Soteris Demetriou
Assistant Professor of Systems Security
Department of Computing, Imperial College London
In a nutshell…
I am an Assistant Professor at Imperial College London and the Director of the Applications, Platforms, and Systems Security (apss) lab. My research focuses on Security and Privacy issues related to mobile and cyber-physical systems (CPS). I have been studying side-channel and confused deputy attacks on the Android OS and its privacy threats from mobile advertising; IoT vulnerabilities in smart-home environments, privacy issues in speech and text processing, and vulnerabilities of 3D object detectors utilized in connected and autonomous vehicles. I’ve worked in strengthening the security of mobile and CPS systems designing access control schemes, anomaly detection, trusted computing and privacy-preserving mechanisms among others. I’ve also worked with Meta’s Core Systems on large scale distributed computing systems.
Download my resumé: full version - short 2-page version.
🗞️ Latest News
- 🥇 Award (May 23th, 2024): Our short paper titled "Adversarial 3D Virtual Patches using Integrated Gradients" has won the best paper award at the 8th IEEE/ACM Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings '24) - co-located with IEEE S&P '24.
- Conference TPC (May, 2024): I was invited and accepted to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the 25th Privacy Enhancing Symposium (PETS 2025).
- 📄 Publication (March, 2024): Our paper titled "Adversarial 3D Virtual Patches using Integrated Gradients" has been accepted at the 8th IEEE/ACM Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings '24).
- Conference TPC (March, 2024): I was invited and accepted to serve at the Technical Program Committee at the Hardware/ Cyber Security and Privacy Track of the IEEE International Conference on Omni-layer Intelligent systems (COINS 2024).
- 📄 Publication (December, 2023): Our paper titled "MobileConfig: Remote Configuration Management for Mobile Apps at Hyperscale" has been accepted at the 21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI '24).
- Conference TPC (December, 2023): I was invited and accepted to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the 31st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS 2024).
- Conference TPC (December, 2023): I was invited and accepted to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM ASIACCS 2024).
- Workshop Organisation (December, 2023): Our workshop proposal to organize the IEEE Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings '24) has been accepted. SafeThings will take place in conjunction with IEEE S&P 2024. Consider submitting your work!
- 📄 Publication (November, 2023): Our paper titled "Username Squatting on Online Social Networks" has been accepted at the 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM ASIACCS '24).
- 📄 Publication (July, 2023): Our paper titled "Evaluating User Behavior in Smartphone Security: A Psychometric Perspective" has been accepted at the 19th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS '23).
- 📄 Publication (July, 2023): Submitted paper with Meta titled "XFaaS: Hyperscale and Low Cost Serverless Functions at Meta" has been accepted at the 29th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP '23).
- 📄 Publication (March, 2023): Submitted paper with Meta titled "ServiceRouter: Hyperscale and Minimal Cost Service Mesh at Meta" has been accepted at the 17th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '23).
- 📄 Publication (March, 2023): Submitted paper with Meta titled "Conveyor: One-Tool-Fits-All Continuous Deployment at Meta" has been accepted at the 17th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '23).
- Visiting Appointment (January, 2022): Appointed as a visiting professor at Meta's Core Systems.
- Workshop Organisation (November, 2021): Our workshop proposal to organize the IEEE Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings '22) has been accepted. SafeThings will take place in conjunction with IEEE S&P. Consider submitting your work!
- Workshop PC (October, 2021): I was invited to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the Fourth International Workshop on Automotive and Autonomous Vehicle Security (AutoSec) workshop. AutoSec will be co-located with NDSS '22. Consider submitting your work!
- Grant (October 2021): We participate in an interdisciplinary team which was awarded a grant by SPRITE+ to explore applying design fiction for proactive identification of digital vulnerabilities in the design of Bio-IoT devices (more here).
- 📄 Publication (August, 2021): Our paper titled "Characterizing Improper Input Validation Vulnerabilities of Mobile Crowdsourcing Services" has been accepted at the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '21).
- 📄 Publication (May, 2021): Our short paper titled "Open, Sesame! Introducing Access Control to Voice Services" has been accepted at the Security and Privacy for Mobile AI (MAISP) workshop - co-located with ACM MobiSys '21.
