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Research and Activities

The Center for Cybersecurity at Loyola University Chicago is actively engaged in other partners, including government and industry, in various cybersecurity activities. If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact us.

Research

The cybersecurity program is actively involved in obtaining external research funding, publishing in international journals and conferences, and presenting the latest research in cybersecurity. For research activities in the Department of Computer Science, click here.

External Funding

  • CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: CyberRamblers Bolster National Security, National Science Foundation, $3,803,006, January 2024 – December 2028.
  • Slowing the Spread of Online Misinformation through Inoculation, Dr. Scholl Foundation, $50,000, November 2023 – November 2024.
  • Education DCL: EAGER: Developing Experiential Cybersecurity and Privacy Training for AI Practitioners, National Science Foundation, $299,095, November 2023 – October 2025.
  • Loyola University Chicago Experiential Cybersecurity Scholarship Program, Motorola Solutions Foundation, August 16, 2023 – May 15, 2024.
  • Understanding the Origin and Spread of Online Misinformation, Dr. Scholl Foundation, October 24, 2022 – December 31, 2023.
  • Taming Container Privileges using Userland OS Guests, NCAE-C in Cybersecurity Education Innovation, September 16, 2022 – September 15, 2024.
  • Interdisciplinary Student Projects in Cybersecurity at Loyola University Chicago: Spreading Misinformation on Social Media and its Consequences for Trust in Government and Cybersecurity. Scholl Foundation, November 15, 2021. (interdisciplinary work involving computer science, cybersecurity, criminal justice and criminology, psychology, and political science)
  • Loyola University Chicago Experiential Cybersecurity Scholarship Program. Motorola Solutions Foundation, August 5, 2021 – May 5, 2022.
  • Teaching Basic Cybersecurity to All. U.S. Department of Defense, September 13, 2021 – December 31, 2022.
  • Realistic and Practical Website Fingerprinting. NSA and NCAE, September 15, 2021 – December 31, 2024.
  • CDSE: Collaborative: Cyber Infrastructure to Enable Computer Vision Applications at the Edge Using Automated Contextual Analysis. National Science Foundation, $209,624, September 1, 2021 - August 31, 2024 (collaborative work with Purdue University)
  • Collaborative Research: OAC Core: Advancing Low-Power Computer Vision at the Edge. National Science Foundation, $250,000, July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2024 (collaborative work with Purdue University)
  • Synthetic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) generated from computed tomography (CT) scans using deep-learning artificial intelligence models for high-dose-rate (HDR) prostate brachytherapy, Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center (CBCC), 2020. (in collaboration with Medical School)
  • SaTC: EDU: Collaborative: Personalized Cybersecurity Education and Training. National Science Foundation, $493,524, July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2024 (collaborative work with Oklahoma State University)

 

