My research interests broadly lie in the area of mobile computing and mobile security. Mobile systems, such as smartphones, wearables (e.g., smartwatches, AR/VR headsets), and IoT devices, have come a long way from being just a method of communication to sophisticated sensing devices that monitor and control several aspects of our lives. While these devices’ advanced computing and sensing capabilities enable several valuable applications, they also make them attractive targets for attackers, opening doors to several threats to users’ security and privacy.
My research combines system design, signal processing, computer vision, and machine learning methods to investigate these threats and then proposes methods for securing modern mobile and IoT devices and protecting users’ privacy. I envision developing practical solutions to the security limitations of existing systems and emerging computing platforms. My goal is to also investigate the impact of these limitations on developers and end users and propose secure systems that address the challenges of these new platforms.
I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University, where I was advised by Dr. Z. Berkay Celik and was a part of the PurSec Lab. My dissertation focused on leveraging multimodal sensing to improve the security and privacy of mobile and IoT systems.
Prospective Students
[Spring/Fall 24] I’m looking for motivated Ph.D. students who are interested in working on security and privacy systems. If you are interested, please reach out to me through email.
Updates
[Aug 2023] Presented our work on location inference from spatial maps on AR/VR devices at USENIX Security 2023!
[Nov 2022] Our work on secure group pairing of heterogeneous IoT devices is accepted to IEEE S&P 2023!
[Oct 2022] Our paper about evasion attacks on physical event verification systems to appear in NDSS 2023!
[June 2021] Received Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship Award 2021-2022!
[Mar 2021] Our paper about side-channel attacks on stylus pencils is accepted to IMWUT-UbiComp 2021!
[Sep 2020] Our work on secure face liveness detection on commodity smartphones to appear in MobiCom 2020!
Selected Publications
LocIn: Inferring Semantic Location from Spatial Maps in Mixed Reality Habiba Farrukh, Reham Mohamed, Aniket Nare, Antonio Bianchi, Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium 2023 [Paper]
One Key to Rule Them All: Secure Group Pairing for Heterogeneous IoT Devices Habiba Farrukh*, Muslum Ozgur Ozmen*, Faik Kerem Ors, Z. Berkay Celik
IEEE Security and Privacy (S&P '23) [Paper]
iStelan: Disclosing Sensitive User Information by Mobile Magnetometer from Finger Touches
Reham Mohamed, Habiba Farrukh, He Wang, Yidong Lu, Z. Berkay Celik
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETS '23) [Paper]
Evasion Attacks on Smart Home Physical Event Verification and Defenses
Muslum Ozgur Ozmen, Ruoyu Song, Habiba Farrukh, Z. Berkay Celik
ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS '23) [Paper]
SARA: Secure Android Remote Authorization
Abdullah Imran, Habiba Farrukh, Muhammad Ibrahim, Z. Berkay Celik, Antonio Bianchi
USENIX Security Symposium 2022 [Paper]
S3: Side-Channel Attack on Stylus Pencils through Sensors Habiba Farrukh, Tinghan Yang, Hanwen Xu, Yuxuan Yin, He Wang, Z. Berkay Celik
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT/UbiComp '21) [Paper]
FaceRevelio: A Face Liveness Detection System for Smartphones with a Single Front Camera Habiba Farrukh, Reham Mohamed Aburas, Siyuan Cao, He Wang
ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom '20) [Paper], [Video], [Slides]
