papers accepted to ACSAC 2016
- The SPIES team has two papers accepted to ACSAC. Great conference, and an acceptance rate of only 22.8% (48/210).
- Gametrics: Towards Attack-Resilient Behavioral Authentication with Simple Cognitive Games
- Manar Mohamed and Nitesh Saxena
- Theft-Resilient Mobile Payments: Transparently Authenticating NFC Users with Tapping Gesture Biometrics
- Babins Shrestha, Manar Mohamed, Sandeep Tamrakar and Nitesh Saxena
- (Sep 04) Latest Media Coverage
- Research finds novel defense against sophisticated smartphone keyloggers, by Tiffany Westry:
- (Sep 17) Two PhD Graduates and Forever SPIES
- Manar Mohamed and Babins Shrestha recently finished their PhD degrees doing some excellent work. Babins is joining VISA as a Senior Information Security Analyst, and Manar will be joining the instructional faculty of Computer Science at the Temple University. Both graduated rather quickly, in nearly 4 years.
- Congratulations to the newly hooded doctors and best wishes for the great times ahead of you. You will be missed!
- (Sep 27) Journal paper accepted to IEEE TIFS
- SMASheD: Sniffing and Manipulating Android Sensor Data for Offensive Purposes.
- Manar Mohamed, Babins Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena
2015
- (Jan 07) Paper accepted to Percom
- Only 15 full papers were accepted out of 196 submissions — acceptance rate of just 7.7%. Top conference in the field of pervasive computing. Congrats to Babins, Manar and Andy.
- Babins Shrestha, Manar Mohamed, Anders Borg, Nitesh Saxena and Sandeep Tamrakar. Curbing Mobile Malware based on User-Transparent Hand Movements. International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), to appear, March 2015.
- (Feb 26) UAB Mix Feature on our Work
- Swagger security: How your smartphone style could keep your digital assets safe
- (Mar 09) Dr. Saxena to serve on top security conference committees
- CCS and ESORICS call for papers still open….submit your BESTest work 🙂
- Dr. Saxena is serving on the program committee of several top security conferences in 2015: Usenix Security, CCS, ESORICS and RFIDSec. Please submit your best work!
- (Apr 01) Song Gao to join Google
- The most recent PhD graduate of SPIES, Song Gao, will be taking up a full time Software Engineer position at Google in Mountain View, CA. Congratulations to Song! Sunny days ahead, literally 🙂
- (Apr 12) Abhishek Anand awarded outstanding graduating MS student in CIS
- Abhishek is the winner of the CIS outstanding graduating MS student award, 2015. Congratulations! A great way to enter the PhD program 🙂
- (Apr 24) Journal paper accepted to IEEE TIFS
- Tap-Wave-Rub: Lightweight Human Interaction Approach to Curb Emerging Smartphone Malware. Babins Shrestha, Di Ma, Yan Zhu, Haoyu Li, and Nitesh Saxena. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), to appear, 2015.
- Congratulations to lead author Babins!
- (Jun 16) Paper accepted to ESORICS
- All Your Voices Are Belong to Us: Stealing Voices to Fool Humans and Machines
- Dibya Mukhopadhyay, Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena
- European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, to appear, September 2015.
- (Aug 06) Paper accepted to CCS
- A Multi-Modal Neuro-Physiological Study of Phishing Detection and Malware Warnings. Ajaya Neupane, Md. Lutfor Rahman, Nitesh Saxena, and Leanne Hirshfield. In ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), October 2015.
- Congratulations to Ajaya. Exciting research. Top conference. Tough competition — acceptance rate = 19.8% (128/646).
- (Aug 22) NSF SaTC Grant Awarded to Dr. Saxena
- Spoof-Resistant Smartphone Authentication using Cooperating Wearables, $207,965.00, Sept 1, 2015 to Aug 31, 2018, NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Program. Joint grant with Syracuse University, total amount $507,000. Details here.
- (Aug 30) Paper accepted to CANS 2015
- Bad Sounds Good Sounds: Attacking and Defending Tap-based Rhythmic Passwords using Acoustic Signals. S Abhishek Anand, Prakash Shrestha, and Nitesh Saxena.
