CRAPE: A Privacy- Enhanced Crash Reporting System. Kiavash Satvat, Mahshid Hosseimi, Maliheh Shirvanian and Nitesh Saxena In ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), March 2020.
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).
Prakash Shrestha Honored with the Dean’s Award
Prakash Shresthawins the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduating PhD Student at the Honors Convocation. Congratulations!

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.
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.
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
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. In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC)
- 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. In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC)
Paper accepted to ISPEC 2019
CATCHA: When Cats Track Your Movements OnlinePrakash Shrestha, Nitesh Saxena, Ajaya Neupane and Kiavash SatvatInternational Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC), November, 2019
4 papers accepted to PST 2019
- Stethoscope: Crypto Phones with Transparent & Robust Fingerprint Comparisons using Inter Text-Speech Transformations
- Maliheh Shirvanian, and Nitesh Saxena International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), August, 2019 [pdf]
- ZEMFA: Zero-Effort Multi-Factor Authentication based on Multi-Modal Gait Biometrics
- Babins Shrestha, Manar Mohamed and Nitesh Saxena International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), August, 2019 [pdf]
- Compromising Speech Privacy under Continuous Masking in Personal Spaces
- S Abhishek Anand, Payton Walker and Nitesh Saxena International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), August, 2019 [pdf]
- Brain Hemorrhage: When Brainwaves Leak Sensitive Medical Conditions and Personal Information
- Ajaya Neupane, Kiavash Satvat, Mahshid Hosseini and Nitesh Saxena International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), August, 2019 [pdf]
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
International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), March 2019. [pdf]