From Brooklyn to Abu Dhabi, across the French Alps and into Mexico City, young people gathered in November for multiple days of intense competitions that continue to push the frontiers of the cybersecurity field. CSAW ‘24 demonstrated again why a modest competition, begun on a Brooklyn campus 21 years ago, has been able to grow into an important bellwether for the engineering discipline it helped to define. It’s all about bringing together young, incisive minds and pitting them against not only other competitors, but an ever-changing threat environment. Photo credits: Priyadarshan Sabarikannan (US/Canada), Olivier Devise (Europe),
CENTER
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
In the past few years, artificial intelligence and its related technology, machine learning, has inserted itself into just about every human undertaking. Its reach has been so extensive that the Hollywood writers’ strike of 2023 was aimed, in part, at preventing AI from replacing human screenwriters. As researchers embrace AI, they are aware that the potential exists for malevolent users to transform a useful tool into a dangerous weapon.
Because of its ubiquity, we’ve chosen AI as our research topic for this issue. It’s a nice fit for an issue that also includes coverage of CSAW ‘24, since artificial intelligence has become a key element across the event’s competitions. In our research focus section, we share ongoing AI research involving NYU Center for Cybersecurity (CCS) faculty and students, including some that are among the first joint studies under the partnership between NYU and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST). Synergistic collaborations like these can be vital to designing and deploying powerful new technologies.
In our profiles section, we’re happy to introduce the cybersecurity community to the Center’s newest faculty member, Assistant Professor Rosanna Bellini. Bellini, who joined the Computer Science and Engineering Department in January, brings with her expertise in an emerging new field: defending victims against technologyaided abuse. Her research complements some of the work on privacy invasion and cyber harassment conducted by CCS colleagues like Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Rachel Greenstadt and CCS co-director Damon McCoy, with whom she has previously collaborated. Welcome, Rosie! We look forward to sharing your accomplishments as a member of our community.
Rounding out our profiles are interviews with alum Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy and Ph.D. candidate Aditya Sirish A Yelgundhalli. The two share common roots in Professor Justin Cappos’ NYU Secure Systems Laboratory and in the fields of supply chain security and secure software updates. Kuppusamy, who graduated in 2017 after serving in key development roles on several software security projects, is currently a staff engineer with DataDog, and this fall he started teaching at NYU as an adjunct professor. Yelgundhalli is a maintainer on the in-toto supply chain security project and a lead developer on the gittuf framework, which prevents tampering of software and documents prepared on Git.
There’s much more to read about in these pages, including news of a new federally funded center dedicated to the protection of America’s electric power infrastructure.
Enjoy!
Dr. Quanyan Zhu Editor in Chief
RESEARCH FOCUS:
NEGOTIATING
THE DUAL POTENTIAL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Over the past few years, the potential of artificial intelligence to be a double-edged tool of either enhancement or destruction has become abundantly clear. As the use of the technology rapidly evolved during this period, researchers from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering (NYU Tandon) and CCS have stayed ahead of the threat curve by leveraging their deep expertise in playing both offense and defense with AI. Read on to learn more about our most recent projects.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: CREATING MORE TRUSTWORTHY AI TOOLS THROUGH THE NYU/KAIST PARTNERSHIP
The global embrace of AI was evidenced in the initial NYU-KAIST Seed Grants, which were announced on September 29, 2024. These disbursements—a total of $2.8 million divided between 10 separate joint research initiatives— represent the first investigations to be carried out under NYU’s multifaceted partnership with KAIST. The awarded projects include two that will be co-led by CCS faculty. One of these initiatives, a study of “Robust and Private Outsourced Machine Learning Using Cryptographic and Hardware Guarantees,” will be led by Michail Maniatakos, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi, and Brent Kang, an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Information Security (GSIS) at KAIST. The other project, “AIxCC: Automating Real-World Vulnerability Discovery and Remediation,” will be led by Tandon’s Brendan DolanGavitt, an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering (currently on academic leave while he completes an industry assignment), Siddharth Garg, and Insu Yun, an Assistant Professor at KAIST and currently leader of that school’s Hacking Lab.
CyberByte will continue tracking progress on these and other KAIST/NYU projects in the months ahead.
HOW CAPABLE IS AI ANYWAY?
How good are AI systems really when it comes to answering questions about specific industry domains? And, can they be effective in identifying fraud or at sniffing out propaganda in online news? Two recent studies by CCS faculty are seeking answers to these and other practical questions about the efficacy of AI systems; in the process, they’re helping to better define the strengths and limitations of the technology in real world deployments.
For one study, Assistant Professor Danny Y. Huang and his student Vijay Prakash teamed up with researchers from JPMorgan Chase, Cornell Tech, and Northeastern University to assess how clearly, simply, and correctly Large Language Models (LLMs) could address security questions. The second study, conducted by Rachel Greenstadt and her Ph.D. candidate Julia Jose, explores the efficacy of LLMs at identifying propaganda in online news articles.
The security study analyzed 1,244 responses to 900 security questions from popular LLMs and the models excelled in providing clear user-friendly answers to basic general security knowledge questions, but struggled a bit with more complex requests. For example, recommendations on password security often included outdated practices, and the advice offered often oversold system capabilities or was too generic to be of use. Additionally, responses varied when queries were paraphrased or repeated, and answers to procedural questions, such as step-by-step guides for configuring security settings, were often filled
(Clockwise from top left) Prakash, Huang, Jose, Greenstadt
with errors. The researchers thus concluded that while LLMs hold promise, users should treat them only as supplementary tools for security-related queries.
The full paper is currently available through Arvix at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.14571
In the second study, Greenstadt and Jose tested several LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus, to see how well they were able to identify common propaganda techniques in online news articles. Specifically, they looked for examples of:
• Name-calling: Labeling a person or idea negatively to discredit it without evidence.
• Loaded language: Using words with strong emotional implications to influence an audience.
• Doubt: Questioning the credibility of someone or something without justification.
• Appeal to fear: Instilling anxiety or panic to promote a specific idea or action.
• Flag-waving: Exploiting strong patriotic feelings to justify or promote an action or idea.
• Exaggeration or minimization: Representing something as excessively better or worse than it really is.
In a paper presented in June 2024 at the 5th International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats, Greenstadt and Jose reported that while these AI models showed some promise, they consistently underperformed more specialized systems designed for propaganda detection.
“LLMs tend to perform relatively well on some of the more common techniques such as name-calling and loaded language. Their accuracy declines as the complexity increases,” Greenstadt explained in an October 2024 news brief (see https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/large-language-modelsfall-short-detecting-propaganda).” One encouraging note from the study was that GPT-4 did show improvements over its predecessor, GPT-3.5, and outperformed a simpler baseline model in detecting certain techniques like name-calling, appeal to fear, and flag-waving. Yet, Greenstadt cautions, “[Our results] also serve as a reminder that, for now, human discernment remains crucial in identifying and countering propaganda in news media.”
Read the paper at https://workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/ pdf/2024_06.pdf
GARG HEADS NEW LLM DESIGN CONFERENCE
In addition to direct contributions to AI through research, CCS faculty also support the continued evolution of the technology by contributing time and effort to professional conferences and journals. Siddharth Garg, for example, will serve, along with Haoxing (Mark) Ren of NVIDIA, as the first general chair of the International Conference on LLM-Aided Design. The event will be held June 26-27 in Stanford, CA, and will address such topics as agentic workflows for design automation and optimization, inference-time techniques for design, code generation, test plan generation, and LLM-aided design for various application domains.
GETTING THE LAST WORD…
We leave the last word to Edward Amoroso, a CCS Distinguished Research Professor who regularly teaches, lectures, and publishes on AI in cybersecurity. He and co-creator Rich Powell have a comic strip,”Charlie Ciso,” which offers a humorous take on the topic.
FACULTY PROFILE:
ROSANNA BELLINI
HUMAN-CENTERED SOLUTIONS TO ENDING TECHNOLOGY-AIDED ABUSE
The newest member of the Center for Cybersecurity faculty team, Rosanna joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU Tandon in January 2025 as an Assistant Professor. She is motivated to make technologies safer for everyone, but especially for groups who might have originally been overlooked when digital systems were designed, deployed, and evaluated.
As a native of Manchester, England, she completed her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Newcastle University. During her doctoral studies, she began to define an intriguing niche for her research: helping survivors of intimate partner violence fight back against technology-aided abuse. She continued to specialize in this work as a postdoctoral scholar at Cornell Tech in New York City in 2021. While there, she held a leadership role with The Clinic to End Tech Abuse (CETA). Rosie has also been the lead author on 22 conference and journal papers, five of which have won best paper designations, and is the recipient of numerous other honors, including a Pride of Newcastle Award from her alma mater.
