Computer Systems Security Laboratory (CSSL), Department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA), Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

Mission

At CSSL, we are interested in computer systems security research. We seek to build practical computer systems with sound security guarantees. We work in a broad spectrum of areas spanning security and privacy in computer systems. Over the years, our research projects have considered security issues in a broad spectrum of computer systems, from cloud platforms through Web browsers to mobile devices. Our projects usually draw on ideas and methods developed in a variety of areas, such as applied cryptography, program analysis, formal methods, machine intelligence, and trusted hardware.

Currently, we are actively working on security and privacy projects in modern cloud computing platforms and cyber-physical systems.

Check out our recent papers in CCS'20 on drone privacy, FSE'20 on SGX enclave programming, ACM TACO on a defense against page-based side channel attacks in SGX enclaves, and AAAI'20 on ML model privacy.

People

Vinod Ganapathy
Associate Professor, CSA
Convenor, CSSL

CSSL member Topic of investigation

A. Akash
M.Tech. student
At CSSL: May 2020 onwards Serverless computing

Rounak Agarwal
M.Tech. (Research) student
At CSSL: January 2018 onwards Securing mobile payment schemes

Rakesh Rajan Beck
M.Tech. (Research) student
At CSSL: January 2019 onwards Drones and privacy

Chinmay Gameti
M.Tech. (Research) student
At CSSL: January 2020 onwards Security for robotics platforms

Arun Joseph
Ph.D. student
At CSSL: July 2018 onwards Security in permissioned blockchains

Jaya Jyothiswaroop Kotni
Project Assistant
At CSSL: August 2019 onwards
Jointly with CSL Serverless computing

Ajay Ashok Nayak
M.Tech. (Research) student
At CSSL: January 2019 onwards GPUs and hardware-based security

Kripa Shanker
Ph.D. student
At CSSL: January 2018 onwards Security in modern cloud platforms

C. Suraj
Project Assistant
At CSSL: September 2020 onwards Drones and privacy

Nikita Yadav
Ph.D. student
At CSSL: August 2020 onwards
Previously, M.Tech., 2018-2020 Security in permissioned blockchains

Publications

For a full list of publications, please see Vinod Ganapathy's list of papers. The following is a list of papers published since CSSL was created in mid-2017.

Topics ― SEC: Security; PRIV: Privacy; SWE: Software Engineering & Analysis; MOB: Mobile Systems; CLD: Cloud Computing; WEB: Web Platforms; SYS: Computer Systems & Architecture; AI/ML: Machine Intelligence;
taco'21 SEC SYS	SG^XL: Security and Performance for Enclaves using Large Pages Sujay Yadalam, Vinod Ganapathy, and Arkaprava Basu, ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization, Volume-TBD(Issue-TBD), Month-TBD 2021, Article-TBD.
ccs'20 PRIV MOB SYS	Privaros: A Framework for Privacy-Compliant Delivery Drones Rakesh Rajan Beck, Abhishek Vijeev, and Vinod Ganapathy, Proceedings of CCS'20, the 27^th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security Virtual event (originally: Orlando, Florida, USA), November 2020.
fse'20 SEC SWE CLD	An Evaluation of Methods to Port Legacy Code to SGX Enclaves Kripa Shanker, Arun Joseph, and Vinod Ganapathy, Proceedings of ESEC/FSE'20, the 28^th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering Virtual event (originally: Sacramento, California, USA), November 2020.
M.Tech. PRIV AI/ML	Model Extraction and Active Learning Aditya Shukla, Masters Thesis for the M.Tech. by Research Degree Thesis defended May 2020.
aaai'20 PRIV AI/ML	ActiveThief: Model Extraction using Active Learning and Unannotated Public Data Soham Pal, Yash Gupta, Aditya Shukla, Aditya Kanade, Shirish Shevade, and Vinod Ganapathy, Proceedings of AAAI'20, the 34^th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence New York, New York, USA, February 2020.
M.Tech. SWE AI/ML	Experiences in Using Reinforcement Learning for Directed Fuzzing Subhendu Malakar, Masters Thesis for the M.Tech. by Research Degree Thesis defended January 2020.
HotMobile'19 PRIV MOB SYS	Regulating Drones in Restricted Spaces Abhishek Vijeev, Vinod Ganapathy, and Chiranjib Bhattacharyya, Proceedings of HotMobile'19, the 20^th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications Santa Cruz, California, USA, February 2019.
codaspy'18 SEC SYS	Secure, Consistent, and High-Performance Memory Snapshotting Guilherme Cox, Zi Yan, Abhishek Bhattacharjee and Vinod Ganapathy, Proceedings of CODASPY'18, the 8^th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy Tempe, Arizona, USA, March 2018.
plas'17 SEC SWE	Compiler Optimizations with Retrofitting Transformations: Is there a Semantic Mismatch? Jay P. Lim, Vinod Ganapathy and Santosh Nagarakatte, Proceedings of PLAS'17, the 12^th ACM SIGSAC Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security Dallas, Texas, USA, October 2017.
icdcs'17 SEC SYS CLD	EnGarde: Mutually-Trusted Inspection of SGX Enclaves Hai Nguyen and Vinod Ganapathy, Proceedings of ICDCS'17, the 37^th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Atlanta, Georgia, USA, June 2017.