- (Sep 05) NSF CICI Grant Awarded to Dr. Saxena
- Improving the Security and Usability of Two-Factor Authentication for Cyberinfrastructure, $249,719.00 ,Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2018,
- (Sep 11) Two papers accepted to ACSAC 2015
- The SPIES team has two papers accepted to ACSAC. Great conference, and an acceptance rate of only 24.4% (47/193).
- (Sep 15) Open Faculty Position
- UAB CIS is currently hiring a faculty member (open to all ranks and many core CS areas).
- (Oct 20) Prof. Saxena wins two NSF grants
- NSF grants:
- (Oct 24) Paper accepted to NDSS 2016
- NDSS is a top conference. Acceptance rate very low: 15% (60/389). Congratulations to Prakash!
- (Nov 24) Paper accepted to CODASPY 2016
- SMASheD: Sniffing and Manipulating Android Sensor Data. Manar Mohamed, Babins Shrestha and Nitesh Saxena. In ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), March 2016.
- (Nov 30) Paper accepted to FC 2016
- A Sound for a Sound: Mitigating Acoustic Side Channel Attacks on Password Keystrokes with Active Sounds. Abhishek Anand and Nitesh Saxena.
- (Dec 16) Research covered in MIT Technology
- User Error Compromises Many Encrypted Communication Apps, MIT Technology Review, by Rachel Metz, December 14, 2015.
2014
- (Jan 07) Song Gao wins an entrepreneurship award
- Song Gao is one of the only two winners of the College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Student Entrepreneurship Awards, 2014. The award is based on Song’s dissertation research on next generation CAPTCHAs.
- (Jan 25) Our credit card fraud study paper accepted to a major Psychology conference
- Consumer anxiety concerning credit/debit card fraud. Manasvee Godbole, Jacinta Cai, Michael Georgescu, Oliver Nick Harper, Nitesh Saxena, David Schwebel, and John Sloan. To be presented at the 122nd American Psychological Association (APA), August 2014.
- (Jan 31) Paper accepted to USEC 2014
- Dynamic Cognitive Game CAPTCHA Usability and Detection of Streaming-Based Farming. Manar Mohamed, Song Gao, Nitesh Saxena, and Chengcui Zhang. In the Workshop on Usable Security (USEC), co-located with NDSS, February 2014.
- (Feb 05) Paper accepted to ASIACCS 2014
- A Three-Way Investigation of a Game-CAPTCHA: Automated Attacks, Relay Attacks and Usability. Manar Mohamed, Niharika Sachdeva, Michael Georgescu, Song Gao, Nitesh Saxena, Chengcui Zhang, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Paul C. Van Oorschot and Wei-Bang Chen. In ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS), June 2014.
- (Feb 16) UAB Reporter Reports on Song Gao’s Entrepreneurship Award
- Awards enable grad students to tackle big ideas, solve real problems , UAB Reporter, Feb 13, 2014
- (Feb 26) Distinguished paper award at NDSS
- The Neural Signatures paper won the distinguished paper award at NDSS. Congratulations to Ajaya.
- (Mar 03) Strong Presence at NDSS 2014
- SPIES researchers had a blast at NDSS/USEC 2014, held last week in San Diego, with 3 papers and 1 distinguished paper award. Plus, lots of drinking 🙂
- (Mar 29) SPIES girls finish third at Facebook CTF
- Manar Mohamed, Dibya Mukhopadhyay and Maliheh Shirvanian, SPIES PhD students, won the third prize at the Facebook Capture the Flag competition held at UAB last week. Congrats to the SPIES women power 🙂
- (Apr 17) Paper accepted to ICME 2014
- Top conference, accepted as a full paper for oral presentation, acceptance rate 13.7% (98/716). Congratulations to SPIES students Song and Manar.
- Gaming the Game: Defeating a Game CAPTCHA with Efficient and Robust Hybrid Attacks. Song Gao, Manar Mohamed, Nitesh Saxena, and Chengcui Zhang. In Security and Forensics Track, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), 2014.
