What we do

Our research group aims to change how people think about data privacy, network security, and software security. Having discovered more than 200 high-impact security and privacy vulnerabilities, we design, implement, and help deploy new data protection technologies. Our work has been cited in the popular media, rulings and reports by federal regulatory agencies such as the FTC and FCC, law review articles, and legal proceedings.

Research papers

E. Bagdasaryan, V. Shmatikov. Blind Backdoors in Deep Learning Models. USENIX Security 2021.
R. Schuster, C. Song, E. Tromer, V. Shmatikov. You Autocomplete Me: Poisoning Vulnerabilities in Neural Code Completion. USENIX Security 2021.
USENIX Security 2021 Distinguished Paper Award
Z. Sun, R. Schuster, V. Shmatikov. De-Anonymizing Text by Fingerprinting Language Generation. NeurIPS 2020 spotlight.
C. Song, A. Rush, V. Shmatikov. Adversarial Semantic Collisions. EMNLP 2020.
E. Bagdasaryan, A. Veit, Y. Hua, D. Estrin, V. Shmatikov. How To Backdoor Federated Learning (full version). AISTATS 2020.
R. Schuster, T. Schuster, Y. Meri, V. Shmatikov. Humpty Dumpty: Controlling Word Meanings via Corpus Poisoning. S&P (Oakland) 2020.
C. Song, V. Shmatikov. Overlearning Reveals Sensitive Attributes. ICLR 2020.
E. Bagdasaryan, V. Shmatikov. Differential Privacy Has Disparate Impact on Model Accuracy. NeurIPS 2019.
C. Song, V. Shmatikov. Auditing Data Provenance in Text-Generation Models. KDD 2019.
L. Melis, C. Song, E. De Cristofaro, V. Shmatikov. Exploiting Unintended Feature Leakage in Collaborative Learning. S&P (Oakland) 2019.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets: A Decade Later.
R. Schuster, V. Shmatikov, E. Tromer. Situational Access Control in the Internet of Things. CCS 2018.
V. Bindschaedler, P. Grubbs, D. Cash, T. Ristenpart, V. Shmatikov. The Tao of Inference in Privacy-Protected Databases. VLDB 2018.
T. Hunt, C. Song, R. Shokri, V. Shmatikov, E. Witchel. Chiron: Privacy-preserving Machine Learning as a Service.
- ZDNet
C. Song, T. Ristenpart, V. Shmatikov. Machine Learning Models That Remember Too Much. CCS 2017.
R. Schuster, V. Shmatikov, E. Tromer. Beauty and the Burst: Remote Identification of Encrypted Video Streams. USENIX Security 2017.
- The Economist, IEEE Spectrum
R. Shokri, M. Stronati, C. Song, V. Shmatikov. Membership Inference Attacks Against Machine Learning Models. S&P (Oakland) 2017.
2018 Caspar Bowden PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
P. Grubbs, T. Ristenpart, V. Shmatikov. Why Your Encrypted Database Is Not Secure. HotOS 2017.
- Hacker News, Reddit
I. Pustogarov, T. Ristenpart, V. Shmatikov. Using Program Analysis to Synthesize Sensor Spoofing Attacks. ASIA CCS 2017.
R. McPherson, R. Shokri, V. Shmatikov. Defeating Image Obfuscation with Deep Learning.
- Media coverage
P. Grubbs, R. McPherson, M. Naveed, T. Ristenpart, V. Shmatikov. Breaking Web Applications Built on Top of Encrypted Data (full version). CCS 2016.
- Mylar: The Guide for the Perplexed gives a concise summary of the results and controversy.
M. Georgiev, V. Shmatikov. Gone in Six Characters: Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services.
- Media coverage
R. McPherson, A. Houmansadr, V. Shmatikov. CovertCast: Using Live Streaming to Evade Internet Censorship (corrected version). PETS 2016.
Y. Xu, T. Hunt, Y. Kwon, M. Georgiev, V. Shmatikov, E. Witchel. Earp: Principled Storage, Sharing, and Protection for Mobile Apps. NSDI 2016.