Alumni

CSSL alumnus		Thesis/Topic	First position after CSSL
	Abhishek Vijeev Project Assistant At CSSL: July 2018-September 2020	Drones and privacy	Microsoft Research India (intern); then grad school at UCSD (Fall 2021)
	Sreepada Abhinivesh M.Tech., 2020 At CSSL: January 2019-July 2020	Anomaly Detection with Sparse Training Data	Wells Fargo, Bangalore
	Rishabh Ravindra Meshram M.Tech., 2020 At CSSL: January 2019-July 2020	Analysis of the SAFE Remote Proctoring System
	Aditya Shukla M.Tech. (Research), 2020 At CSSL: January 2018-January 2020	Model Extraction and Active Learning	ShareChat, Bangalore
	Sujay Yadalam Project Assistant At CSSL: July 2018-July 2019 Jointly with CSL	Defenses against side-channel attacks in SGX	Ph.D. candidate, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison
	Subhendu Malakar M.Tech. (Research), 2020 At CSSL: June 2017-June 2019	Experiences in using Reinforcement Learning for Directed Fuzzing	Cohesity India, Bangalore
	Zad Basheer M.Tech., 2018 At CSSL: June 2017-June 2018.	A Security Analysis of Some Mobile Payment Applications	Walmart Labs, Bangalore

CSSL member		Topic of investigation
	A. Akash M.Tech. student At CSSL: May 2020 onwards	Serverless computing
	Rounak Agarwal M.Tech. (Research) student At CSSL: January 2018 onwards	Securing mobile payment schemes
	Rakesh Rajan Beck M.Tech. (Research) student At CSSL: January 2019 onwards	Drones and privacy
	Chinmay Gameti M.Tech. (Research) student At CSSL: January 2020 onwards	Security for robotics platforms
	Arun Joseph Ph.D. student At CSSL: July 2018 onwards	Security in permissioned blockchains
	Jaya Jyothiswaroop Kotni Project Assistant At CSSL: August 2019 onwards Jointly with CSL	Serverless computing
	Ajay Ashok Nayak M.Tech. (Research) student At CSSL: January 2019 onwards	GPUs and hardware-based security
	Kripa Shanker Ph.D. student At CSSL: January 2018 onwards	Security in modern cloud platforms
	C. Suraj Project Assistant At CSSL: September 2020 onwards	Drones and privacy
	Nikita Yadav Ph.D. student At CSSL: August 2020 onwards Previously, M.Tech., 2018-2020	Security in permissioned blockchains