- (Apr 26) Honors Convocation – Song Gao wins the Dean’s Award
- Song Gao is among the very few (and the only one from Computer Science) winning the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award. He was also awarded the outstanding graduating PhD student of Computer Science. Congratulations to Song on this honor! Who’s next? 🙂
- (Apr 27) Starting new exciting journey…
- SPIES student, Lutfor Rahman, just graduated with an MS degree, and is now taking up a Lead Developer position at Marvin Technology, a Birmingham based IT company. Congratulations and all the best! Now, at least we do not have to worry about him hacking into our brains 🙂
- (May 21) RFIDSec’14 accepted papers posted
- RFIDSec 2014 conference that Dr. Saxena is leading has just announced its list of accepted papers. Exciting program in the making.
- http://rfidsec2014.cis.uab.edu/program/
- (Jun 03) Passwords No More? UAB covers our contextual security work
- Passwords no more? UAB researchers develop mechanisms that enable users to log in securely without passwords, by Katherine Shonesy, UAB News. Coverage on our Percom’14 and FC’14 papers. Chasing our dream for a “password free” world 🙂
- (Jun 12) RFIDSec program announced
- A focused program covering exciting work in security and privacy of RFID, Internet-of-Things, and Body Area Networking: http://rfidsec2014.cis.uab.edu/conference-program/
- (Jun 12) Interview with Dr. Nitesh Saxena, Beyond the Computer Password
- http://www.crushplate.com/2014/06/interview-with-dr-nitesh-saxena-beyond.html
- (Jul 29) Dr. Saxena wins Comcast research award
- Dr. Saxena won a Comcast research award, 2014 for his work on secure CAPTCHAs. The award is a $75,000 unrestricted gift.
- (Aug 22) Paper accepted to CCS 2014
- Wiretapping via Mimicry: Short Voice Imitation Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Crypto Phones. Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena. In ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), to appear, November 2014.
- Top conference; acceptance rate = 19.5% (114/585). Congratulations to Maliheh!
- (Aug 25) Research covered in CNBC
- Our research on relay resistant zero-interaction authentication covered in CNBC (based on our Percom’14 paper)
- Forget passwords: This is the future of logging in, CNBC, Aug 25, 2014, by Hamza Ai
- (Sep 07) Journal paper accepted to IJIS
- Keyboard Acoustic Side Channel Attacks: Exploring Realistic and Security-Sensitive Scenarios. Tzipora Halevi and Nitesh Saxena
- International Journal of Information Security, to appear, 2014.
- (Sep 10) Jonathan Voris takes up a faculty position
- Jon Voris, a former SPIES PhD graduate, is starting this Fall as an Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at the New York Institute of Technology. Congratulations! Who’s next 🙂
- (Sep 13) Can CAPTCHAs be less annoying? News coverage on our CAPTCHA work
- Coverage of our work on next generation CAPTCHAs by UAB news (where it got over 11,000 unique hits).
- Some of the other media venues where the story was picked up:
- Research Unveils Improved Method To Let Computers Know You Are Human , Slashdot, Aug 19, 2014
- New Research Presents an Improved Method to Let Computers Know You Are Human , ACM TechNews, Aug 20, 2014
- Game-Like CAPTCHA Lets Computers Know You Are Human, Communications of the ACM, Aug 26, 2014
- Better than CAPTCHA: Improved method to let computers know you are human, ScienceDaily, Aug 25, 2014
- Researchers Devise a Better Way to CAPTCHA ,CIO, Sep 11, 2014
- CAPTCHAs Might Soon Be Out , IQpill, Aug 26, 2014
- New research presents an improved method to let computers know you are human, TECHSPOT, Aug 24, 2014
- DCG CAPTCHA – УЛУЧШЕННЫЙ СПОСОБ УЗНАТЬ КОМПЬЮТЕРУ ЧТО ПЕРЕД НИМ ЧЕЛОВЕК, TECHNEWS.RU, Aug 27, 2014
- Onderzoekers ontwikkelen betere CAPTCHA-variant, security.nl, Aug 19, 2014
- Ученые создали новый метод распознавания человека компьютером Источник, Центр, Aug 20, 2014
- Better than CAPTCHA: Improved method to let computers know you are human, Technocrat Epiphanies, Aug 26, 2014
- (Sep 17) Saxena awarded nearly $75,000 to study CAPTCHA mechanisms
- (Sep 30) Nice media coverage on our CAPTCHA work
- Beyond CAPTCHA: A Better Way to Tell Humans and Robots Apart, OZY, Sep 29, 2014
- (Oct 20) Journal paper accepted to PMC
- Using Contextual Co-Presence to Strengthen Zero-Interaction Authentication: Design, Integration and Usability. Hien Thi Thu Truong, Xiang Gao, Babins Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, N. Asokan and Petteri Nurmi. In Elsevier Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC), to appear, 2014.