CyberByte: Would you mind walking us through your background?
Bellini: I originally started off as an undergraduate in philosophy because I was fascinated by trying to understand how people think. I took the plunge to retrain as a computer scientist for my master’s studies, and found myself gravitating towards the subfield of HumanComputer Interaction when I realized it meant I didn’t have to choose between my interest in understanding people, and in developing new systems. My Ph.D. in Computer Science predominantly focused on Digital Civics – the design of digital services with citizens and for citizens. It’s built on the principle that if people are going to be using digital services, it makes a lot of sense for them to have a stake in helping to shape them to ensure that they are going to be effective, fair, and responsive to the needs of their stakeholders.
Also, during this time, I began to focus on a research area that quite a lot of people might find hard to grapple with— intimate partner violence. I started to ask what assistance could look like for individuals who found it hard to access digital services, and what kinds of different considerations we would need to take on board.
CyberByte: How did you become involved in cybersecurity?
Bellini: It can be tempting as an academic to focus on problems that are interesting to other experts, but might not have any practical benefit for the rest of society. I try to combat this by ensuring my research speaks to real problems for real people. Cybersecurity focuses on trying to understand what adversaries are doing, how they are designing their attacks, and what their targets are. With digital technologies being integrated in every aspect of our lives, it makes sense that the use of these systems should be safe, fulfilling experiences for everybody involved.
During my doctorate, I discovered that many governmental services simply were not designed and implemented for at-risk users. In some cases, they were designed so poorly that they actually exacerbated risk. I realized that understanding these challenges from a cybersecurity perspective was essential; otherwise, how could we consider our technologies to be safe? I found the cybersecurity community was asking the same kinds of questions, so joining with them felt like a natural next step for me.
CyberByte: Can you briefly summarize what your current work entails and what practical applications it has for those subject to technology-enabled intimate partner abuse?
Bellini: Sure. What drives me as a researcher is to make technology safer for every individual. To proactively address technology abuse, I lead efforts to redesign consumer-facing technologies by detecting areas of misuse, and developing digital tools that intervene with abusers to prevent harmful behavior. I couple these efforts with direct, reactive security services for survivors subject to ongoing attacks, and consult with consumer-facing banking, legal, and security services to offer targeted solutions that mitigate harm.
To do this work, I combine rigorous datadriven and engaged design research techniques from the fields of Computer Security and Privacy and Human-Computer Interaction to analyze abusive adversaries’ goals, skills, and attack strategies across in-person and online contexts. Then, I help to develop and deploy digital tools that change abusers’ patterns of behavior in community-based interventions. The next step is designing responsive sociotechnical interventions to help survivors of technology-based attacks reclaim their privacy and security, and improve their financial well-being. Lastly, I’m also helping to build out a community of practice dedicated to safer security and privacy research practices involving at-risk users in academia and industry.
CyberByte: How did you prepare for the many non-technical aspects of your research work?
Bellini: I already had experience working across many fields of study, including philosophy, criminology, health science and more. This set me up for success since, as computer scientists, we cannot fully understand intimate partner violence and interpersonal abuse until we gain an understanding of what has already been studied in other areas for decades.
However, this type of Interdisciplinary research does have its challenges. Equipping myself with an understanding of different terminologies, as well as different ways of
recognizing excellence, also helped a great deal.
CyberByte: The work you’re doing now is very reliant on getting the different parties involved to trust you, and certainly someone who has been the victim of abuse is not very open to trust. How are you able to overcome this problem?
Bellini: You’re right. Trust is an absolutely vital element when working with at-risk groups. And we must be able to take the time to build up this rapport. To do this, I work with the experts on the ground and with community-led organizations that often happen to be geographically local to me. Working with these organizations can also ensure you’re doing something genuinely valuable for the organization, rather than being simply extractive. As a side effect, it’s a more natural way to broker and build up trust with participants.
I have to be careful, however, as I have found that people will be almost overly trusting of me as a researcher, because of my association with a university, and their belief that researchers are automatically trustworthy. I take this trust very seriously because this might be one of the first times someone has shared their experiences with anyone else, and trust can be broken in an instant. I have to be careful to not over promise that I can make structural changes, but I can certainly share that I will be dedicated to keep working at making technology safer for all.
CyberByte: As someone who has viewed the issue of intimate partner violence on both sides of the Atlantic, are current government strategies helping?
Bellini: Interpersonal abuse is an extremely expensive societal problem, as there’s not a single sector—workplace, housing, heath, financial support— where its impact doesn’t hit. Unfortunately, the issue just does not get the required funding. Non-profit organizations do an incredible amount of work on very little money. And, one significant difference between the U.K. and the U.S. in this area is that there is a very strong set of organizations within the U.K. addressing the problem.
CyberByte: Though you are new to the
NYU faculty, you have been involved in studies with several of our CCS faculty and students as far back as 2020. How did you happen to join forces with now CCS Co-director Damon McCoy, and Professor Rachel Greenstadt?
Bellini: In 2019, which feels like a century ago now, I did an internship at Cornell Tech with Professors Nicola Dell and Thomas Ristenpart. I was really attracted to their style of research because of their persistence in being very pragmatic. Their approach is to look at real problems and come out with something that really moves the field forwards, particularly for vulnerable population groups. Dell and Ristenpart had reached out to Greenstadt and McCoy—who shared a grant with them at the time—because they both had expertise in working with adversarial communities online. And I think that’s how those kinds of connections really get made, which is identifying existing kinds of expertise rather than replicating what’s already out there.
CyberByte: Within the scope of your personal experience, what would you say is the current status of cybersecurity awareness in the U.K., both in terms of user and company responses, and in how the subject is taught?
Bellini: It may be a little surprising, but I didn’t take a cybersecurity class until my master’s studies and that was just one module towards the end of the program. And I think that there’s definitely scope and a market to introduce cybersecurity a lot sooner because once I properly understood the principles of information security, I couldn’t identify a single area across the space of my computer science education that wouldn’t have benefited from knowing more about the security side of things. I think it makes you a better coder. It develops your critical thinking skills. It makes you a better designer. I think it genuinely does give you a much more wellrounded understanding of why things work the way they do, and what kinds of harm or failure states we want to avoid when it comes to digital technology.
To answer the broader question of cybersecurity awareness, we need to
ensure that security isn’t about expecting the end user to change their behavior. There’s a multitude of reasons why someone will never pick a very strong password of 16 characters, or remember to log themselves out of a shared system. So I think that companies need to see cybersecurity as something they have to build in or be thinking about from the very start. The overwhelming majority of work I do is look at how everyday systems are misused for abusive purposes without taking advantage of any software vulnerabilities. If you have people who properly understand security, safety, and privacy working with these systems from the very start, you could make it so much harder for abusive actions to actually occur.
PH.D. PROFILE:
ADITYA SIRISH A YELGUNDHALLI
DECENTRALIZING
TRUST—A CONVERSATION ON OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE SUPPLY CHAIN SECURITY
by Chinmay Tompe , NYU Tandon M.S. Alumnus
Aditya Sirish A Yelgundhalli is a Ph.D. in NYU’s Secure Systems Lab who graduated in 2025. With extensive experience in opensource software supply chain security, he serves as a maintainer for multiple projects supported by the non-profit Linux Foundation. These include in-toto (https://in-toto.io/), SLSA (https://slsa. dev/), and Sigstore gitsign (https://docs.sigstore.dev/cosign/ signing/gitsign/). As part of his dissertation research, he has led the development of gittuf (https://gittuf.dev/), a system designed to protect the transparency and authenticity of content developed in Git repositories. In addition to his academic work, Yelgundhalli is currently a part-time consultant at Bloomberg’s CTO office, where he collaborates on software supply chain security research.
CyberByte: Can you give us a brief overview of your journey to the current point in your career?
Yelgundhalli: Sure! I was a Ph.D. student at the Secure Systems Lab, where my research focused on software supply chain security. I was part of the lab in various capacities since January 2019, and in that time I contributed significantly to the in-toto project and worked on The Update Framework (TUF) (https://theupdateframework. io/). Around 2.5 years ago, I led the development of an offshoot of TUF called gittuf, which focuses on securing Git repositories. While gittuf started with strong ties to TUF, it has evolved into something increasingly distinct.
Beyond these projects, I’ve also explored other aspects of software supply chain security, such as analyzing dependencies in software development, and understanding how we can reason about the libraries we use. This journey has taken me through different aspects of the software development lifecycle, and has involved interactions with a variety of open-source communities, including the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), and the Reproducible Builds initiative. I’ve also worked with Linux distribution maintainers and other ecosystem stakeholders.