Recent Cybersecurity Publications

  • E. Abdukhamidov, M. Abuhamad, G. K. Thiruvathukal, H. Kim and T. Abuhmed, "SingleADV: Single-Class Target-Specific Attack against Interpretable Deep Learning Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2024. doi: 10.1109/TIFS.2024.3407652
  • Mohsen Ali Alawami, Tamer Abuhmed, Mohammed Abuhamad, Hyoungshick Kim. "MotionID: Towards practical behavioral biometrics-based implicit user authentication on smartphones",
    Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Volume 101, 2024.
  • Shelia Kennison, Kameryn Fritz, M. Andrea Hurtado Morales, and Eric Chan-Tin. "Emoji use in Social Media Posts: Relationships with Personality Traits and Word Usage", Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 15, February 2024, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1343022.
  • Eldor Abdukhamidov, Mohammed Abuhamad, Simon S. Woo, Eric Chan-Tin, and Tamer Abuhmed. "Hardening Interpretable Deep Learning Systems: Investigating Adversarial Threats and Defenses", IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2023.
  • Muhammad Khan, Rachel Gordon, Nimra Khan, Madeline Moran, Mohammed Abuhamad, Loretta Stalans, Jeffrey Huntsinger, Jennifer Forestal and Eric Chan-Tin. "Identification and Analysis of the Spread of {Mis}information on Social Media", CSoNet, December 2023.
  • Yong Shao, Kenneth Hernandez, Kia Yang, Eric Chan-Tin and Mohammed Abuhamad. "Lightweight and Effective Website Fingerprinting over Encrypted DNS", IEEE Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC), May 2023.
  • Daisy Reyes, Eno Dynowski, Taryn Chovan, John Mikos, Eric Chan-Tin, Mohammed Abuhamad and Shelia Kennison. "WebTracker: Real Webbrowsing Behaviors", IEEE Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC), May 2023.
  • Qirui Sun, Mohammed Abuhamad, Eldor Abdukhamidov, Eric Chan-Tin, Tamer Abuhmed. "MLxPack: Investigating the Effects of Packers on ML-based Malware Detection Systems Using Static and Dynamic Traits", Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Cybersecurity and Social Sciences (CySSS), May 2022.
  • Eric Chan-Tin, Loretta Stalans, Spencer Johnston, Daisy Reyes, and Shelia Kennison. "Predicting Phishing Victimization: Roles of Protective and Vulnerable Strategies and Decision-Making Styles", ACM Workshop on Scalable Network Traffic Analytics (SNTA), 2022.
  • Eldor Abdukhamidov, Mohammed Abuhamad, Firuz Juraev, Eric Chan-Tin, and Tamer Abuhmed. "AdvEdge: Optimizing Adversarial Perturbations against Interpretable Deep Learning", in CSoNet 2021.
  • Anne Wagner, Anna Bakas, Shelia Kennison, and Eric Chan-Tin. A Comparison of SONA and MTurk for Cybersecurity Surveys", in European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference (EICC), November 10–11, 2021, Virtual Event, Romania. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3487405.3487657
  • Jack West, Kyuin Lee, Suman Banerjee, Younghyun Kim, George K. Thiruvathukal, Neil Klingensmith. "Moonshine: An Online Randomness Distiller for Zero-Involvement Authentication", ACM IPSN, 2021.
  • Anna Bakas, Anne Wagner, Spencer Johnston, Shelia Kennison, and Eric Chan-Tin. "Impact of Personality Types and Matching Messaging on Password Strength", EAI Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety, June, 2021. DOI: 10.4108/eai.1-6-2021.170012.
  • Sultan Alshamrani, Mohammed Abuhamad, Ahmed Abusnaina, Daehun Nyang and David Mohaisen. "Hate, Obscenity, and Insults: Measuring the Exposure of Children to Inappropriate Comments in YouTube", The International Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Social Media (SocialNLP - TheWebConf), 2021.
  • Mohammed Abuhamad, Ahmed Abusnaina, DaeHun Nyang, David Mohaisen. "Sensor-based Continuous Authentication of Smartphones’ Users Using Behavioral Biometrics", The IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J), 2021.
  • Weiqi Cui, Tao Chen, and Eric Chan-Tin. "More Realistic Website Fingerprinting Using Deep Learning", IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Singapore, 2020.
  • Shelia Kennison and Eric Chan-Tin. "Taking Risks with Cybersecurity: Using Knowledge and Personal Characteristics to Predict Self-Reported Cybersecurity Behaviors", Journal of Frontiers in Psychology, section Cognition, 2020.
  • Brook Abegaz, Eric Chan-Tin, Neil Klingensmith, George K. Thiruvathukal. "Addressing Rogue Vehicles by Integrating Computer Vision, Activity Monitoring, and Contextual Information", ACM AutoUI Work in Progress, Virtual Event, 2020.
  • Kyuin Lee, Neil Klingensmith, Dong He, Suman Banerjee, and Younghyun Banerjee. "ivPair: Context-Based Fast Intra-Vehicle Device Pairing for Secure Wireless Connectivity", WiSec '20: Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, 2020
  • Weiqi Cui, Jiangmin Yu, Yanmin Gong, Eric Chan-Tin. "Efficient, Effective, and Realistic Website Fingerprinting Mitigation", EAI Transactions on Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety, November 2019, DOI: 10.4108/eai.29-1-2019.161977.
  • Zongho Huang, Rui Hu, Richard Guo, Yanmin Gong, Eric Chan-Tin. "DP-ADMM: ADMM-based Distributed Learning with Differential Privacy", IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security, July 2019, DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2019.2931068.
  • Tao Chen, Weiqi Cui, and Eric Chan-Tin. "Measuring Tor Relay Popularity", Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm), Orlando, Florida, 2019.
  • Weiqi Cui, Tao Chen, Christian Fields, Julianna Chen, Luis Sierra. "Revisiting Assumptions for Website Fingerprinting Attacks", ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS), Auckland, New Zealand, 2019.

Projects

View our student and Center-related projects

Projects

 
  • Wifi security and privacy: use aircrack and airgeddon to crack wifi routers and use the pineapple to monitor wifi usage
  • Launch a campus-wide phishing "attack" using a Unicode domain that looks like the university page
  • Determine how much ad companies know about each user on Facebook
  • Survey of CTF challenges and puzzles
  • and more...

Clubs

Below describes Loyola Chicago's cybersecurity competition club. To view other computer science clubs, see student activities. 

7968

7968 sends teams to cybersecurity competitions, both offensive and defensive in nature, and both academic and recreational in purpose, to represent Loyola University Chicago. 7968 also provides training to students to enhance their offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as hosting other cybersecurity-related events. Learn more at 7968.org, or contact us to join.

Women In Cybersecurity LUC Student Chapter

Our mission is to have a profound and lasting impact on the Loyola community by fostering female inclusivity, inspiring future leaders, promoting career development, confidence, advocacy, service, and partnership.

The Center for Cybersecurity at Loyola University Chicago is actively engaged in other partners, including government and industry, in various cybersecurity activities. If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact us.

Research

The cybersecurity program is actively involved in obtaining external research funding, publishing in international journals and conferences, and presenting the latest research in cybersecurity. For research activities in the Department of Computer Science, click here.

Projects

View our student and Center-related projects

Clubs

Below describes Loyola Chicago's cybersecurity competition club. To view other computer science clubs, see student activities.