- (Oct 28) Song Gao successfully defends his PhD dissertation
- Song Gao came out of his dissertation defense with flying colors. Excellent work on next generation CAPTCHAs. Congratulations to the newly-cooked Doctor :-)…who’s next?
- (Nov 01) 2 papers accepted to NDSS 2014
- Only 55 papers were accepted out of a total 293 submissions. Congrats to the SPIES student lead authors, Ajaya and Maliheh.
- Ajaya Neupane, Nitesh Saxena, Keya Kuruvilla, Michael Georgescu, and Rajesh Kana. Neural Signatures of User-Centered Security: An fMRI Study of Phishing, and Malware Warnings.
- Maliheh Shirvanian, Stanislaw Jarecki, Nitesh Saxena and Naveen Nathan. Two-Factor Authentication Resilient to Server Compromise Using Mix-Bandwidth Devices.
- (Dec 11) Paper accepted to Percom 2014
- Only 18 full papers were accepted out of 175 submissions — acceptance rate of just 10.2%. Congrats to Babins.
- Hien Truong, Xiang Gao, Babins Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, N. Asokan, and Petteri Nurmi. Comparing and Fusing Different Sensor Modalities for Relay Attack Resistance in Zero-Interaction Authentication. In International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), to appear, March 2014.
- (Dec 16) Journal paper accepted at JCS
- Web Search Query Privacy: Evaluating Query Obfuscation and Anonymizing Networks. Sai Teja Peddinti and Nitesh Saxena. In Journal of Computer Security (JCS), to appear, 2014.
- (Dec 16) Journal paper accepted at IEEE TETC
- Context-Aware Defenses to RFID Unauthorized Reading and Relay Attacks. Tzipora Halevi, Haoyu Li, Di Ma, Nitesh Saxena, Jonathan Voris, and Tuo Xiang. In IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC), November 2013.
- (Dec 16) Extensive media coverage on our VoIP Security work
- Our work on VoIP Security (Crypto Phones) received extensive media coverage. Some articles here: https://spies.engr.tamu.edu/media-outreach/#voipSec
- (Dec 22) Paper accepted to FC 2014
- Drone to the Rescue: Relay-Resilient Authentication using Ambient Multi-Sensing. Babins Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, Hien Truong and N. Asokan. In Financial Cryptography and Data Security, to appear, March 2014. Acceptance rate = 22.5% (31/138).
- (Dec 25) SPIES research covered in Yahoo! Finance
- Future credit cards could thwart Target hackers, by Aaron Pressman, covering our work on secure mobile payments (ESORICS’12 paper).
2013
- (Oct 21) Paper accepted at ISC 2013
- NIharika Sachdeva, Nitesh Saxena, and Ponnurangam Kumaraguru. On the Viability of CAPTCHAs for Use in Telephony Systems: A Usability Field Study. In Information Security Conference (ISC), to appear, November 2013.
- (Oct 14) RFIDSec 2014 Website Up and Running
- Please submit your best work: http://rfidsec2014.cis.uab.edu/
- (Sep 20) Saxena wins Google award for mobile security research
- Saxena wins Google award for mobile security research, UAB News, by Meghan Davis
- (Sep 11) Prof. Saxena to lead RFIDSec 2014
- Prof. Saxena will be co-chairing the 10th Workshop on RFID Security (RFIDSec) 2014, to be to held at the University of Oxford, UK, July 2014. Details forthcoming. This is a major venue in the space of RFID and small device security and privacy.
- (Aug 13) Paper accepted at CANS 2013
- Babins Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena and Justin Harrison. Wave-to-Access: Protecting Sensitive Mobile Device Services via a Hand Waving Gesture. International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS), November 2013, to appear.