CyberByte: For those unfamiliar with gittuf, could you explain what it is and its significance in software security?
Yelgundhalli: To understand gittuf, let’s first look at the broader goals of software supply chain security. One key aspect is transparency, or having clear visibility into what’s happening in our software, along with verifiability, or the ability to enforce policies. Another crucial goal is eliminating single points of trust, ensuring that no single entity has unchecked control over security enforcement. When it comes to source code development, Git is the dominant version control system. According to Stack Overflow’s developer survey, around 90% of developers use it (see https:// stackoverflow.blog/2023/01/09/beyond-git-the-other-versioncontrol-systems-developers-use/). While Git itself is designed to be distributed, many security measures—such as access control, and policy enforcement—are centralized within platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.
By moving enforcement from centralized platforms like GitHub into the repository itself, gittuf decentralizes security. Instead of relying on external systems, developers define and verify policies directly in Git, in alignment with the supply chain security principles of transparency, reduced risk, and distributed trust.
In gittuf, security is embedded. Pulling a repository means getting both code and its guardrails. By making security intrinsic to the repo, gittuf gives developers control. They are not forced to trust a platform.
CyberByte: What motivated you to create gittuf? What problem were you trying to solve?
Yelgundhalli: gittuf was really an extension of the work we had already been doing with projects like in-toto and TUF. Around the time we started looking at gittuf, we had already spent several years working on securing the software supply chain. By 2022, we were seeing a major shift in the industry around this topic. We saw efforts like SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts) emerge in response to the attack on SolarWinds, focusing at that time on providing verifiable evidence of what happens during the build process. But securing the build pipeline alone doesn’t
solve the whole problem. What if the source code that goes into the build system is already compromised? That’s where gittuf comes in. It’s specifically focused on securing source code development. We wanted to ensure that, from source to build to distribution, there’s integrity and transparency in every step.
In addressing this issue, I was fortunate to collaborate with software engineer Billy Lynch, who has extensive experience in Git security through projects at Google, Chainguard, and on Sigstore’s Git signing. We explored ideas by combining supply chain security knowledge, Git internals, and frameworks like TUF—iterating through trial and error to refine our approach. gittuf, now gaining traction, ensures that pulling a repository delivers not just code but cryptographic integrity guarantees. It wasn’t a straight-line journey. A lot of it was exploratory, just figuring out what worked and what didn’t, and adapting along the way.
CyberByte: You mentioned SolarWinds as a key turning point. How did that incident and others like the XZ Utils attack shape your research?
Yelgundhalli: Successful software supply chain attacks are rare, but when they happen, they demonstrate how serious they can be. Before SolarWinds, supply chain security was something few companies prioritized. Then, in December 2020, we learned the U.S. federal government had been compromised, and supply chain security became a priority. The XZ Utils attack reinforced another critical lesson: attackers don’t need to breach your build system if they can manipulate your source code first. For years, researchers warned about these risks, but without high-profile incidents, attention was scarce. The difference now is urgency and adoption. The goal? I think it is to make supply chain security as seamless as HTTPS has become in recent years.
That said, no system is bulletproof. Even the best defenses are unlikely to stop a highly resourced attacker like the one behind XZ. All we can really do is raise the bar so high that widespread attacks become impractical.
CyberByte: Where do you see the field heading in the next decade, particularly with AI in the mix?
Yelgundhalli: Supply chain security is about authenticated communication—tracking data transformations, whether in software or AI models. AI doesn’t change this; it’s just another artifact with dependencies. OpenSSF and companies like Google are already applying supply chain principles to AI, using tools like Sigstore for model signing and provenance. What’s likely to happen is that with increased use of AI in decision making, there will also be higher expectations for how and why we can trust those AI models.
I think regulations (U.S./E.U.) will drive adoption, with near-term focus on “low-hanging solutions,” like requiring SBOMs and provenance for software artifacts. With all that metadata being produced, I think aggregation, such as in OpenSSF’s GUAC (https:// openssf.org/projects/guac/), will become key, both for AI decisionmaking and to help humans reason about software and assess trustworthiness.
Ultimately, the future hinges on balancing security with usability, making it invisible until needed. I don’t see this changing much because of AI, but I’m excited to see how this evolves!
CyberByte: You’ve worked in both academia and industry. How do you balance research with practical applications?
Yelgundhalli At the Secure Systems Lab, we prioritize bridging the gap between research and real-world impact. We prioritize building deployable solutions that address practical security challenges. This ethos is core to our identity. For instance, when we built gittuf, we didn’t just create a prototype for a paper. We ensured it was reasonably production-ready, engaged with industry partners, and contributed it to the OpenSSF. That’s how we measure success— real-world adoption.
CyberByte: Who has been your biggest mentor or influence in your career?
Yelgundhalli: Without a doubt, Santiago Torres-Arias, one of Justin Cappos’ former Ph.D. students. When I joined the lab, I didn’t work directly with Justin—Ph.D. students typically guide newer researchers. Santiago, who developed in-toto for his dissertation, has had a huge impact on how I approach open source, security, and research. More broadly, the open-source security community has shaped my thinking. Whether it’s past lab members or contributors at OpenSSF, it’s been a collective effort.
It also fuels our collaborations with industry through internships as well. With Bloomberg, we’re learning from applying our work to continually improve the tooling and design of gittuf. While interning at Toradex, we had a similar synergy.
CyberByte: Outside of supply chain security, what’s your general philosophy on cybersecurity?
Yelgundhalli: I started with a strong interest in privacy, and that still influences how I approach security. I’m a private person online—I avoid sharing much personal data, use minimal social media, and enable security best practices like multi-factor authentication. At the same time, I acknowledge that if a nation-state actor truly wants to target you, there’s not much you can do. My approach is about practical risk minimization—controlling what data I expose rather than chasing perfect security, which doesn’t exist.
Cybersecurity isn’t just about tech—it’s about understanding human behavior, trust, and communication. Whether you’re securing software supply chains or improving privacy, the best security measures are the ones people actually use. Find work that has real impact, collaborate with the open source community, and don’t get caught up in theoretical perfection at the cost of practical solutions.
TRISHANK KARTHIK KUPPUSAMY
Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy is a Staff Engineer at Datadog. As a Ph.D. student at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, he worked with Professor Justin Cappos (https://engineering.nyu.edu/faculty/justin-cappos) on software update security issues. Kuppusamy led the specification for Uptane (https://uptane.org/), which delivers secure software updates for automobiles. He also worked on improving the security and efficiency of The Update Framework, better known as TUF (https://theupdateframework.io/), a predecessor to Uptane that has been adopted by notary, trdl, Automotive Grade Linux, Kolide, and sigstore. The full list of adoptions can be found at https:// theupdateframework.io/community/adoptions/
CyberByte: Let’s start with your journey. You went from being a Ph.D. student to becoming a Staff Engineer at DataDog. Can you walk us through that transition?
Kuppusamy: I started my Ph.D. at the end of 2012 and joined DataDog in the fall of 2017. It was an interesting journey as I’m sure every Ph.D. student’s journey is. More recently, I became an Adjunct Professor at Tandon as well, so that added another layer to my career.
To summarize my journey, I point to four projects:
1. Private information retrieval and scaling security systems that make secure software update systems more practical and usable.
2. Diplomat—the first of several projects that adapted TUF to defend against specific repository issues, in this case the volume of projects community repositories must deal with.
3. Mercury—another TUF variant designed to protect against rollback attacks, without significant drawbacks in performance.
4. Artemis—identifying new use cases for securing software updates, like container image registries and the automotive industry. So, in a way, my research evolved into practical applications that bridged academia and industry, which naturally led me to where I am today.
CyberByte: What motivated you to focus on this intersection between academia and industry?
Kuppusamy: I guess I’ve always wanted to be an academic of some sort. As a kid, I was fascinated with the idea of being a scientist. But, over time, I realized that I didn’t want to be just in academia or in industry. I found that the intersection of the two is the most interesting space. In game theory, this is called a mixed strategy or a barbell strategy. I spend 80% of my time in industry and 20% in
academia. This balance allows me to do applied research while also contributing to fundamental advancements in security.
CyberByte: Your early career as a full-stack developer didn’t focus on software supply chain security. How did your time at NYU and working on these projects shape your perspective towards it?
Kuppusamy: When I was working as a full-stack developer, I wasn’t focused on software supply chain security per se. But I had an interest in security from a self-taught perspective. For instance, back then, PyPI wasn’t using HTTPS everywhere, so man-in-the-middle attacks were a real issue. Software supply chain security became a bigger focus for me during my Ph.D. work. At the time, there was no systematic study of it, not in industry and definitely not in academia. It took several years for people to even recognize it as a critical security domain. The NYU Secure Systems Lab was—and still is—a pioneer in this area. It produced some of the foundational work that has influenced the way industry thinks about software supply chain security today.
