The SPIES lab will have 2 full papers presented at the WebConf (WWW) 2025. Only 409 papers were accepted out of 2062 submissions (acceptance rate of merely 19.8%).

• The First Early Evidence of the Use of Browser Fingerprinting for Online Tracking
  Zengrui Liu, Jimmy Dani, Yinzhi Cao, Shujiang Wu, Nitesh Saxena
  In the 25^th ACM Web Conference (WWW), April 2025.
• Broken Access: On the Challenges of Screen Reader Assisted Two-Factor and Passwordless Authentication
  Md Mojibur Rahman Redoy Akanda, Ahmed Tanvir Mahdad, Nitesh Saxena
  In the 25^th ACM Web Conference (WWW), April 2025.

• Usability and Security Analysis of the Compare-and-Confirm Method in Mobile Push-Based Two-Factor Authentication
  Mohammed Jubur, Nitesh Saxena and Faheem Reegu
  In IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2024

Aftab Hussain recently joined the SPIES lab as a post-doctoral researcher. Welcome on-board!

Aftab Hussain is an incoming Post Doctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University, having recently completed his PhD defense at the University of Houston. He works on improving the security and reliability of large language models (LLMs) for source code, and his PhD dissertation is on Trojan Detection in LLMs of Code. His PhD research has been funded by a Cybersecurity Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. He has recently presented his research at reputable venues in software engineering and AI, such as AIWare at FSE 2024 and SeT LLM at ICLR 2024. Aftab holds a Master’s degree from the University of California, Irvine in Software Engineering, where he published in top software engineering and security conferences such as ASPLOS and USENIX ATC.

 

• An In-Depth Analysis of Password Managers and Two-Factor Authentication Tools
  Mohamed Jubur, Prakash Shreshtha, and Nitesh Saxena
  In ACM Computing Surveys, 2024

• BPSniff: Continuously Surveilling Private Blood Pressure Information in the Metaverse via Unrestricted Inbuilt Motion Sensors
  Zhengkun Ye, Ahmed Tanvir Mahdad, Yan Wang, Cong Shi, Yingying Chen, Nitesh Saxena
  In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P; Oakland), May 2025.

• Misinformation Research Needs Ecological Validity
  James Crum, Cara Spencer, Emily Doherty, Erin Richardson, Sage Sherman, Amy W. Hays, Nitesh Saxena, Richard E. Niemeyer, Allison P. Anderson, Marta Čeko & Leanne Hirshfield
  In Nature Human Behaviour, Oct 2024.

A warm welcome to two new members of the SPIES Lab, starting their PhD degrees in Fall 2024.

1. Mahbub Alam
2. Shaykh Siddique (co-advised with Irfan Khan)

Post-Doctoral Researcher in Cybersecurity

The SPIES lab in the Computer Science and Engineering department at Texas A&M University, College Station is looking to hire a post-doctoral researcher. SPIES lab, directed by Dr. Nitesh Saxena, is one of the leading academic cybersecurity research labs, broadly focusing on computer and network security, user-centered security (including cognitive security), AI and ML security, and applied cryptography. The selected candidates will work with the PI, the students in the lab and a strong network of collaborators at A&M and other top-tier institutions and industry labs on cutting-edge projects of mutual interest. The candidate will have the opportunity to lead new research projects, define research agenda and work on research proposals submitted to federal and state organizations. As such this is a unique opportunity to enhance the candidate’s research and teaching careers through collaboration building, focused mentorship from the PI, student mentoring engagement and potential teaching opportunities. This is not merely a job but a rare professional development opportunity.

Annual salary: Starting at $72,000 yearly, commensurate to experience.

Duration: 2 years, renewable after the first year.

Start date: Immediate 

Qualifications:

• PhD degree in Computer Science or a related field, completed by the start date.
• A strong academic record supported by publications in top-tier venues in cybersecurity and computer science.

Application materials (email to: Nitesh Saxena nsaxena@tamu.edu)

• Curriculum Vitae
• Research Statement
• Names of three references (letters will be requested only after an initial screening)

 

• News Reader: A News Interest Identification Attack using   Single-Electrode Brainwave Signals
  Anuradha Mandal, Cagri Arisoy and Nitesh Saxena
  In the 27th Information Security Conference (ISC), October 2024

Breaching Security Keys without Root: FIDO2 Deception Attacks via Overlays exploiting Limited Display Authenticators

Ahmed Tanvir Mahdad, Mohammed Jubur, and Nitesh Saxena
In the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), October 2024.