Welcome


I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I lead the Secure & Transparent Systems Laboratory. My research confronts a broad array of issues in computer security. I am especially interested in the challenges of detecting, investigating, and preventing intrusions in various computing environments such as operating systems, organizations, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things. Increasingly, my work investigates and addresses the concerns of the users that interact with these systems.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Florida, where I was advised by Professor Kevin Butler and a founding graduate student of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity. My dissertation work was in the area of data provenance, particularly the construction of secure provenance-aware systems. I obtained my M.Sc in Computer Science at the University of Oregon, and bachelors degrees in Computer Science and English Literature from the University of Maryland.

Interested in joining my research group? Please review our lab participation page before reaching out!

Recent News


10 July, 2023
Akul Goyal's work on improved provenance-based intrusion detection, titled "R-CAID: Embedding Root Cause Analysis within Provenance-based Intrusion Detection," has been accepted to appear at the 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy! Congrats Akul!

20 May, 2023
Our IEEE S&P'23 paper "Characterizing Everyday Misuse of Smart Home Devices" was recognized with a Distinguished Paper Award!

21 December, 2022
Akul Goyal's work on attacking provenance-based intrusion detection systems, "Sometimes, You Aren’t What You Do: Mimicry Attacks against Provenance Graph Host Intrusion Detection Systems," has been accepted to NDSS'23. Congrats Akul!

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