CyberByte: You’ve been involved in projects like TUF (The Update Framework), Uptane, and in-toto. Can you explain their significance and how they contribute to the space?
Kuppusamy: One of the common questions I get is: why do we need multiple systems instead of just one? The answer is that they each solve different parts of the problem.
• TUF focuses on securing the last mile of software distribution.
• in-toto goes deeper, ensuring that the entire software development pipeline is secure before software even reaches the last mile.
• Uptane is a generalized extension of TUF designed for software updates where dependency resolution happens in the cloud, such as for automotives.
These are complementary, rather than competing technologies. TUF and in-toto work together to secure different stages of the software supply chain, while Uptane adapts TUF’s principles for diverse domains, such as the automotive industry.
CyberByte: Uptane is specifically designed for over-the-air (OTA) software updates in vehicles. What were some of the key challenges in developing it? What lessons did you learn?
Kuppusamy: One of the biggest challenges was adapting security principles to a completely different computing environment. Cars are not like cloud servers or laptops. They have dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tiny computers called ECUs (Electronic Control Units). Some are very powerful, while others are extremely limited in capability. Another challenge was the way vehicle networks operate. In some older car models, once an attacker breaches one ECU—like the cellular modem—they can potentially control critical components like the engine or brakes. There have been real-world hacks exploiting this (see the YouTube presentation at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=OobLb1McxnI). Another challenge is that manufacturers control software updates, not the car owners. That’s different from how most personal devices work. Another layer of complexity came from legal and regulatory requirements. For example,
in some cases, fleet managers or even governments may have a say in what software gets installed in vehicles. We had to design Uptane to ensure safe updates while considering all these unique constraints. So, Uptane had to account for multiple sources of truth.
In development, a major lesson learned was that while security principles remain consistent, real-world implementations vary drastically. Different industries have different constraints, so you have to design systems that are flexible enough to accommodate those differences while staying true to core security principles. For instance, not every system uses the same data format—some use JSON, others use XML or CBOR. When designing security frameworks, we need to avoid being overly prescriptive and allow for variation in implementation. And, furthermore, we found there is a need for clear specifications. Before Uptane, TUF didn’t have a detailed client-side implementation guide. Working on Uptane pushed us to create more rigorous documentation, which actually improved TUF as well.
CyberByte: You taught supply chain security at NYU. What’s the key takeaway you want students to glean from your course?
Kuppusamy: I’ve always loved teaching. I firmly believe that teaching forces you to learn better. If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Another reason is that I want to pass on knowledge to the next generation. Supply chain security is still an evolving field, and we need more people working on it.
The main thing I emphasize is that there is no magic bullet for software supply chain security. It’s all about defense in depth. You can’t rely on just one tool or framework. Instead, you need a layered approach, using multiple security mechanisms to cover different attack vectors.
One of the biggest challenges in teaching security is avoiding getting lost in technical details. I try to provide a historical perspective to show how security problems evolved over time. I also break down software supply chain security into key components so students can see the bigger picture before diving into specifics. This approach helps both students and industry professionals understand where each security measure fits into the broader system.
One of the biggest mistakes made today is treating security as a separate discipline from software engineering. It’s almost like we’re telling engineers, “Don’t try to do this yourself—you’ll get it wrong.”
But imagine if civil engineers were taught that bridge safety was optional! Security should be embedded in the development process from day one. Students learning to code should also learn to design fundamentally secure systems.
CyberByte: Where do you see this field going in the next 5-10 years? What are you looking forward to?
Kuppusamy: Right now, we’re still in the early days of securing software supply chains, but I’m optimistic that within a decade this will no longer be a major issue. We need what I call the “TLS of software supply chain security”—a solution so seamless that developers don’t even have to think about it. For example, today, TLS (Transport Layer Security) is so ubiquitous that turning it off is more work than enabling it. That’s the level of integration I envision for software supply chain security.
One project I’m particularly excited about is Robusto (see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D_8mbINXihT_ UxN86oO6eg0w5Ik7zjtF80medlJNWtg/edit?tab=t.qgduozt32mvu), a system we’re working on that integrates various security frameworks to create a standardized, open-source solution for securing open source repositories. If we do it right, it will solve these problems once and for all.
CyberByte: What are your thoughts on privacy and decentralized architectures? Are we moving toward a more decentralized future?
Kuppusamy: I used to be more optimistic about decentralization, but I’ve realized that the real-world trade-offs make it difficult. Decentralization gives you more privacy and freedom, but it also sacrifices usability and performance. People want simplicity. You can’t expect your grandmother to use a decentralized social network if even tech-savvy people struggle with it. Ultimately, privacy and decentralization must be balanced with real-world usability. If it’s too difficult for the average person to adopt, it won’t succeed.
CyberByte: With advancements in quantum computing, how do you see it impacting security and cryptography?
Kuppusamy: Quantum computing is a fascinating challenge for cryptography. The industry is already preparing for the postquantum era, and organizations like NIST are standardizing postquantum cryptographic algorithms.
In security, we talk about crypto agility—the ability to switch between cryptographic algorithms as needed. Some companies are now testing classical and post-quantum algorithms simultaneously, which is a great approach. It’s like insurance—you prepare for the worst-case scenario even if quantum computers never become powerful enough to break current encryption.
The important thing is that we don’t take an extreme approach. Security should be flexible enough to adapt to new threats without being too rigid to implement real-world solutions.
CSAW ’24 KICKS OFF DECADE THREE
From November 6-9, hundreds of next-generation cyber defenders converged on Brooklyn and four other geographic sites around the globe for CSAW ’24. During these events, attendees participated in competitions based on real-world problems, listened to technical talks by cybersecurity insiders, and took advantage of opportunities to network with representatives from public and private institutions.
As it matures into its third decade, the world’s most comprehensive student-run cybersecurity event remains an important source of ideas for defending against increasingly sophisticated new cyber threats. This year, in Brooklyn, there were noted changes to existing competitions to better reflect shifting needs within the field, and at other global CSAW sites, change was also in the air. For example, the BioHack 3D competition was added to CSAW India, as well as CSAW MENA, where it was initially created, and CSAW Europe added a new challenge in which participants submitted posters warning the general public against the consequences of poor cybersecurity practices.
3,000 + total participants in all rounds
500+ finalists
16 partner organizations
11 unique global challenges
5 global sites
CSAW BY THE NUMBERS FOR THE US-CANADA SITE
300+ attendees
85 finalists
13 sponsors 6 competitions
SPEAKER SERIES
REFLECTS THE DIVERSITY OF CYBER TASKS
Following an opening dinner on the 6th, CSAW ’24 in Brooklyn kicked off on Thursday morning, November 7, with its Industry Speaker Series. The six cyber professionals who addressed attendees accurately represented the diversity of the cybersecurity field, both in terms of the various job responsibilities they hold and the industry sectors—including finance, critical infrastructure, and system/software security—in which they serve.
Leading off was Luna Tong, the CEO and co-founder of Zellic. Tong, who was a founding member of Perfect Blue, the #1-ranked Capture the Flag team in 2020, 2021, and 2023, spoke about “the value of the hacker ‘ethos’ in the marketplace,” and suggested that the skills and determination that characterize the hacker mindset “need to be applied where they’re desperately needed.”
Next up was Gaurav Kumar Srivastava, a cybersecurity consultant and former research professional with Siemens. Srivastava made a case for why vulnerability managers are the “unsung
heroes of cyber defense,” In a similar vein, Michael Zelinski, a systems specialist at Con Edison, devoted his talk to the importance of incident response, another task critical to protecting cyberphysical systems like power grids.
A duo of speakers from TIAA—Lead Cybersecurity Governance and Risk Specialist Kanan Vaidya and Director of DevSecOps—Cloud Elizabeth Vasquez–followed Zelinski’s talk with insights on “Cybersecurity in Action” within their organization. The session wrapped up with a talk by Dan Guido, CEO and founder of the open source software security company Trail of Bits. Guido, a frequent presence at CSAW in a number of capacities since he participated as an undergraduate computer science student, exposed some of the prevailing security myths of working with AI.