M. Wilber, V. Shmatikov, S. Belongie. Can We Still Avoid Automatic Face Detection?. WACV 2016.
S. Son, D. Kim, V. Shmatikov. What Mobile Ads Know About Mobile Users. NDSS 2016.
- Media coverage
R. Shokri, V. Shmatikov. Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning. CCS 2015.
- Media coverage
R. McPherson, S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. No Escape from Reality: Security and Privacy of Augmented Reality Browsers. WWW 2015.
M. Georgiev, S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. Rethinking Security of Web-Based System Applications. WWW 2015.
C. Brubaker, A. Houmansadr, V. Shmatikov. CloudTransport: Using Cloud Storage for Censorship-Resistant Networking. PETS 2014.
C. Brubaker, S. Jana, B. Ray, S. Khurshid, V. Shmatikov. Using Frankencerts for Automated Adversarial Testing of Certificate Validation in SSL/TLS Implementations. S&P (Oakland) 2014.
S&P 2014 Best Practical Paper Award
- Media coverage
M. Georgiev, S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. Breaking and Fixing Origin-Based Access Control in Hybrid Web/Mobile Application Frameworks. NDSS 2014.
A. Houmansadr, E. Wong, V. Shmatikov. No Direction Home: The True Cost of Routing Around Decoys. NDSS 2014.
S. Son, K. McKinley, V. Shmatikov. Diglossia: Detecting Code Injection Attacks with Precision and Efficiency. CCS 2013.
A. Johnson, V. Shmatikov. Privacy-Preserving Data Exploration in Genome-Wide Association Studies. KDD 2013.
S. Jana, A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. A Scanner Darkly: Protecting User Privacy from Perceptual Applications. S&P (Oakland) 2013.
2014 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- Media coverage
A. Houmansadr, C. Brubaker, V. Shmatikov. The Parrot Is Dead: Observing Unobservable Network Communications. S&P (Oakland) 2013.
S&P 2013 Best Practical Paper Award
S. Lee, E. Wong, D. Goel, M. Dahlin, V. Shmatikov. πBox: A Platform for Privacy-Preserving Apps. NSDI 2013.
S. Son, V. Shmatikov. The Postman Always Rings Twice: Attacking and Defending postMessage in HTML5 Websites. NDSS 2013.
NDSS 2013 Best Student Paper Award
S. Son, K. McKinley, V. Shmatikov. Fix Me Up: Repairing Access-Control Bugs in Web Applications. NDSS 2013.
A. Dunn, M. Lee, S. Jana, S. Kim, M. Silberstein, Y. Xu, V. Shmatikov, E. Witchel. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Machine: Protecting Privacy with Ephemeral Channels. OSDI 2012.
Runner-up for the 2013 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
M. Georgiev, S. Iyengar, S. Jana, R. Anubhai, D. Boneh, V. Shmatikov. The Most Dangerous Code in the World: Validating SSL Certificates in Non-Browser Software. CCS 2012.
2012 NYU-Poly AT&T Best Applied Security Paper Award
- FAQ about this paper
- Media coverage
S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. Memento: Learning Secrets from Process Footprints. S&P (Oakland) 2012.
S&P 2012 Best Student Paper Award
- Media coverage
S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. Abusing File Processing in Malware Detectors for Fun and Profit. S&P (Oakland) 2012.
S. Son, K. McKinley, V. Shmatikov. RoleCast: Finding Missing Security Checks When You Do Not Know What Checks Are. OOPSLA 2011.
V. Srivastava, M. Bond, K. McKinley, V. Shmatikov. A Security Policy Oracle: Detecting Security Holes Using Multiple API Implementations. PLDI 2011.
J. Calandrino, A. Kilzer, A. Narayanan, E. Felten, V. Shmatikov. "You Might Also Like:" Privacy Risks of Collaborative Filtering. S&P (Oakland) 2011.
- Media coverage
S. Jana, D. Porter, V. Shmatikov. TxBox: Building Secure, Efficient Sandboxes with System Transactions. S&P (Oakland) 2011.
E. Wong, V. Shmatikov. Get Off My Prefix! The Need for Dynamic, Gerontocratic Policies in Inter-domain Routing. DSN 2011.