- 📄 Publication (May, 2021): Our short paper titled "Temporal Consistency Checks to Detect LiDAR Spoofing Attacks on Autonomous Vehicle Perception" has been accepted at the Security and Privacy for Mobile AI (MAISP) workshop - co-located with ACM MobiSys '21.
- 📄 Publication (May, 2021): Our short paper titled "Layer-wise Characterization of Latent Information Leakage in Federated Learning" has been accepted at the Distributed and Private Machine Learning Workshop (DPML) - co-located with ICLR '21.
- 📄 Publication (April, 2021): Our paper titled "Shadow-Catcher: Looking Into Shadows to Detect Ghost Objects in Autonomous Vehicle 3D Sensing" has been accepted at the 26th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS '21).
- Conference TPC / Editorial Board Member (Mar, 2021): I was invited to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the 22nd Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2022) and join the Editorial Board of the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs). Consider submitting your work!
- Workshop PC (Mar, 2021): I was invited to serve at the Technical Program Committee of the Security and Privacy for Mobile AI (MAISP) workshop. MAISP will be co-located with MobiSys '21. Consider submitting your work!
- 🥈 Award (Feb 25th, 2021): Our short paper titled "Object Removal Attacks on LiDAR-based 3D Object Detectors" was a Runner-Up for the best short paper award at the Third International Workshop on Automotive and Autonomous Vehicle Security (AutoSec) - co-located with NDSS '21.
- Student Travel Grants (Feb 18th, 2021): Two of my PhD students, Chengzeng (Charles) You and Anastasios Lepipas, have been awarded a Student Travel Grant for NDSS 2021. Well Done! 👏👏👏
- 📄 Publication (Feb 2nd, 2021): Our short paper titled "Object Removal Attacks on LiDAR-based 3D Object Detectors" has been accepted at the Third International Workshop on Automotive and Autonomous Vehicle Security (AutoSec) - co-located with NDSS '21.
- Grant (July 15th, 2020): I have been awarded an ISST Champions Fund by the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London which will help us measure human smartphone security attention and behavior.
- Comment (April 14th, 2020): Read my comment on smartphone-assisted contact tracing here.
- 📄 Publication (Mar 7th, 2020): Our paper titled “DarkneTZ: Toward Model Privacy at the Edge using Trusted Execution Environments’” has been accepted at ACM MobiSys 2020.
- Conference Session Chair (Nov, 2019): I was invited to serve as a session chair at the Cyberphysical Security session of the 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS 2019). CCS is the flagship security conference of ACM.
- Conference OC (May, 2019): I was invited to serve at the Organisation Committee (Finance Co-Chair) of the 26th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM Mobicom).
- 📄 Publication (Feb 19th, 2019): Our paper titled “BEEER: Distributed Record and Replay for Medical Devices in Hospital Operating Rooms’” has been accepted at HotSoS 2019.
- Conference PC (Dec, 2018): I was invited to serve at the Program Committee of the 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS 2019). CCS is the flagship security conference of ACM.
- 📰 News Article (September 28th, 2018): “Getting smart on smartphone cyber security”, Duncan Swinscow-Hall, Imperial College London, (link to article).
- 🏢 New Appointment (September 1st, 2018): Appointed as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Imperial College London.
- 🏆 Best-in-Session Presentation Award (May 20th, 2018): I was awarded a best-in-session presentation award at IEEE INFOCOM 2018.
- 🏅 Travel Award (March 27th, 2018): I was awarded a conference travel grant by the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to attend IEEE INFOCOM 2018 and present our work.
- 🏆 Distinguished Paper Award (Feb 21st, 2018): Our paper titled “Resolving the Predicament of Android Custom Permissions” has received a Distinguished Paper Award at NDSS 2018.
- 📄 Publication (Nov 27th, 2017): Our paper titled “CoDrive: Improving Automobile Positioning via Collaborative Driving’” has been accepted at IEEE INFOCOM.
- 📄 Publication (Oct 26th, 2017): Our paper titled “Resolving the Predicament of Android Custom Permissions” has been accepted at NDSS.