After a lunch break, representatives of the speakers’ companies, joined by personnel from the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the National Science Foundation, met with potential job seekers at the CSAW Career Fair, where they discussed various professional options in the domain of cybersecurity and left resumes for consideration for current and future openings.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
Of course, the heart and soul of CSAW continues to be its competitions. So, on Friday, November 8, the finals of six challenges got underway, both in person and online. At the US-Canada site, the contests included second iterations of the LLM CTF Attack Competition and the AI-Based Hardware Attack Challenge (AHA),
In the case of the AHA competition, its second go-round in Brooklyn boasted an important new sponsor, the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (NORDTECH), a consortium that aims to boost chip manufacturing research and productivity through improved education and training. Built around the growing demand for secure and reliable hardware, AHA asked participants to design strategies for automatically inserting backdoors into an open source digital design, such as OpenTitan, Ariane, or a design from OpenCores. Resulting vulnerabilities had to be simulatable and synthesizable, and needed to demonstrate the effects of the added vulnerability (e.g., Hardware Common Weakness Enumeration and Common Vulnerability Scoring System). As noted in an article on the NORDTECH news site (https://www.nordtechub.org/nordtech-new s/0mnmaalrlbu74sey4chajtr7k9z52j), bringing the resources of the consortium to the AHA competition added new strengths and tools. It also served to expand the scope of CSAW to integrate AI-driven hardware attack simulations. Note that both the MENA and India CSAW sites also added their own iterations of the AHA challenge for 2024.
AHA Global Chair: Hammond Pearce, a Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales Sydney.
Student Leads: Jason Blocklove (NYU), Prithwish Basu Roy (NYU Abu Dhabi), and Vishesh Mishra (IIT Kanpur),
Two other 2024 competitions made changes to their focus and judging criteria.
The Policy Competition was renamed Cyber Policy and offered participants two different focus areas. According to Jasnoor Mann, a graduate assistant at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs (CGA), which partnered with CCS on the challenge, the first focus area involved “balancing software security with innovation, defining reasonable security precautions, and developing legislation that supports small businesses and startups while upholding industry standards.” The second focus area “addressed global approaches to software liability, the potential for a universal software security standard, and the integration of open source software in global security frameworks.” Students submitted a 500-word response to a challenge from one of the focus areas. Three entrants, Kaleigh Kornfeld (NYU), William Allen (NYU), and Eric Somogyi (DePaul), were selected to deliver Powerpoint presentations at the finals. Kornfeld, was selected as the winner for her policy recommendations in the area of software security and liability, which addressed such questions as what constitutes a “reasonable precaution” in software security, and how legislation can ensure liability doesn’t stifle small businesses and startups.
Faculty Chair: Christopher P Ankersen, Clinical Professor, Center for Global Affairs, NYU
Student Lead: Graduate Assistant Jasnoor Mann Co-organized by CCS and the NYU Center for Global Affairs
The Applied Research Competition, another perennial CSAW fixture, also had something of a facelift with the addition of a second judging category. Papers were reviewed and rated on the strength of “technical impact” or “significant social impact,” and a first place and runner-up award was presented in each category.
According to the competition’s faculty advisor, Danny Huang, this year’s conference received 194 submissions. A program committee composed of 46 volunteers reviewed and assessed the submissions and selected 15 finalists who were invited to present their research posters during the CSAW event. At the end of the judging, the winners were:
Social Impact
First Place: “Privacy Requirements and Realities of Digital Public Goods,” by Geetika Gopi, Aadyaa Maddi, and Giulia Fanti, Carnegie Mellon University; and Omkhar Arasaratnam of OpenSSF. Originally presented at the 2023 USENIX Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect (PEPR ‘23)
Runner-up: “‘The Times they are A-Changin’: Characterizing Post-publication Changes to Online News” by Chris Tsoukaladelis, Brian Kondracki, Niranjan Balasubramanian, and Nick Nikiforakis, Stony Brook University. Originally presented at the 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
Technical Impact
First Place: “Passive SSH Key Compromise via Lattices” by Kaiwen He, George Arnold Sullivan, Nadia Heninger, University of California, San Diego. Originally presented at the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (SIGSAC ‘23).
Runner-up: “Gotcha! I Know What You are Doing on the FPGA Cloud: Fingerprinting Co-Located Cloud FPGA Accelerators via Measuring Communication Links” by Chongzhou Fang, UC Davis; Ning Miao, UC Davis; Han Wang, Temple; Jiacheng Zhou, UC Davis; Tyler Sheaves, UC Davis; John M. Emmert, Univ of Cincinnati; Avesta Sasan, UC Davis; Houman Homayoun, UC Davis; ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ‘23).
ARC Faculty Chair: Danny Huang, Assistant Professor, ECE/CSE/CCS NYU
Student Leads: Ph.D. Students Mo Satt and Grace McGrath, MS student Shubh Kamdar
Judges: Ronald Jones (DTCC), Ashish Pujari and BK Das (Google), Kanan Vaidya (TIAA), Howdy Fisher (Greynoise), Luna Tong (Zellic), and Yixin Sun (University of Virginia).
Global Perspectives: Highlights from Other CSAW Sites
CSAW is truly a global affair and so no report on the events of 2024 would be complete without checking in with a few of our global sites: CSAW Europe, CSAW MENA, and CSAW Mexico.
Thanks to Hari Ramasubbu, Senior Center Coordinator at the Center for Cyber Security at NYU Abu Dhabi; AnneLaure Duee, CSAW Europe coordinator at Grenoble INP-Esisar; and Felipe A. Trujillo Fernández, Maestro en Ciencias at Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México, and site coordinator for CSAW Mexico, for providing details and descriptions of their respective events.
EUROPE
The CSAW Europe event packed a lot of activities, camaraderie, and information into a two day program at Grenoble INP-Esisar in Valence, France.
BY THE NUMBERS
220 K-12 school children
145 finalists 51 institutional and industrial partners
45 participating universities 5 competitions
The first day was designated “Research Day,” with programming devoted to presentations on the security of hardware and software systems. The event was hosted by the ARSENE project, part of the French cyber defense agency PEPR Cybersécurité, and drew approximately 90 attendees. On the same day, CSAW volunteers also conducted visits to K-12 schools in the region, working with students in hands-on programs designed to stimulate interest in cyber and technical careers.
The following day, CSAW events were divided between CyberDay activities and student competitions. CyberDay, co-sponsored by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Entreprises, is a program devoted to raising professional awareness of cybersecurity by presenting keynotes on topics such as geopolitical issues and the economic impact of cybersecurity issues on businesses. The program also introduced attendees to an immersive game where they got to experience a cyberattack in a company.
The brand new Cybersecurity Awareness Communications Challenge, open to students at all levels, asked participants to create a high impact communication medium to raise awareness of cybersecurity to the general public. The winning poster, from a team at Sapienza Universitá in Rome, reminded viewers that “even their minds can be hacked” and that they should take steps to protect their personal information.
On the same day, Esisar students also took local school children on guided tours of CSAW events, with workshops especially designed for them. These tours served to raise awareness of cybersecurity and stimulate interest in cyber and technical careers.
MENA
2024 marked the 11th anniversary of CSAW MENA, and its newest edition was a resounding success. The event brought cybersecurity researchers, students and professionals from nine countries—Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, China (Shanghai)—to the United Arab Emirates to share knowledge, engage in friendly competition, and contribute to the advancement of the cybersecurity field. A total of 118 students and researchers took part in the finals, a 34% surge in participant numbers compared to previous years.
Here is a round-up of the competitions.
Applied Research: The Applied Research “best paper award” has a reputation for attracting some of the world’s best global security research. This year’s competition featured nine exceptional participants from 5 countries.
BioHack 3D: BioHack 3D marked a groundbreaking event as only the second workshop and hackathon solely dedicated to biochip security and its intersection with 3D printing technology. The one-day event focused on shedding light on security vulnerabilities in PCR biochips. With participation from across the UAE, a total of 21 teams engaged in the virtual qualifying round, with only 5 elite teams advancing to the final round.
Capture The Flag: Ten teams of 37 participants from five different countries emerged as finalists out of 90 in the qualifying rounds.
Hack My Robot: With a focus on autonomous soil compactors, this year’s Hack My Robot competition highlighted the critical safety and quality implications of potential compromises. Nineteen participants from four different countries competed in the final round, with 5 teams emerging as finalists. In the final rounds, challengers had to hack a construction environment robot to disrupt functionalities and steal data. All finalists displayed the ability to defend against creative and technically complex attacks.
LLM Attack Challenge: With the burgeoning popularity of LLMs, the capabilities of new models are rising, including the ability to pinpoint software vulnerabilities while also generating the code to exploit them. The success of the LLM Attack Challenge at CSAW 2023 set the stage for this year’s edition, which drew 41 participants.
