About Us
SPriTE stands for Security, Privacy, Trust and Ethics in Computing. SPriTELab's mission is to do ground-breaking and impactful security and privacy research with the goal of improving humanity's trust and reliance in modern computing systems, applications and technology.
SPriTELab's research focus spans all aspects of cyber and cyber-physical systems security & user-privacy, with a special emphasis on the topics of Mobile & IoT Security, Distributed Systems Security, Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Incentive-based Mechanism Design for Security, Adversarial Machine Learning and Design of Mobile/Ubiquitous Sensing Algorithms, Systems and Applications.
Some specific research problems that we are currently working on include: (i) private data inference threats from sensory side channels on mobile, wearable and IoT devices, (ii) addressing security, privacy and scalability issues in public permissionless blockchains and blockchain-based applications, (iii) machine learning security and adversarial machine learning, including secure federated learning, (iv) web/online security and privacy, including tracking and fingerprinting on the web and (v) mobile sensing and sensing-based applications, including activity and context detection.
Several of our ongoing research efforts are generously funded/supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). A detailed list of our current research projects can be found here, while a detailed list of related publications can be found here.
We are always looking for exceptional undergraduate student researchers, graduate/PhD student researchers and post-doctoral researchers to join SPriTELab, and to work with us on exciting new research problems in these areas. Please contact SPriTELab director, Dr. Murtuza Jadliwala, for more information on open positions in the lab and how to apply for the same.
SP1 310A
506 Dolorosa St, San Antonio, TX 78204, USA.Contact: Dr. Murtuza Jadliwala
Lab Resources:
nextcloud.sprite.utsa.edu
sprite.utsa.edu/vmsRecent News
Paper Accepted at WiSec 2024
Our paper titled "De-anonymizing VR Avatars using Non-VR Motion Side-channels" was accepted at WiSec 2024. A pre-print is available at the link below.
Paper Accepted at IEEE S&P 2024
Our paper titled "An Analysis of Recent Advances in Deepfake Image Detection in an Evolving Threat Landscape" was accepted at IEEE S&P 2024. Pre-print coming soon!
Paper Accepted at NDSS'24
Our paper "MirageFlow: A New Bandwidth Inflation Attack on Tor" has been accepted at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2024. A Pre-print is now available at the link below.
NSF funds ScooterLab with a Collaborative Research Grant!
We are happy to announce that ScooterLab received full funding from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) CISE Community Infrastructure (CCRI) program.
Paper Accepted at IEEE S&P 2023
Our paper titled "BayBFed: Bayesian Backdoor Defense for Federated Learning" was accepted at IEEE S&P 2023.
NSF Funds new SaTC Multi-disciplinary EAGER Grant
SPriTELab is excited to start a new NSF project with Dr. Mythili Menon (Wichita State Univ.) to study how language skills and linguistic features impact the perception and response of refugees (in the US) to social engineering attacks such as phishing and vishing!
Paper Accepted at DSN 2022
Our paper titled "Background Buster: Peeking through Virtual Backgrounds in Online Video Calls" was accepted at DSN 2022. A pre-print is now available at the link below.
Paper Accepted at WiSec 2022
Our paper titled "An Investigative Study on the Privacy Implications of Mobile E-scooter Rental Apps" was accepted at WiSec 2022. A pre-print is now available at the link below.
PhD Student Opening
SPriTELab has an opening for one PhD student researcher in the broad area of systems security and privacy.
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