I am a Doctoral Researcher in the Information Security Group at University College London, advised by Prof. George Danezis and Dr. Emiliano De Cristofaro.

My research focuses on Machine Learning Robustness and AI Safety, while I also pursue projects on Distributed Systems, Trusted Hardware, Privacy-preserving Computations and Technical Market Manipulation.

I am currently working on deep neural networks and how they can be abused to launch mass surveillance campaigns on the Internet, as well as potential countermeasures to such practices. Moreover, I work on adversarial samples and their impact on deep neural networks deployed in production, while investigating novel techniques that improve the worst-case robustness of such deployments.

Besides these, I have also published research results on other topics usually on security, privacy, and systems design. Two recent projects are Snappy (i.e., a fast payment solution for slow permisionless blockchains) and my study on technical market manipulation (see Publications). Other papers include our high-assurance cryptographic hardware prototype which was the first trojan-resilient deployment that achieved performance similar to that of conventional hardware security modules used in production (Finalist at the CSAW 2018 competition). Our study on ultrasound tracking received wide-spread attention and is considered the seminal work in this area. With Petr Svenda, we created and maintain the first open-source cryptographic library for JavaCards.

In the past, I developed auditing tools for the Public Key Infrastructure of Deutsche Bank and participated in an international consortium studying large-scale security threats in telecommunication networks. Furthermore, I cooperated with the Computer Security Group of the University of California, Santa Barbara in several projects, including a detection system for evasive web-malware.

If you have any fun project ideas, feel free to drop me a line.

Vasilios Mavroudis

v.mavroudis at ucl.ac.uk
Computer Science Department
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Recent News

Feb 2019: I will attend the 3rd AI Safety Camp to work on Intelligent Agent side-effects and ML Robustness! Feb 2019: Stream of works on "Market manipulation as a security problem" accepted on Eurosec 2019 and the 27th Workshop on Security Protocols! Jan 2019: My interview at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum is now online! [Link] Jan 2019: I am a fellow in the ConceptionX commercialization and entrepreneurship program! Jan 2019: I completed a 5-course Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera! [Link] [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Nov 2018: I was awarded a grant from the generous Allan & Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust! [Link] Oct 2018: Our paper ''High-Assurance Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components'' is a finalist for the CSAW Europe Applied Research Award. [Link] Oct 2018: I'm quoted in ''Wired'' about our work on hardware trojans. [Link] Sep 2018: My interview on Süddeutsche Zeitung is online. [Link] Sep 2018: I am listed in the 10 out of 200 young scientists by Heidelberg Laureate Forum! [Link] Sep 2018: Our article on Javacard was published at Hackernoon! [Link] Aug 2018: Our "Cryptogame" session proposal has been accepted in Mozfest 2108. [Link] Aug 2018: Our "Cryptogame" project has been funded by the public engagement unit at UCL. [Link] July 2018: Received the Werner Romberg grant to attend the Heidelberg Laureate Forum! [Link] Jul 2018: Our write up on the JavaCard ecosystem was published by the Software Sustainability Institute and the Benthem's Gaze blog. [Link 1] [Link 2] Jun 2018: Thrilled to serve as a publications co-chair for the Privacy Enhancing Technologies symposium 2019. [Link] May 2018: Our preprint on verifiable data access is out. [Link] May 2018: Started my research visit at the systems security group in ETHz. [Link] Apr 2018: Cyber World Magazine features my article on the future of hardware-trojans and the security of chips in critical systems. [Link] Apr 2018: Presented our work on ultrasonic signals at Stanford security seminar. [Link] Apr 2018: More press coverage for our work on ultrasonic signals. [Link] Apr 2018: Presented with Giovanni Vigna (UCSB, Lastline) our work on the security of ultrasonic communications at RSA Conference. [Link] Mar 2018: Our preprint on tracking technologies found in the retail spaces is out. [Link] Feb 2018: Completed our cryptography masterclass for year-11 students. [Link]