CSAW ’24 MENA also featured an engaging keynote by Luca Di Bartolomeo, a doctoral assistant with HexHive Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne. An experienced competitor in global CTF finals, including DEFCON and XCTF, Luca’s talk on “The CTF Player Pipeline: From Noob to Addicted,” shared insights on becoming a dedicated participant in these types of competitions. His expertise inspired attendees to explore and excel in the dynamic world of cybersecurity challenges.
MEXICO
CSAW Mexico brought together many activities, promoting collaboration and innovation to a program that has grown since its creation at New York University in 2003.
BY THE NUMBERS
13 high school teams 5 institutions 5 undergraduate level teams
55 students
The latest edition of CSAW Mexico was designed to foster interest in cybersecurity among high school students, as well as to promote awareness of current cyber risks. Since its first edition, in 2018, the event has been organized by the Universidad Iberoamericana, under the vision of NYU Ph.D. graduate Santiago Torres Arias, who collaborated with his alma mater to bring the competition to his home country.
CSAW Mexico held more than 15 training and awareness actions aimed at students and teachers of different educational levels. These activities not only assessed technical skills, but also promoted best practices in cybersecurity and a broader understanding of contemporary challenges in this field.
Looking ahead to 2025, CSAW Mexico seeks to continue evolving beyond an annual event, developing outreach, training, and awareness activities throughout the year. This effort will include the participation of recognized cybersecurity experts and institutions to further strengthen the ecosystem in Mexico. In addition, this expanded approach will ensure that CSAW remains both an educational and professional benchmark.
• Europe | Sebastian Neef, Technische Universität Berlin (Germany) presenting “What All the PHUZZ is About: A Coverage-guided Fuzzer for Finding Vulnerabilities in PHP Web Applications”
• MENA | Marouene Boubakri, University of Carthage Tunis (Tunisia) presenting “Architectural Security and Trust Foundation for RISC-V”
• US-Canada-Social Impact | Geetika Gopi, et al., Carnegie Mellon University (USA) presenting “Privacy Requirements and Realities of Digital Public Goods”
• US-Canada-Technical Impact | Keegan Ryan, et al., University of California, San Diego (USA), presenting “Passive SSH Key Compromise via Lattices”
BioHack 3D
• Team AltF4, University of Wollongong, Dubai (UAE) Hadiyya Mattummathodi Mariah, Khalifa Riaz Mohammed, Muhammad Ansari
Capture the Flag
• Europe | pwn-la-Chapelle, RWTH Aachen University (Germany) Felix Schaub, Anton Fricke, Dorian Koch, Daniel Petri
• MENA | 0x1a4, TEK-UP University, (Tunisia) Knani Alaaeddine, Chebbi Jasser, Badreddine Chamkhi, Knani Mohamed Aziz
• US-Canada | Shellphish, Arizona State University (USA) Audrey Dutcher, Justin Miller
Cybersecurity Awareness Communication Challenge (Europe only)
• Mashers, Sapienza Universitá di Roma and Roma Tre University, Rome (Italy) Tiziano Caruana and Mohammed Ryan Shaikh
Embedded Security Challenge
• Europe | The Roman Xpl0it, Sapienza Universitá di Roma and Università di Verona (Italy)
Kristjan Tarantelli, Simone Di Maria, Lorenzo Colombini, Francesco Bianchi
• US-Canada | Yellow Hackets, Georgia Tech University/University of North Georgia (USA)
Tracy Guo, Henry Bui, Shayan Aqeel, Smit Patel
Hack3D (Global)
• Greeks for Geeks, National Technical University of Athens (Greece) Christos Madamopoulos, George Karapidakis, Stasinos Ntaveas, Nicholaos Moraitis
Hack my Robot
• MENA | Mr. Robot, Princess Sumaya University for Technology (Jordan) Badi AbuAlGhanam, Mohammad AlSarabi
LLM CTF Attack Competition
• MENA | Team PBD, UAE Pearl Rwauya, Simon Grange, Safa Al Almeri
• US-Canada | NYU Tandon (USA) Shiv Thaker, Samkit Shah
Red Team Attack (Europe only)
• Les Nanoninjas, Lycée FrancoAllemand de Buc (LFA) (France)
NYU New York: OSIRIS Lab, Center for Global Affairs, Cyber Fellows, Wasserman Center for Career Development, Tandon Career Hub. NYU Abu Dhabi: Center for Cyber Security, the Modern Microprocessors Architecture Lab Global and Domestic Affiliates: IIT-Kanpur Interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security and Cyber Defense of Critical Infrastructures, the University of Delaware College of Engineering, Grenoble Alpes Cybersecurity Institute, Grenoble INP Institut d’ingénierie et de Management, the Global CyberPeace Challenge, and CTFd.
Corporate and Government Sponsors for CSAW ’24 USCanada: Con Edison, Cubic Defense, DTTC, Google, HP, Intel, Metropolitan Transit Authority, the National Science Foundation, NORDTECH, Synopsys, TIAA, Trail of Bits, and Zellic.io
FOREVER CSAW:
WHY THESE FORMER COMPETITORS ARE STILL ALL IN
Nektarios Tsoutsos, Assistant Professor and Associate Director, Center for Cybersecurity, Assurance, and Privacy at the University of Delaware, and Dan Guido, co-founder and CEO of Trail of Bits, are members of a unique club. Both are former CSAW competitors who have continued to remain engaged with the event in some way. As a Ph.D.student in 2013, Tsoutsos captured first place in the 6th iteration of the Embedded Security Contest (ESC), while Guido became involved in the program as an undergraduate, back in the early days when CTF was the only CSAW competition. After the 2024 event, we caught up with them to find out why the competition remains such an important part of their lives..
CyberByte: As students, what initially drew you to CSAW?
Tsoutsos: Initially, what drew me was my deep interest in embedded systems and cybersecurity. At the time, I was already conducting research in these areas, so the competition felt like a natural extension of my academic interests. Additionally, it was very appealing to me that ESC was addressing real-world problems, and offered the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded peers.
Guido: I came to [what was then called] Polytechnic University specifically because of its strong cybersecurity program. Once on campus, I was immediately on the lookout for opportunities to engage with other students and professors in the field. That’s when I discovered CSAW in the fall of 2004. Vikram Padman, a former research technology specialist at Polytech and now a Cyber Security Systems engineer for Lockheed Martin, had set up a stand in the hallway recruiting participants for the contests. I’ve always thrived on competition—in high school I competed in football, wrestling, track, and baseball, and I had that same adversarial, competitive nature when it came to technology. I was eager to dive right into CSAW, and that’s really what attracted me to cybersecurity in the first place.
CSAW provided the perfect vehicle for experimentation in an environment that reflected real-world problems. The reason these contests have such staying power in the community, and why employers respect them is that they genuinely mirror the challenges cybersecurity professionals face daily. Unlike coursework, which students often dismiss as theoretical or outdated, CTF competitions feel immediately relevant and practical.
CyberByte: So now we know why you both “dived in,” the question becomes, what keeps you coming back each year?
Tsoutsos: I would say the vibrant community and the continuous innovation within the field are what keeps me coming back. CSAW is more than just a competition; it is a forum for exchanging ideas, networking with professionals, and staying updated on the latest advancements in cybersecurity. The ESC competition (for which Tsoutsos now serves as global lead) in particular, offers a unique platform to contribute to cutting-edge research that has real-world implications.
Guido: CSAW was very special to me during college. It was something I felt a sense of ownership over and represented one of my earliest experiences with entrepreneurial activity. What keeps me coming back is simply that it’s fun, and I enjoy seeing others succeed. I experience a sense of vicarious fulfillment watching students engage with the competition. You can really feel the drive, especially at the finals event. Everyone there has worked hard to earn their place. They’re passionate about the field, and those are the people I want to be around and support. I see my younger self in them.
My participation has evolved significantly. After competing as a student, I began running the CTF competition—at one point, in 2008, even hosting it from my apartment. After graduation, I became an adjunct faculty member at Polytechnic, teaching penetration testing and application security courses while mentoring students running competitions. I also played matchmaker with sponsors, connecting the largest firms in New York City with this event to help them find new talent—which further expanded opportunities for students.
About five years later, I created THREADS, a research conference showcasing both academic research and industry presentations alongside CSAW. We ran it for three years (2012-2014), with each event focusing on a different theme. When THREADS ran its course, I contributed to the CSAW Summer Program for High School Women by delivering the opening lecture and developing a short course.
Next up, In 2015 and 2016, I helped to shape the CSAW Policy Competition. We challenged students to explore innovative solutions, like national bug bounty programs and present workable proposals to industry experts. In the last few years, as Trail of Bits grew, my involvement shifted to contributing challenges for the Capture the Flag competition. We developed real-world challenges based on the PlayStation 3 hack and created Windows-based challenges— something rare in CTF competitions but crucial for comprehensive security education. In recent years, I’ve returned to CSAW to give keynote presentations on emerging technologies and industry trends.