- (Aug 08) Prof. Saxena wins the prestigious Google Research Award (2nd time)
- Prof. Saxena received a $50,000 Google Faculty Research Award for the year 2013 based on his work on “Contextual Security.” Joint project with Prof. N. Asokan from Aalto University, Finland. This is the second Google award for Prof. Saxena following the 2011 award introducing the notion of “Playful Security.”
- (Jul 31) Song Gao successfully defends his PhD thesis proposal
- Congratulations to Song for successfully defending his PhD thesis proposal centered on game-oriented CAPTCHAs — next generation CAPTCHAs that may be playful (and not painful) for users.
- (Jul 25) Prof. Saxena to Co-Lead CIA-JFR’s Information Assurance Pillar
- Prof. Saxena will be serving as the co-leader of the Information Assurance/Security Pillar of UAB’s CIA-JFR Center.
- (Jul 17) UAB research to improve online communication security
- A press-release on our new Cisco project to provide end-to-end security over VoIP communications.
- UAB research to improve online communication security, Meghan Davis.
- (Jul 16) Tap-Wave-Rub Malware Defense Covered at Fox (WTVM)
- SPECIAL REPORT: When Malware Attacks (includes video interview). Fox 54 (WTVM), July 11, 2013
- (Jun 28) Prof. Saxena invited to the editorial board of IEEE Trans. on Information Forensics and Security
- IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security is a flagship journal within the Security community, likely one of the best.
- Information on Forensics and Security
- (Jun 13) Cisco funds a research project
- Prof. Saxena (PI) awarded $150,000 in research funding from Cisco Systems to launch a new project on Voice-over-IP secure communications, specifically “Establishing Peer-to-Peer Secure VoIP Connections.” This is a joint project with Prof. Bangalore (Co-PI) @CCL lab.
- (May 16) Out-Of-Band channels gone wild
- News story on our AsiaCCS’13 paper: UAB research finds new channels to trigger mobile malware
- We have explored out-of-band channels for years in our secure device pairing project. This is a new twist…
- (May 02) Prof. Saxena invited to the editorial board of Springer’s International Journal of Information Security
- International Journal of Information Security
- The Springer’s International Journal of Information Security (IJIS) is a reputed venue publishing strong contributions to security and cryptography research.
- (Apr 11) Article featuring our usable security work
- Spies Like Us: Putting a New Spin on Computer Security, by Matt Windsor (UAB Magazine)
- (Mar 14) TWR App: Prof. Saxena and Babins interview with Fox 6
- On Your Side: New UAB app defends against malware, by Ronda Robinson (interview aired at 5pm 3/14/13)
- (Feb 28) News story on our Tap-Wave-Rub malware defense
- UAB has a story, been picked up by other media outlets, based on our Tap-Wave-Rub paper to appear at WiSec’13: UAB develops a simple defense for complex smartphone malware, by Kevin Storr.
- (Feb 27) Prof. Saxena interviews with NBC 13
- 13 Investigates: WiFi thieves, by Linda White, NBC 13
- (Jan 29) Launching the Mobile Payment Platform Security project (with a teaser)
- Mobile device credit/debit card readers are an emerging platform with already an enormous market. However, are these secure? What are the users’ security and privacy perceptions of these technologies? https://spies.engr.tamu.edu/mobile-payment-platform-security/
- (Jan 23) Paper accepted at AsiaCCS 2013
- Sensing-Enabled Channels for Hard-to-Detect Command and Control of Mobile Devices
- (Jan 21) Paper accepted at WiSec 2013
- Tap-Wave-Rub: Lightweight Malware Prevention for Smartphones using Intuitive Human Gestures
- (Dec 18) Paper accepted at FC 2013
- Exploring Extrinsic Motivation for Better Security: A Usability Study of Scoring-Enhanced Device Pairing
- (Dec 15) Paper accepted at CGAT 2013
- An Investigation of the Usability of a Game for Secure Wireless Device Association
- (Dec 04) Journal paper accepted at IEEE TDSC
- Location-Aware and Safer Cards: Enhancing RFID Security and Privacy via Location Sensing
- (Nov 25) Journal paper accepted at IEEE TIFS
- Acoustic Eavesdropping Attacks on Constrained Wireless Device Pairing
- (Nov 12) Prof. Saxena to serve as the co-director of UAB’s master’s program in security
- Starting January 2013, Prof. Saxena will be co-directing the MS program in Computer Forensics and Security Management (CFSM), which is a joint program offered by Computer and Information Sciences, Justice Sciences, and Management, Information Systems, and Quantitative Methods. This is the second graduate level security program Prof. Saxena will be co-leading, followed by NYU-Poly’s MS program in Cyber-Security.
