I am a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, with joint appointments in Computer Engineering and Modeling and Simulation. My research is in the area of security and privacy, with a recent focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, software and networked systems, Internet of Things and wearables, and blockchains. At UCF, I direct the SEAL research group, where I have been fortunate to mentor several excellent students.
I obtained my Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2012, where I was a Doctoral Dissertation Fellow advised by Yongdae Kim. I spent several years before and after my Ph.D. in the research and development industry, including working as a research engineer at ETRI in South Korea and as a (senior) research scientist at Verisign Labs.
Current Services
35th USENIX Security Symposium (Security 2026)26th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2026)
45th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2025)
Selected Recent Publications
Also see my DBLP and Google Scholar profiles for complete lists- ISOC NDSS 2025 A Comparative Evaluation of LLMs in Vulnerability Detection
- IEEE ICDCS 2025 Attributing ChatGPT-Transformed Synthetic Code
- USENIX Sec 2024 Enhancing Network Attack Detection with Distributed and Data Collection System
- ACM CoNEXT 2024 Measuring DNS-over-HTTPS Downgrades
- IEEE S&P 2023 Three Birds with One Stone: Efficient Partitioning of Interdependent Networks
- ISOC NDSS 2023 A Robust Counting Sketch for Data Plane Intrusion Detection
- ACM CCS 2022 A Scalable and Dynamic ACL System for In-Network Defense
- IEEE VR 2022 A Keylogging Inference Attack on Air-Tapping Keyboards
- ACM CCS 2021 Revisiting Nakamoto Consensus in Asynchronous Networks
- ACM CCS 2021 SyncAttack: Double-spending in Bitcoin Without Mining Power
- ICCV 2021: Adversarial Example Detection Using Latent Neighborhood Graph
- PoPETS 2020 Multi-χ: Identifying Multiple Authors from Source Code Files
- IEEE ICDCS 2020 Detecting Adversarial Examples in Control Flow Graph-based Malware Classifiers
- IEEE INFOCOM 2020 Adversarial Learning-based Approach to Defend Against Website Fingerprinting
- EEE ICDCS 2019 Adversarial Learning Attacks on Graph-based IoT Malware Detection Systems
- IEEE DSN 2019 Where Are You Taking Me? Behavioral Analysis of Open DNS Resolvers
- ACM CCS 2018 Large-Scale and Language-Oblivious Code Authorship Identification
- ISOC NDSS 2018 ABC: Enabling Smartphone Authentication with Built-in Camera
Doctoral Advisees(1)(2)(3)
- Jeff Spaulding (2018) — Manager, NVIDIA
- Ashar Ahmad (2019) — VP, Raptore Tech.
- Hisham Alasmary (2020) — Assoc. Prof., KKU
- Mo Abuhamad (2020) — Asst. Prof., LUC
- Rhongho Jang (2020) — Asst. Prof., Wayne
- Jeman Park (2020) — Asst. Prof., KHU
- Jinchun Choi (2020) — Sr. Researcher, ETRI
- Afsah Anwar (2021) — Asst. Prof., UNM
- Muhammad Saad (2021) — Sr. Researcher, X
- Sul Alshamrany (2021) — Asst. Prof., SEU
- Ahmed Abusnaina (2022) — Sr. Scientist, Meta
- Ulku Meteriz (2022) — Sr. Scientist, Meta
- A. Alabduljabbar (2022) — Asst. Prof., PSAU
- Hattan Althebeiti (2023) — Asst. Prof., Taif U.
- Mo Alqadhi (2024) — Asst. Prof., IPA
- Mo Alkinoon (2024) — Lecturer, ODU
- Ayodeji Adeniran (2024) — Architect, Insurity
- Soohyeon Choi (2025) — Scientist, SMU
- Aziz Alghamdi (2025) — Asst. Prof., Najran U.
- Ahod Alguried (2025) — Asst. Prof., PSAU
- Ilkin Isler (2025) — AI Eng., Universal Creative
- Ali Alkinoon (2025) — Lecturer, UCF
- Jie Lin (2025) — Lecturer, UCF
- Ahmed Sabbah (S'2022-)
- Mo Kharma (S'2022-)
- Cuong Dang (S'2025-)
- Mandana Ghadamian (F'2025-)
- Khalid Alquonus (F'2025-) — SACM Fellow
- Steffen Camarato (F'2025-) — CSGrad4US Fellow
- Pelumi Ogunwale (F'2025-) — ORC Fellow
Recent Teaching Activities
- 📘 Fall 2025: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy
- 📗 Spring 2025: CAP 6640 – Natural Language Understanding
- 📘 Fall 2024: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy
- 📘 Fall 2022: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy (Sample Projects)
- 📘 Fall 2021: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy
- 📗 Spring 2021: CAP 6640 – Natural Language Understanding
- 📗 Spring 2021: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy
- 📗 Spring 2020: CAP 6640 – Natural Language Understanding
- 📗 Spring 2020: CAP 5150 – Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy
- 📗 Spring 2019: CAP 6640 – Natural Language Understanding
- 📗 Spring 2019: CIS 4361 – Secure Operating Systems
- 📘 Fall 2018: CIS 4615 – Secure Software Development
- 📗 Spring 2018: CAP 6133 – Computer Security and Computer Forensics
- 📘 Fall 2017: CIS 4615 – Secure Software Development
Recent Honors (and Awards)
- 2025: Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Doctoral Students, University-Wide
- 2024: ACM Distinguished Speaker (2024–2027)
- 2024: Best Paper Award, WISE 2024.
- 2022: UCF Teaching Incentive Award for Excellence in Teaching
- 2022: UCF Research Incentive Award for Excellence in Research
- 2022: CECS Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award
- 2022: Best Paper Award Nomineee of IEEE VR 2022
- 2022: Best Extended Abstract Award of IEEE DSN 2021
- 2021: Best Student Paper Award Nomineee of ACM ICS 2021
- 2020: Best Paper Award of IEEE Systems Journal (2020)
- Distiniguished TPC member of IEEE INFOCOM (2016-2021)
Current/Recent Professional Services
TPC of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETs) for 2025–2026.
TPC of Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2025
Track Chair (Blockchain) for the IEEE International Conf. on Distributed Computing Sys. (ICDCS) 2025.
Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on Dep. and Secure Computing (TDSC) for the term 2022–2025.
Associate Editor for the IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing (TMC) for the term 2019-2024.
Join My Research Group – Fall 2026
I am seeking highly motivated students to join my research group for doctoral studies beginning in Fall 2026. My group focuses on research at the intersection of security, systems, and machine learning, and I welcome inquiries from students who are passionate about these areas.
Applicants with a demonstrated interest—whether through research publications, strong technical projects, or even a well-articulated research vision—are especially encouraged to reach out. A master’s degree in computer science is required, along with solid coursework in relevant areas such as security, operating systems, networking, or machine learning.
I also encourage undergraduate students in our Computer Science program who are interested in research to contact me to discuss opportunities for early involvement. Exploring research during your undergraduate years can be an excellent way to prepare for graduate studies and meaningful contributions in the field.
📩 If you're interested, please feel free to email me — I look forward to hearing from you!
Contact
Building: L3Harris Corporation Engineering Center (HEC)
Room: 207
Address: 4328 Scorpius St, Orlando, FL 32816
Email: lastname@ucf.edu