The Secure, Private Internet (SPIN) Research Group

We aim to make Internet communications truly secure and private. To this end, we study the security and privacy guarantees of existing network protocols, tools, and services, and propose ways to strengthen them—either through design improvements or by building clean-slate communication systems. Our research blends the development of practical systems with rigorous theoretical analysis, drawing on methods from computer networking, cryptography, and statistics. Over the years, we have explored a wide range of topics, including Internet censorship resistance, traffic analysis and defenses, trustworthy AI, and multimedia information hiding.

Faculty

Amir Houmansadr
Professor

PhD Students

Traffic Obfuscation, Anti-censorship, Privacy
Internet Censorship, Traffic Analysis
AI/ML Security and Privacy

AI/ML Security and Privacy
AI/ML Security and Privacy
Trustworthy AI, Adversarial ML
Traffic Analysis, Network Security
Co-advisor: Pubali Datta
AI/ML Security and Privacy
Trustworthy AI and ML, Privacy
Trustworthy AI and ML, Privacy

PhD Alumni

PhD (2024), Microsoft
PhD (2023), Google
PhD (2023), Oracle Labs
PhD (2022), Deepmind
PhD (2021), Snap

Active Research Topics

We always strive to explore emerging, impactful research problems in the area of security and privacy. The following are our active research topics:
  • Privacy-enhancing technologies
  • Trustworhty AI
  • Network traffic analysis
  • Privacy in next-generation networks
  • Covert communications
  • IoT and location privacy

Software/Code

Selected Media Coverage