- (Nov 06) Launching the Neuro Security project (with a teaser)
- Can your brainwaves give away your PIN or password while you’re gaming, or predict your susceptibility to attacks? https://spies.engr.tamu.edu/neuro-security/
- (Oct 24) Prof. Saxena gives an invited talk at the TechMixer Event
- NFC: A Convenient Mobile Payment Platform, or Fraudsters’ Playground?
- “TechMixer brings tech professionals and enthusiasts together for the largest single day of technology training held in Alabama, and had around 600 participants this year. “
- (Oct 23) Tzipora Halevi takes up a post-doctoral researcher position
- Tzipora Halevi, the most recent SPIES PhD graduate, will continue as a post-doctoral researcher at the NYU/NYU-Poly Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Security and Privacy. Congratulations to her!
- (Sep 11) Story Time…
- UAB has a story, been picked up by other media outlets (e.g., Bloomberg, ZDNet), based on our ESORICS’12 paper: UAB system improves mobile payment security, protects personal info.
2012
- (Aug 10) Paper accepted at ICICS 2012
- Exploring Mobile Proxies for Better Password Authentication
- (Aug 04) Grant proposal funded by the NSF EAGER (Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace) program
- Establishing Secure Wireless Connections via Playful User Engagement
- (Aug 03) Prof. Saxena gives an invited talk at Carleton University
- User-Aided Device Authentication: The Case of Constrained Wireless Devices
- (Jul 20) The doctorhood…
- Tzipora Halevi successfully defends her PhD thesis, making her the second SPIES PhD graduate after Jon Voris. Who’s next?
- (Jun 10) Paper accepted at ESORICS 2012
- Secure Proximity Detection for NFC Devices based on Ambient Sensor Data
- (Apr 09) NIST grant proposal invited for the next round
- Our collaborative proposal submitted in response to the NIST’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) Pilot Grant Program has been invited for the next round of competition. Only 27 pre-proposals were selected out of a total of 186 submissions; an acceptance rate of merely 14.5%. The proposal centers around our work on usable authentication primitives and fault-tolerant distributed security services. This grant is expected to fund up to $4M over a period of two years per proposal.
- (Mar 03) And the award goes to…
- Austin Robinson wins the Mu Alpha Theta Award for “the most challenging, thorough, and creative investigation of a problem involving mathematics accessible to high school students” at the Regional Science and Enigeering Fair.
- (Feb 24) Paper accepted at AsiaCCS 2012
- A Closer Look at Keyboard Acoustic Emanations: Random Passwords, Typing Styles and Decoding Techniques
- (Feb 15) Paper accepted at WiSec 2012
- Location-Aware and Safer Cards: Enhancing RFID Security and Privacy via Location Sensing
- (Jan 27) Prof. Saxena gives an invited talk at Brown University
- Acoustic Eavesdropping Attacks on Constrained Wireless Device Pairing
- (Dec 20) Paper accepted at Percom 2012
- Sensing-Enabled Defenses to RFID Unauthorized Reading and Relay Attacks without Changing the Usage Model
- (Nov 17) Paper accepted at INFOCOM 2012
- Estimating Age Privacy Leakage in Online Social Networks
- (Oct 01) Grant proposal funded by the NSF EAGER (Trustworthy Computing) program
- Towards Context-Aware Security and Privacy for RFID Systems
- (Sep 01) Grant proposal funded by the NSF Trustworthy Computing program
- Mobile Phone Password Managers: An Evaluation and a Re-Design based on Human-Perceptible Communication