Selcuk Uluagac

Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor

suluagac@fiu.edu
305-348-3710
http://nweb.eng.fiu.edu/selcuk
EC 3141
ORCID: 0000-0002-9823-3464

Biography

Dr. Selcuk Uluagac is currently an Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Science at Florida International University, leading the Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab with an additional courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Before, he was a Senior Researcher at Georgia Tech and Symantec. He holds a PhD from Georgia Tech and MS from Carnegie Mellon University in cybersecurity.  He is an expert in the areas of cybersecurity and privacy with an emphasis on their practical aspects (focusing on systems security topics, malware, ransomware, forensics, IoT, CPS, smart systems) and teaches classes in these areas. He has hundreds of papers/studies/publications in the most reputable venues such as NDSS, USENIX Security, IEEE TIFS.  He received US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2015), US Air Force Office of Sponsored Research’s Summer Faculty Fellowship (2015), University of Padova (Italy)’s Faculty Fellowship (2016), Google’s ASPIRE Research award in security and privacy (2021), Faculty Fellowship from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (2022),  FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Established Faculty with Significant Grants (STEM  Category), (2023), FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Faculty with Notable Gains in Student Learning and Success (Sciences Category) (2021), FIU College of Engineering and Computing Faculty Award in Excellence in Research and Creative Activities (2021), FIU Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (2020), among others. His research has been funded by numerous government agencies and industry, e.g., NSF, Dept. of Energy, Air Force Research Lab, Dept. of Labor, Cyber Florida, Google, Microsoft, Trend Micro, and Cisco, inter alia.  He is very entrepreneurial and visionary with his research. Many of his research ideas have resulted in patents (10+). He is chairing/serving on the of top-tier security conferences, e.g., NDSS, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, IEEE SP. In 2023, he was the TPC Chair of Security and ML Track of ACM CCS 2023 and was the General Chair of ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec) in 2019. In 2018, he co-chaired the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Annual Expo and Conference. In 2022, he was the TPC Co-Chair of IEEE CNS Conference. He currently serves as the deputy editor in-chief of IEEE TIFS and associate editors of IEEE TMC and Elsevier COMNET journals. More information can be obtained from https://nweb.eng.fiu.edu/selcuk/ and his lab at https://csl.fiu.edu/.

Honors and Awards

  • Google – ASPIRE- Android Security and PrIvacy Research Award, November 2021
  • Faculty Fellowship from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy for 2022.
  • FIU Provost Top Scholar Award in Established Faculty with Significant Grants (STEM Category), 2023
  • FIU Provost Top Scholar Award in Faculty with Notable Gains in Student Learning and Success Category, 2021
  • FIU College of Eng. & Computing Faculty Award in Excellence in Research & Creative Activities Category, 2021
  • FIU Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (December 2020)
  • Service Award for Contributions as General Chair by Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), to 12th ACM International Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec) (May 2019)
  • NSF CAREER AWARD by the National Science Foundation (NSF), in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations (May 2015)
  • Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Award by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, (March 2015)
  • Faculty Fellowship Award by the University of Padova, Department of Mathematics, Italy, (June 2016)
   

Research and Educational Interests

  • Security and privacy of Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Security and privacy of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
  • Security for healthcare/medical systems
  • Security for smart city
  • Malware, ransomware
  • Digital forensics
  • Security and privacy of smart technologies

Background Education

  • Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • M.S., Georgia Institute of Technology Information Security, Computer Science
  • M.S., Carnegie Mellon University Electrical and Computer Engineering

Selected Publications

  1. Harun Oz, Ahmet Aris, G. Seray Tuncay, Leonardo Babun, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "ROB: Ransomware over Modern Web Browsers," in Proc. of the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, Anaheim, CA, 2023
  2. Ege Tekiner, Abbas Acar, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "A Lightweight IoT Cryptojacking Detection Mechanism in Heterogeneous Smart Home Networks," Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), April 2022
  3. Leonardo Babun, Amit Sikder, Abbas Acar, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "The Truth Shall Set Thee Free: Enabling Practical Forensic Capabilities in Smart Environments," Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), April 2022
  4. Harun Oz, Ahmet Aris, Albert Levi, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "A Survey on Ransomware: Evolution, Taxonomy, and Defense Solutions," in ACM Computing Surveys, January 2022
  5. Leonardo Babun, Berkay Celik, Hidayet Aksu, Patrick McDaniel, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "Realtime Analysis of Privacy-(un)aware IoT Applications," in Proc. of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), 2021
  6. Ege Tekiner, Abbas Acar, A. Selcuk Uluagac, Engin Kirda, and Ali Aydin Selcuk, "SoK: Cyrptojacking Malware," IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE EuroSP), 2021.
  7. Faraz Naseem, Ahmet Aris, Leonardo Babun, E. Tekiner, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "MINOS: A Lightweight Real-Time Cryptojacking Detection System," Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021
  8. Amit Kumar Sikder, Guiseppe Petraca, Hidayet Aksu, Trent Jaeger, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "A Survey on Sensor-based Threats and Attacks to Smart Devices and Applications," IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2021
  9. Leonardo Babun, Hidayet Aksu, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "CPS Device-class Identification via Behavioral Fingerprinting: From Theory to Practice," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (IEEE TIFS), 2021
  10. Abbas Acar, Hossein Fereidooni, Tigist Abera, Amit Kumar Sikder, Markus Miettinen, Hidayet Aksu, Mauro Conti, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Selcuk Uluagac. 2020. “Peek-a-Boo: I see your smart home activities, even encrypted!,” in Proc. of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec), July, 2020, Linz, Austria.
  11. Amit Kumar Sikder, Hidayet Aksu, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "A Context-aware Framework for Detecting Sensor-based Threats on Smart Devices," in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (IEEE TMC), January 2019
  12. H. Aksu, L. Babun, M. Conti, G. Tolomei, and A. S. Uluagac, “Advertising in the IoT era: Vision and challenges,” IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 1–7, April 2018
  13. A. Acar, H. Aksu, A. S. Uluagac, and M. Conti, “A survey on homomorphic encryption schemes: Theory and implementation,” ACM Computing Surveys., vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 79:1–79:35, Jul. 2018
  14. Z. Berkay Celik, Leonardo Babun, Amit K. Sikder, Hidayet Aksu, Gang Tan, Patrick McDaniel, and A. Selcuk Uluagac, "Sensitive Information Tracking in Commodity IoT," in Proc. of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium,Maryland, MD, August, 2018
  15. A. K. Sikder, H. Aksu, and A. S. Uluagac, “6thsense: A context-aware sensor-based attack detector for smart devices,” in Proc. of the 26th USENIX Security Symposium, Vancouver, BC, 2017
  For all publications, visit Prof. Selcuk Uluagac’s Google Scholar Page