TrackAR: AR/VR Device Fingerprinting and User-Device Pairing Detection via Shared Motion Sensor Data
Tanvir Ahmed Mahdad, Md Shahidur Rahman and Nitesh Saxena
In the 19th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), June-July 2026.
SPIES Research Lab’s study, led by Kalyan Nakka, Jimmy Dani and Nitesh Saxena, has been cited in a major South Korean news coverage, featuring a significant AI security incident of LG Uplus’s popular AI calling app “ixi-O”. Our study on the trust and ethics gap in Small Language Models (SLMs) applied to on-device AI, has revealed that SLMs have “much lower reliability than server-based SLMs” and pose “greater risk of leaking personal information”. These findings proved prescient, when “ixi-O” app, promoted as strong on security due to on-device AI, has experienced a data breach affecting dozens of users in South Korea, emphasizing our study’s privacy concerns in on-device AI systems and their real-world impact.
Link: https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-it/2025/12/09/LYNFHR3PKJAVDHXP4LWOBIHHXQ/
Read More: arXiv
The Texas A&M University College of Engineering highlighted SPIES Lab’s browser fingerprinting research, emphasizing how websites are stealthily using browser fingerprinting to track users online. The study shows that clearing cookies provides a false sense of security, as websites link unique device signatures to advertising behavior in real time to track users invisibly. To combat this, we developed the FPTrace framework that exposes fingerprint-based tracking practices even under current privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
Links:
1. YouTube
2. TAMU College of Engineering (LinkedIn Post)
We are delighted to share that our paper, “Harnessing Vital Sign Vibration Harmonics for Effortless and Inbuilt XR User Authentication,” has received the Distinguished Paper Award at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2025.
This recognition highlights the impact and innovation of our collaborative work, which introduces a novel authentication mechanism leveraging vibration harmonics derived from users’ vital signs within extended reality (XR) systems to enable continuous, effortless, and built-in user verification.
The acceptance rate for CCS 2025 was 13.9% (316 accepted out of 2,278 submissions), and only about 1% of all submitted papers received a Distinguished Paper Award.
Congratulations to the entire team for this outstanding achievement!
#ACMCCS2025 #CyberSecurity #XR #Authentication
6 out of 7 of our PhD graduates from the past 4 years have been recruited as faculty members, making the positive difference to the world of academia. Not to say that the 7th one is not a special one too — he is holding the cybersecurity fort at the US government. Truly exceptional pool of students I have been fortunate to work with.
Those six:
That one (outlier?):
ACM AI Letters (AILET) is envisioned to become the premier rapid-publication venue for impactful, concise, and timely communications in AI. Bridging a crucial gap between traditional conferences and journals, ACM AI Letters will feature short peer-reviewed contributions that accelerate knowledge dissemination across academia and industry. This unique publication prioritizes theoretical breakthroughs, algorithmic innovation, practical real-world applications, and critical societal implications, including ethics, policy, and responsible AI. It also introduces a distinctive space for rigorously reviewed opinion pieces and policy briefs, promoting swift engagement with contemporary issues shaping the AI landscape.