- 📄 Publication (July 13th, 2017): Our paper titled “CamForensics: Understanding Visual Privacy Leaks in the Wild.” has been accepted at SenSys.
- 🏅 Award (May, 2017): I was selected for sponsorship and travel support to the 5th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- 📄 Publication (May 2nd, 2017): Our paper titled “HanGuard: SDN-driven protection of smart-home WiFi devices from malicious mobile apps.” has been accepted at WiSec.
- 🏅 Award (April 12th, 2017): I was selected as a young researcher in the fields of Mathematics and Computer Science to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum.
- 🏅 Award (April 6th, 2017): I was selected to participate in the French-American Doctoral Exchange (FADex) program focused in Cybersecurity.
- 📄 Publication (March 6th, 2017): Our paper titled “Ghost Installer in the Shadow: Security Analysis of App Installation on Android” has been accepted at DSN.
- 🏅 Award (August 2nd, 2016): I have been awarded the Best in Class Award during the 2016 Intern Project Fair at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
- 📄 Publication (July 22nd, 2016): Our paper titled “Draco: Uniform and Fine-grained Control of Web Code Access on Android” has been accepted at CCS.
Interests
- Security and Privacy
- Mobile Computing and IoT
- Large Scale Computer Systems
- Applied Machine Learning
Education
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PhD in Computer Science, 2018
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
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MSc in Computer Science, 2014
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
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BSc/MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2010
University of Patras (Greece)
Research Themes
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Recent Publications
Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2024).
MobileConfig: Remote Configuration Management for Mobile Apps at Hyperscale.
21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 24).
(2023).
Conveyor: One-Tool-Fits-All Continuous Software Deployment at Meta.
17th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 23).
(2023).
Evaluating User Behavior in Smartphone Security: A Psychometric Perspective.
USENIX Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS).
(2022).
Data Augmentation for Dementia Detection in Spoken Language.
Interspeech 2022, 23rd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Incheon, Korea, 18-22 September 2022.
(2022).
Using 3D Shadows to Detect Object Hiding Attacks on Autonomous Vehicle Perception.
2022 IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops (SPW).
Featured Publications
(2023).
ServiceRouter: Hyperscale and Minimal Cost Service Mesh at Meta.
17th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 23).
(2023).
XFaaS: Hyperscale and Low Cost Serverless Functions at Meta.
29th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 23).
(2020).
Darknetz: towards model privacy at the edge using trusted execution environments.
18th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys 20).
(2018).
Codrive: Improving automobile positioning via collaborative driving.
IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 18).
(2018).
Resolving the predicament of android custom permissions.
25th Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 18).
PDF Cite Slides Video Presentation Source Code (Formal Model) Project Website
(2016).
Free for all! assessing user data exposure to advertising libraries on android..
23rd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 16).
(2015).
What's in Your Dongle and Bank Account? Mandatory and Discretionary Protection of Android External Resources..
22nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 15).
(2013).
Identity, location, disease and more: Inferring your secrets from android public resources.
Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGSAC conference on Computer & communications security (CCS 13).
Featured Talks
Teaching
Imperial College London
COMP97109/COMP97110/COMP70004: ADVANCED SECURITY (FALL 2019, FALL 2020, FALL 2021, SPRING 2023, SPRING 2024) - Role: Module Lead
CO447H: ADVANCED SECURITY IN SMARTPHONE AND IOT SYSTEMS (SPRING 2019) - Role: Module Lead
COMP97069/COMP70032: COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE (FALL 2019, FALL 2020, FALL 2021) - Role: Module Lead
Carnegie Mellon University
15-799: Security for Software and Hardware Systems (SPRING 2023) - Role: Guest Lecturer on Mobile Security
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CS463 / ECE424: COMPUTER SECURITY II (SPRING 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018) - Role: Teaching Assistant, Guest Lecturer
CS563 / ECE525: ADVANCED COMPUTER SECURITY (FALL 2014, 2016, 2017) - Role: Guest Lecturer
Contact
- s.demetriou@imperial.ac.uk
- +44 (0)20 7594 8237
- 180 Queen''s Gate, South Kensington, London, SW7 2AZ
- ACEX Building, Floor 3, Office 353
- DM Me
- Skype Me