S. Jana, V. Shmatikov. EVE: Verifying Correct Execution of Cloud-Hosted Web Applications. HotCloud 2011.
S. Son, V. Shmatikov. SAFERPHP: Finding Semantic Vulnerabilities in PHP Applications. PLAS 2011.
I. Roy, S. Setty, A. Kilzer, V. Shmatikov, E. Witchel. Airavat: Security and Privacy for MapReduce. NSDI 2010.
S. Son, V. Shmatikov. The Hitchhiker's Guide to DNS Cache Poisoning. SecureComm 2010.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. Myths and Fallacies of "Personally Identifiable Information". CACM, June 2010.
M. Bond, V. Srivastava, K. McKinley, V. Shmatikov. Efficient, Context-Sensitive Detection of Real-World Semantic Attacks. PLAS 2010.
R. Chang, G. Jiang, F. Ivančić, S. Sankaranarayanan, V. Shmatikov. Inputs of Coma: Static Detection of Denial-of-Service Vulnerabilities. CSF 2009.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. De-anonymizing Social Networks (full version). S&P (Oakland) 2009.
- FAQ about this paper
- Media coverage
J. Brickell, V. Shmatikov. Privacy-Preserving Classifier Learning. Financial Crypto 2009.
J. Brickell, V. Shmatikov. The Cost of Privacy: Destruction of Data-Mining Utility in Anonymized Data Publishing. KDD 2008.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets, or How to Break Anonymity of the Netflix Prize Dataset. S&P (Oakland) 2008.
S&P "Test of Time" Award (2019)
2008 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
- FAQ about this paper
- Media coverage
S. Jha, L. Kruger, V. Shmatikov. Towards Practical Privacy for Genomic Computation. S&P (Oakland) 2008.
J. Brickell, D. Porter, V. Shmatikov, E. Witchel. Privacy-Preserving Remote Diagnostics. CCS 2007.
P. Gupta, V. Shmatikov. Security Analysis of Voice-over-IP Protocols. CSF 2007.
E. Wong, P. Balasubramanian, L. Alvisi, M. Gouda, V. Shmatikov. Truth in Advertising: Lightweight Verification of Route Integrity. PODC 2007.
S. Jarecki, V. Shmatikov. Efficient Two-Party Secure Computation on Committed Inputs. EUROCRYPT 2007.
A. Mahimkar, J. Dange, V. Shmatikov, H. Vin, Y. Zhang. dFence: Transparent Network-based Denial of Service Mitigation. NSDI 2007.
V. Shmatikov, M-H. Wang. Secure Verification of Location Claims with Simultaneous Distance Modification. ASIAN 2007.
V. Shmatikov, M-H. Wang. Security Against Probe-Response Attacks in Collaborative Intrusion Detection. LSAD 2007.
R. Chang, V. Shmatikov. Formal Analysis of Authentication in Bluetooth Device Pairing. FCS-ARSPA 2007.
V. Shmatikov, M-H. Wang. Measuring Relationship Anonymity in Mix Networks. WPES 2006.
P. Porras, V. Shmatikov. Large-Scale Collection and Sanitization of Network Security Data: Risks and Challenges. NSPW 2006.
J. Brickell, V. Shmatikov. Efficient Anonymity-Preserving Data Collection. KDD 2006.
V. Shmatikov, M-H. Wang. Timing Analysis in Low-Latency Mix Networks: Attacks and Defenses. ESORICS 2006.
P. Gupta, V. Shmatikov. Key Confirmation and Adaptive Corruptions in the Protocol Security Logic (full version). FCS-ARSPA 2006.
G. Norman, V. Shmatikov. Analysis of Probabilistic Contract Signing. J. Computer Security, 2006.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. Fast Dictionary Attacks on Passwords Using Time-Space Tradeoff. CCS 2005.
A. Narayanan, V. Shmatikov. Obfuscated Databases and Group Privacy. CCS 2005.
J. Brickell, V. Shmatikov. Privacy-Preserving Graph Algorithms in the Semi-Honest Model. ASIACRYPT 2005.
P. Gupta, V. Shmatikov. Towards Computationally Sound Symbolic Analysis of Key Exchange Protocols (full version). FMSE 2005.
A. Datta, A. Derek, J.C. Mitchell, V. Shmatikov, M. Turuani. Probabilistic Polynomial-Time Semantics for a Protocol Security Logic. ICALP 2005.