Publications

Peer-reviewed & Preprints

Market Manipulation as a Security Problem: The case of decentralized exchanges.
Mavroudis V., 26th International Workshop on Security Protocols, April 2019 (to appear)
Market Manipulation as a Security Problem: Attacks and Defenses
Mavroudis V., 12th European Workshop on Systems Security (EuroSec), March 2019 (to appear)
Snappy: Fast Blockchain Payments.
Mavroudis V., , Wuest K., Dhar A., Kostiainen K., Capkun S., Under submission. Feb 2019
Location, location, location: Revisiting modeling and exploitation for location-based side channel leakages.
Papagiannopoulos K., Andrikos C., Rassias G., Mavroudis V., Sonnino A., Lerman L., Chmielewski L., Batina L., Under Submission, Feb 2019
Towards Low-level Cryptographic Primitives for JavaCards.
Vasilios Mavroudis, Petr Svenda. Oct 2018
VAMS: Verifiable Auditing of Access to Confidential Data.
Alexander Hicks, Vasilios Mavroudis, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Meiklejohn, and Steven J. Murdoch. May 2018
Eavesdropping Whilst Youre Shopping: Balancing Personalisation and Privacy in Connected Retail Spaces [PDF]
Mavroudis V., Veale M. (Equal Contribution), PETRAS/IoTUK/IET Living in the IoT Conference, 2018.
A Touch of Evil: High-Assurance Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components [PDF, ArXiv]
Mavroudis V., Cerulli A., Svenda P., Cvrcek D., Klinec D., Danezis G., 24th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2017.
CSAW 2018 Applied Research Competition Finalist.
On the Privacy and Security of the Ultrasound Tracking Ecosystem [PDF]
Mavroudis V., Hao S., Fratantonio Y., Maggi F., Kruegel C., Vigna G., Proceedings of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, 2017
Visual Analytics for Enhancing Supervised Attack Attribution in Mobile Networks [PDF]
Papadopoulos S., Mavroudis V., Drosou A., Tzovaras D., 29th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences, 2014
Development of Realtime Mobile Security Monitoring System
Mavroudis V., Mavridis I., 2nd Conference on Information Technology Applications and Administration Strategies, 2010.
Use and Effective Application of Free and Open Source Software in Education
Mavroudis V., Mouratis S., 4th National Conference of Information Technology Educators, 2010.

Technical Reports

The Ultrasound Tracking Ecosystem.
Vasilios Mavroudis, Shuang Hao, Yanick Fratantonio, Federico Maggi, Giovanni Vigna, and Christopher Kruegel. November 2016
Correlation Analysis and Abnormal Event Detection Module.
EU FP7 Project: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem
Anomaly detection based on real-time exploitation of billing systems.
EU FP7 Project: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem
Anomaly detection within femtocell architectures.
EU FP7 Project: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem
Network information sources.
EU FP7 Project: Enhanced Network Security for Seamless Service Provisioning in the Smart Mobile Ecosystem

Theses

Crux: Privacy-preserving Statistics for Tor, Information Security Group, University College London, UK, 2015.
Supervisor: George Danezis
Cassiopeia: Real-time mobile security monitoring system, Dept. of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, Greece, 2012.
Supervisor: Ioannis Mavridis

Media

Talks

Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components, RISE Annual Conference, London, UK, 14 November 2018. [Link] A touch of Evil: Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components (poster), CSAW 2018, Valence, France, 9 November 2018. Cryptogame: Pirates & Guardians of the Galaxy, London, UK, 27 October 2018. [Link] High-Assurance Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components. Stanford Security Seminar, Palo Alto, US, 19 April 2018. [Link] The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Ultrasonic Communications Ecosystem. RSA Conference 2018, San Fransisco US, 17 April 2018. [Link] A witch-hunt for trojans in our chips. London Enterprise Tech Meetup, London, UK, 12 February 2018. [Link] Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components. Cryptacus Workshop, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 16-18 November 2017. [Link] Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components. IMDEA Software Inst., Madrid, Spain, 28 Sept 2017. [Link] Towards Trojan-tolerant Cryptographic Hardware. ZISC Seminar ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, 20 Sept 2017. [Link] OpenCrypto: Unchaining the JavaCard Ecosystem. Blackhat US, Las Vegas, US, 22-27 July 2017. [Link] Trojan-tolerant Hardware & Supply Chain Security in Practice. Defcon 25, Las Vegas, US, 27-30 July 2017. [Link] On the Privacy & Security of the Ultrasound Tracking Ecosystem. Computer Laboratory Security Seminar, Cambridge, UK, 21 February 2017. [Link] Talking Behind Your Back: On the Privacy & Security of the Ultrasound Tracking Ecosystem. Mozilla International Privacy Day, London, UK, 28 Jan 2017. [Link] Talking Behind Your Back: On the Privacy & Security of the Ultrasound Ecosystem. Information Security Seminar, UCL, London, UK, 19 January 2017. [Link] Talking Behind Your Back: Tough Love for the Ugly Ultrasound Tracking Ecosystem. Chaos Communication Congress, Hamburg, Germany, 27-30 Dec. 2016. [Link] Cross-device Tracking Canaries. Data Transparency Lab Conference 2016, New York, US, 17-19 Nov 2017. [Link] Talking Behind Your Back: Attacks and Countermeasures of Ultrasonic Cross-device Tracking. Blackhat Europe, London, UK, 3–4 November 2016. [Link][Slides] Cassiopeia: Mobile security monitoring. FOSS conference 2011, Greece.

Academic Service & Teaching

Publications co-chair for the Privacy Enhancing Technologies symposium 2019. Co-organizing the Hacking Seminars at UCL (September 2017-present). Organizing the Information Security Seminars at UCL (January 2017-present). External Reviewer for Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (April 2017-present). Teaching Assistant for Computer Security I module, Information Security MSc (Winter term 2017-2018). Guest Lecture on Acedemic Research, In2ScienceUK Organization (August 2017). Teaching Assistant for Computer Security II module, Information Security MSc (Spring term 2016-2017).