Ali Ahad

Ali Ahad

Ph.D. student at University of Virginia (UVA)

About me:

Hello! I am Ali Ahad, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia (UVA). I am currently being advised by Prof. Yonghwi Kwon. My primary research focus lies in the broad spectrum of Software Systems Security and System Forensics.

Actively looking for research internships for summer 2023. Please reach out if you have any opportunities for me!

Research interests:

My current research interests include Systems and Software security, Binary analysis, Reverse Engineering, and Forensics.

I am currently exploring the security flaws of reverse engineering tools to make forensic analysis more robust and efficient.

Updates:

  • [11/09/2022]: Paper acceptance in S&P’23 - PyFET: Forensically Equivalent Transformation for Python Binary Decompilation
  • [11/06/2021]: Paper acceptance in S&P’22 - SwarmFlawFinder: Discovering and Exploiting Logic Flaws of Swarm Algorithms
  • [09/11/2021]: Paper acceptance in NDSS’22 - Forensic Analysis of Configuration-based Attacks
  • [05/20/2021]: Paper acceptance in FSE’21 - Swarmbug: Debugging Configuration Bugs in Swarm Robotics
  • [03/23/2021]: Paper acceptance in CCS’21 - Spinner: Automated Dynamic Command Subsystem Perturbation
  • [08/24/2020]: Started Ph.D. at UVA

Publications:

  1. “PyFET: Forensically Equivalent Transformation for Python Binary Decompilation” [📖 - BibTex]: Ali Ahad, Chijung Jung, Ammar Askar, Doowon Kim, Taesoo Kim, and Yonghwi Kwon, In Proc. of the 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P ‘23)

  2. “SwarmFlawFinder: Discovering and Exploiting Logic Flaws of Swarm Algorithms” [📖 - BibTex]: Chijung Jung, Ali Ahad, Yuseok Jeon, and Yonghwi Kwon, In Proc. of the 43rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P ‘22)

  3. “Forensic Analysis of Configuration-based Attacks” [📖 - BibTex]: Muhammad Adil Inam, Wajih Ul Hassan, Ali Ahad, Adam Bates, Rashid Tahir, Tianyin Xu, and Fareed Zaffar, In Proc. of the 29th Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS ‘22)

  4. “Swarmbug: Debugging Configuration Bugs in Swarm Robotics” [📖 - BibTex]: Chijung Jung, Ali Ahad, Jinho Jung, Sebastian Elbaum, and Yonghwi Kwon, In Proc. of 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE ‘21)

  5. “Spinner: Automated Dynamic Command Subsystem Perturbation” [📖 - BibTex]: Meng Wang, Chijung Jung, Ali Ahad, and Yonghwi Kwon, In Proc. of 28th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ‘21)