CyberByte: Dr. Tsoutsos, CSAW ‘24 also marks 18 years of ESC competitions at CSAW. As someone who has been involved for more than a decade, how has the nature of the challenge changed since you first became involved?
Tsoutsos: ESC has evolved significantly. The challenges have become more complex and now address a wider range of real-world issues. The contest has also embraced emerging technologies and methodologies, making it more relevant and impactful. Solutions proposed by ESC participants are aligned with innovative cybersecurity practices and have the potential to influence real-world impacts.
CyberByte: In recent years, ESC has been adopted by two other CSAW sites—Europe and India. Is there any interaction between the leaders of these other sites and your team in Delaware?
Tsoutsos: Yes, there is considerable interaction between the local leaders of the other CSAW sites and our team at the University of Delaware. We regularly collaborate to ensure the consistency and quality of the challenges across all sites. This collaboration also allows us to share insights and best practices, ultimately enriching the experience for all participants.
CyberByte: Mr. Guido, other than faculty, you are one of the few people who was there when CSAW began. Could you imagine then what this competition would grow into? And what is the most important change you have seen in the event?
Guido: I believe CSAW fundamentally changed when we shifted from local to global scope. Before that transformation, CSAW was effectively a recruiting drive to get people to join our security lab at Polytechnic University. The first year I participated, we faced an uphill battle convincing even our fellow students that cybersecurity was worth caring about. Once we opened CSAW to people around the United States and around the globe, that decision transformed everything. Today, people are banging down the door to participate and gain recognition for their work.
What’s particularly gratifying is seeing how the industry recognition has grown. Now, CSAW attracts sponsorship and participation from major technology companies, government agencies, and security firms that all recognize its value in identifying and nurturing talent. NYU Tandon has become a significant player in this field, with CSAW as its flagship event.
CyberByte: Since your CSAW days, Mr. Guido, you have gone on to found your own company, Trail of Bits, and to become an important voice in cybersecurity. Do you think your CSAW experience helped you prepare for the challenges you have faced in these posts?
Guido: What CSAW did was transform my scope of operation from local to global. I still meet people around the world who tell me they know me because they participated in a CSAW CTF competition I ran 20 years ago—this happened just two weeks ago with someone who works at SpaceX.
CSAW provided an environment with just enough challenge to match my skill level at 19. It offered significant opportunities for success, with a limited downside if things didn’t go perfectly. This created a perfect stretch opportunity where I could grow my abilities. The technical and organizational skills I developed through CSAW directly translated to founding Trail of Bits in 2012. What connects these endeavors is a commitment to pragmatic security and education. Trail of Bits isn’t just a consulting firm—we’re an educational venture at heart. (Note that the company released a Capture the Flag Field Guide in 2014 providing
advice for would-be competitors, which can be found at https://blog.trailofbits. com/2014/05/20/trail-of-bits-releasescapture-the-flag-field-guide/).
We apply cutting-edge research to solve real-world security problems, showing others how to do the same.
Both CSAW and Trail of Bits operate on the principle that deep technical understanding is essential to effective security work, and that practical, hands-on experience is the surest path to developing that understanding.
CyberByte: Dr. Tsoutsos, you were last featured in CyberByte back in 2020 and were quoted as saying, “I immediately understood that CSAW was much more than a student competition: it was a forum to talk about cybersecurity, a unique opportunity to meet peers and area experts, and a driver for state-of-the-art research.” Do you believe this description still holds true today? And, what types of research do you see coming out of these competitions?
Tsoutsos: Absolutely, I believe this description still holds true today. CSAW continues to be a dynamic platform that fosters discussion, collaboration, and innovation in cybersecurity. The research coming out of these competitions often pushes the boundaries of what is possible, ranging from advanced threat detection methods to secure embedded system designs. The forum remains a critical driver for state-of-the-art research and a breeding ground for the next generation of cybersecurity experts.
CyberByte: Mr. Guido, you have been quoted as saying, “CSAW played a large part in how I came to love cybersecurity, and I’m glad it still does so for many students.” What about the competition stimulated this connection to the discipline that has become your life’s work?
Guido: Before CSAW and Polytechnic University, I was swimming against the current. My high school years were marked by a fundamental disconnect—I was developing technical skills that weren’t recognized or supported by the educational system around me. I pushed technical boundaries out of necessity and curiosity. I discovered vulnerabilities in my
school’s network, but faced punishment rather than mentorship. The school banned me from using computers and even prevented me from writing for the school newspaper because the club met in the computer lab. I responded by creating my own website and independent student newspaper—finding a way forward when conventional paths were blocked.
CSAW represented a complete reversal of this dynamic. The competition didn’t just tolerate my curiosity, but rewarded it. It was revolutionary to me that my skills were valuable, not problematic. I didn’t win first place in my first CSAW CTF—I came in second. But that outcome was actually perfect. It showed me exactly where my knowledge gaps were and gave me a
clear roadmap for improvement. I could see precisely what I needed to learn next, which was exactly what I’d been searching for.
In an era where cybersecurity education is now widespread, CSAW continues to set the bar higher than any classroom could. It provides a proving ground where ambitious students can test their limits, connect with industry professionals, and chart their path to excellence. CSAW isn’t just a competition—it’s a launchpad for careers, a forge for technical skills, and a community that recognizes and nurtures talent. Twenty years later, that remains its greatest gift to the field and to the students who will define its future.
CSAW through the years with Dan and Nektarios
CCS NEWS
DOE Funds New Electric Power Cybersecurity Center at NYU
NYU will soon be home to a new federally funded center dedicated to the protection of America’s electric power infrastructure. The new center will be one of several regional cybersecurity hubs established by the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) to promote and support innovative research, and to train the energy workforce in cybersecurity skills.
According to an announcement from CESER, the NYU team will lead a project called “Innovations in Securing the Power Grid by Integrated Research and Education” or INSPIRE. The research team will “focus on addressing gaps in cybersecurity that arise from integrating components into the electric grid, such as electric vehicle charging infrastructure and distributed energy resources.” The team is charged with developing an anomaly detection system that “can be used on the grid and its distributed assets to monitor for malicious cyber activities in real-time.”
In announcing NYU’s addition to the project, Puesh M. Kumar, Director of CESER, observed,“Universities are pivotal partners to help us build a more secure and resilient energy sector. I am thrilled that NYU will be joining the network of university-based cybersecurity centers to help tackle the growing cyber threats to U.S. energy systems.” New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also praised the initiative, adding, “Our energy sector is a target for cyber actors from around the world.The work NYU will do is critical to ensuring that advancements in the electric grid are done with a cyber workforce aware of and able to address cyber threats. I look forward to seeing the work done by NYU in this important project.”
For more information about the project, go to https://www.energy.gov/ceser/articles/nyuselected-university-based-cybersecurityresearch-and-training
NYU CCS and Abu Dhabi Researchers Identify Significant Security Risks in Labs-on-chips Labs-on-chips is an exciting new medical technology that enables technicians to perform multiple laboratory tests on tiny fluid samples, such as blood droplets. Unfortunately, malicious parties are already finding ways to tamper with these devices and affect their functionality. In a study published last fall in Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from CCS and NYU Abu Dhabi reported that in one type of these devices, called flow-based microfluidic biochips (FMBs), the microscopic valves that control the fluid flow can be subtly altered during manufacturing. Such tampering affects a critical parameter for the integrated microfluidic circuitry of the device.
An Illustration showing the FMB manufacturing process. At the manufacturing stage, attackers with access to materials could compromise FMBs through chemical tampering methods, such as altered curing ratios, harmful chemical doping, or deliberate material degradation. From “BioTrojans: Viscoelastic microvalve-based attacks in flow-based microfluidic biochips and their countermeasures”
According to an NYU Research story about the investigation, the team found that “stealthy tampering can be achieved by introducing harmful chemicals or by altering the associated chemical composition, which significantly changes the energetics of the microvalve deformation. The researchers, who include lead author Navajit Singh Baban, a CCS postdoctoral associate, named these bad valves “BioTrojans,” and cautioned that they “look identical to normal valves but behave very differently under stress.” As microfluidic biochips are increasingly used in critical applications, such as disease diagnosis, DNA analysis, drug discovery, and biomedical research, the presence of these BioTrojans could have devastating consequences. Ramesh Karri, the senior author of the study and chair of NYU Tandon’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, adds, “This isn’t just about a malfunctioning medical device. It’s about the potential for malicious actors to intentionally sabotage these critical tools in ways that are very difficult to detect.”