A. Mahimkar, V. Shmatikov. Game-Based Analysis of Denial-of-Service Prevention Protocols (corrected version). CSFW 2005.
S. Jarecki, V. Shmatikov. Probabilistic Escrow of Financial Transactions with Cumulative Threshold Disclosure. Financial Crypto 2005.
R. Chadha, J.C. Mitchell, A. Scedrov, V. Shmatikov. Contract Signing, Optimism, and Advantage (full version). J. Logic and Algebraic Programming, 2005.
J. Millen, V. Shmatikov. Symbolic Protocol Analysis with an Abelian Group Operator or Diffie-Hellman Exponentiation. J. Computer Security, 2005. Contains serious bugs in the proofs.
V. Shmatikov, C. Talcott. Reputation-Based Trust Management. J. Computer Security, 2005.
P. Lincoln, P. Porras, V. Shmatikov. Privacy-Preserving Sharing and Correlation of Security Alerts. USENIX Security 2004.
R. Dingledine, V. Shmatikov, P. Syverson. Synchronous Batching: From Cascades to Free Routes. PET 2004.
S. Jarecki, V. Shmatikov. Handcuffing Big Brother: an Abuse-Resilient Transaction Escrow Scheme. EUROCRYPT 2004.
V. Shmatikov. Decidable Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols with Products and Modular Exponentiation. ESOP 2004.
A. Datta, R. Küsters, J.C. Mitchell, A. Ramanathan, V. Shmatikov. Unifying Equivalence-Based Definitions of Protocol Security. WITS 2004.
D. Hughes, V. Shmatikov. Information Hiding, Anonymity and Privacy: A Modular Approach. J. Computer Security, 2004.
V. Shmatikov. Probabilistic Model Checking of an Anonymity System. J. Computer Security, 2004.
R. Chadha, J.C. Mitchell, A. Scedrov, V. Shmatikov. Contract Signing, Optimism, and Advantage. CONCUR 2003.
J. Millen, V. Shmatikov. Symbolic Protocol Analysis with Products and Diffie-Hellman Exponentiation. CSFW 2003.
H. Comon-Lundh, V. Shmatikov. Intruder Deductions, Constraint Solving and Insecurity Decision in Presence of Exclusive or. LICS 2003.
V. Shmatikov, C. Talcott. Reputation-Based Trust Management. WITS 2003.
G. Norman, V. Shmatikov. Analysis of Probabilistic Contract Signing. FASec 2002.
S. Jarecki, P. Lincoln, V. Shmatikov. Negotiated Privacy. ISSS 2002.
V. Shmatikov. Probabilistic Analysis of Anonymity. CSFW 2002.
V. Shmatikov, D. Hughes. Defining Anonymity and Privacy. WITS 2002.
H. Comon, V. Shmatikov. Is It Possible to Decide Whether a Cryptographic Protocol Is Secure Or Not? J. Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2002.
V. Shmatikov, J.C. Mitchell. Finite-State Analysis of Two Contract Signing Protocols. Theoretical Computer Science, 2002.
J. Millen, V. Shmatikov. Constraint Solving for Bounded-Process Cryptographic Protocol Analysis. CCS 2001.
CCS "Test of Time" Award (2011)
V. Shmatikov, J.C. Mitchell. Analysis of Abuse-Free Contract Signing. Financial Crypto 2000.
V. Shmatikov, J.C. Mitchell. Analysis of a Fair Exchange Protocol. NDSS 2000.
V. Shmatikov, J.C. Mitchell. Analysis of a Fair Exchange Protocol. FLOC Workshop on Formal Methods and Security Protocols, 1999.
V. Bono, A. Patel, V. Shmatikov. A Core Calculus of Classes and Mixins. ECOOP 1999.
V. Bono, A. Patel, V. Shmatikov, J.C. Mitchell. A Core Calculus of Classes and Objects. MFPS 1999.
V. Shmatikov, U. Stern. Efficient Finite-State Analysis for Large Security Protocols. CSFW 1998.
J.C. Mitchell, V. Shmatikov, U. Stern. Finite-State Analysis of SSL 3.0. USENIX Security 1998.
J.C. Mitchell, V. Shmatikov, U. Stern. Finite-State Analysis of SSL 3.0 and Related Protocols. DIMACS Workshop on Design and Formal Verification of Security Protocols, 1997.