The research team proposed several solutions in their Scientific Reports article, including recommending design modifications to make valves more resilient, and a novel authentication method using fluorescent dyes to detect tampered components.
To learn more about the study, read the NYU Research story at https://engineering.nyu.edu/ news/nyu-tandon-researchers-uncover-security-flaw-miniature-medical-labs or download the Scientific Reports article “BioTrojans: Viscoelastic microvalve-based attacks in flow-based microfluidic biochips and their countermeasures,” published in August 2024, at https://www. nature.com/articles/s41598-024-70703-0
THROUGH THE NYU MS-CR MASTER’S PROGRAM, VETS CONTINUE
TO SERVE AND PROTECT
For many students in the Master of Science in Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy (MS-CRS) program, addressing tomorrow’s cyber challenges is just a continuation of a commitment to service that began in the U.S. Armed Forces. According to an NYU News story, written by Addison Dunlap and posted November 12, 2024, the master’s degree program, which is offered jointly by NYU’s School of Law and NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, is proving appealing to veterans. At the time the article was published, the program’s student cohort included 21 former servicemen and women, and throughout it’s five-year history, its offerings have been a strong draw for veterans.
The synergism between the trained corps of the service people and the master’s degree program offers a win-win for both groups. The veterans get to put their critical thinking and rapid response skills to use against new threats to the country, while the school gets what Randal Milch, faculty director of the program and co-director of NYU’s Center for Cybersecurity, calls, “hard-earned practical experience—usually gained in stressful situations—and a can-do approach to our discussions of cybersecurity policy.” Erin O’Brien, executive director of NYU Law’s Institute for Executive Education, adds, “Members of the military are uniquely positioned to lead in an era when AI is reshaping the digital landscape. Professionals need more than just coding expertise or legal knowledge in isolation—they need the strategic vision to anticipate threats, the technical acumen to implement solutions, and the regulatory understanding to ensure responsible innovation.”
While the factors that draw veterans to the program likely vary from person to person, one reason for its popularity could be the school’s willingness to go the extra mile for this cohort. NYU participates in Yellow Ribbon, a scholarship program that helps students supplement their Post 9/11 GI Bill tuition benefits. In addition, Tyler Hornbeck, a current student in the program who was a cyber operations specialist in the U.S. Army and is now an enterprise services engineer at Tanium Inc, told NYU News that the University also assists veterans in “filling out the potentially confusing paperwork of utilizing veterans benefits, and having tons of veteran resources to answer questions and foster a robust veteran community.”
To learn more about the veteran presence in MS CRS, read the NYU News article at https://www.nyu.edu/about/newspublications/news/2024/november/ former-us-veterans-drawn-to-combattingcyber-threats-.html
Forbes Names NYU CS4CS as a Top Summer Option for High School Students
NYU Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS), a three-week summer cybersecurity program for high school students, was named a “top option” by Forbes magazine for “tech focused summer programs.” The program, offered tuition-free with support from The Depository Trust & Clearing Company (DTCC), is run through the university’s Center for K12 STEM Education, and offers hands-on instruction in digital forensics, steganography, hacking, and cryptography.
No prior experience in computer science is required, and it particularly aims to empower underrepresented populations in cybersecurity. This year’s program will run from July 1 to August 9, and is open to 9th through 11th graders from NYC and neighboring cities.
The Forbes article can be found at https://www.forbes.com/sites/ kristenmoon/2024/12/09/top-10-techfocused-summer-programs-for-highschool-students-in-2025/
CENTER FOR CYBERSECURITY WELCOMES US CYBER COMMANDER TO TANDON
In January, NYU Tandon was honored to host General Timothy D. Haugh, 4th Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and the 19th Director of the National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service, for a day of discussions on such crucial issues as cyber workforce development and potential research partnerships.
During his time on the Tandon campus, General Haugh, whose academic background includes three master’s degrees in Telecommunications, Joint Information Operations, and National Resource Strategy, met with NYU Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and NYU Tandon Executive Dean Juan J. de Pablo, and other members of the school’s senior leadership. Participants focused on aligning NSA’s objectives with NYU Tandon’s strengths in Al security, cybersecurity, and
infrastructure defense, and identifying how NSA can leverage NYU’s expertise and resources. Discussion topics included potential workforce development initiatives, including capstone projects and student competitions, which could offer opportunities for mentorship, and the development of practical solutions to real-world challenges.
Afterwards, General Haugh spent time with CCS faculty, who had a chance to showcase their latest research and explore potential collaborations, as well as with students in the Scholarships for Service CyberCorps and ROTC.
Among the faculty who met with General Haugh were Justin Cappos (2nd from l), Senior Director of CCS Joel Caminer (4th from l), Ramesh Karri (Center), and to his right, Edward Amoroso, Nikhil Gupta, CCS co-director Damon McCoy, along with some of the veterans in attendance.
NYU Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and NYu Tandon Executive Dean Juan de Pablo (l) and General Haugh.
AWARDS AND HONORS
CYBER FELLOWS COLLECT SPECIAL RECOGNITIONS
Several current and past Cyber Fellows have distinguished themselves in recent months.
Sasha LaPommeray, who graduated in 2024, and Ankhi Afroz Howlader, who completed her master’s degree in 2022, have been selected for the third cohort of the U.S. Digital Corps (USDC). This initiative of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is designed to give early-career technologists the chance to work on some of the nation’s most pressing challenges, and to introduce them to careers in public service. LaPommeray will spend her two years as a cyber specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Howlader will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In an NYU News article released in late December, Abhijit Chitnis, the director of Tandon’s cybersecurity master’s program stated,“I am proud of both Sasha and Ankhi for being selected to the latest cohort of the U.S. Digital Corps. As empowered technology leaders, they will now have a chance to apply their skills to public service for solving the most challenging issues. I am sure they will make NYU and Tandon proud as they start their careers and continue to shine.”
The two-year fellowships are highly competitive, with thousands of applicants each year vying for available spots. And, while there is no commitment to continue working in the public sector after the fellowship is completed, 95 percent of the fellows in the program’s first cohort chose to remain. Thus, according to GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan Fully, “Growing the U.S. Digital Corps is crucial to driving innovation across the federal government, especially as emerging technologies like AI evolve.”
You can read more about the program in the NYU News article, which also includes a Q and A with LaPommeray, at https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/nyu-tandon-alumni-earn-importantfederal-fellowships
Kimberly Milner, a current M.S. Cybersecurity student, has won the inaugural Cyber Range Challenge. Hosted by SecureAcademy, the virtual event is designed to provide cybersecurity students and enthusiasts with real-world, hands-on experience competing in Red Team-Blue Team, CTF-style cyber ranges. Participants from 11 countries and 12 academic institutions took part in the event, which challenged them to conduct a thorough vulnerability assessment of an exposed server to aid a company in identifying potential security risks, and then delve into specific vulnerabilities. The competition featured two sessions, each producing a winner.
When interviewed for a blog post on the SecureAcademy website, Milner observed that she “enjoyed participating in Check Point’s SecureAcademy Cyber Range challenge, as the platform provided a secure environment to practice essential skills for mitigating security vulnerabilities in systems.” To read more about the competition, go to https://blog. checkpoint.com/infinity-global-services/a-milestone-in-hands-on-cyber-security-trainingsecureacademys-first-global-cyber-range-challenge/?utm_source=sociabbleapp&utm_ medium=social&utm_campaign=none&utm_term=2XJC2SrVMkSg&socid=2XJC2SrVMkSg
CONGRATULATIONS TO CCS BEST PAPER HONOREES
Over the past few months, several CCS faculty and students have been recognized at conferences for outstanding papers. These include:
“Orion: A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Framework for Deep Learning.” Named Best Paper at the 2025 ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS). The lead author on the paper is Austin Ebel, a Ph.D. student, and his collaborators are Karthik Garimella, and his advisor, Brandon Reagen. Read the paper at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.03470v3
“Stoking the Flames: Understanding Escalation in an Online Harassment Community.” Received an Honorable Mention at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW1). The lead author of the paper is Kejsi Take, a Ph.D. graduate in 2024 and now a security engineer at Meta. Her collaborators on the project were Victoria Zhong, Chris Geeng, Emmi Bevensee, Damon McCoy, and Rachel Greenstadt. Read the paper at https://doi. org/10.1145/3641015
“Rethinking Trust in Forge-Based Git Security,” Won a Distinguished Paper Award at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2025. The lead author on the paper is Aditya Sirirsh A Yelgundhalli, then a Ph.D. student. His collaborators are Ph.D. student Patrick Zielinski, Professor Reza Curtmola, from New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Tandon Professor Justin Cappos.
