Hadjer Benkraouda

Hadjer Benkraouda

Graduate Student

University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign

 

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About Me

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois a Urbana-Champaign. I am part of the i-DASH Lab lead by Prof. Gang Wang. 

My research interests lie in the intersection between System security, Binary Analysis, and Machine Learning with a focus on IoT devices. 

News

  • March 2024: Our Paper “VeriSMS: A Message Verification System for Inclusive Patient Outreach against Phishing Attacks.” was accepted at CHI 2024!
  • November 2023: Excited to share our work at CPSIoTSec ’23 and be part of be part of iMentor!
  • October 2023: Joined the ACTION’s Student Council! 
  • August 2023: Our Paper  “Towards PLC- Specific Binary Analysis Tools: An Investigation of Codesys-Compiled PLC Software Applications.” was accepted at CPSIoTSec ’23!
  • August 2023: Excited to join the Grainger College of Engineering Diversity Ambassadors.
  • March 2023: Our paper “Everybody’s Got ML, Tell Me What Else You Have: Practitioners’ Perception of ML-Based Security Tools and Explanations.” was accepted at IEEE S&P ’23!
  • April 2022: Had a great time presenting my research to The Aerospace Corporation research teams!
  • April 2022: Passed my Qualifying Exam!
  • October 2021: Our paper (in collaboration with the The Aerospace Corporation) “Image Reconstruction Attacks on Distributed Machine Learning Models” was accepted at DistributedML!.
  • March 2021: Our paper “FaceHack: Attacking Facial Recognition Systems using Malicious Facial Characteristics.” was accepted at IEEE TBIOM!
  • November 2020: Our paper “ICSFuzz: Manipulating I/Os and Repurposing Binary Code to Enable Instrumented Fuzzing in ICS Control Applications” was accepted at USENIX ’21!
  • August 2020: Joined the CS Ph.D. program at UIUC!
  • February 2020: Our paper “I came, I saw, I hacked: Automated Generation of Process-independent Attacks for Industrial Control Systems” was accepted at AsiaCCS 2020!
  • December 2019: Our paper “SNIFU: Secure Network Interception for Firmware Updates in legacy PLCs” was accepted at VTS 2020!
  • August 2018: Joined Center for Cyber Security at NYU Abu-Dhabi as a research assistant.Di

Publications

  • Benkraouda, H., Diwan, N., Wang, G. “Code and Data separation for Non-Standard Binary File Formats.” [Under Review]
  • Wang, C., Jia, Z., Benkraouda, H., Zevnik, C., Heuermann, N., Foulger, R., Handler, J., Wang, G. “VeriSMS: A Message Verification System for Inclusive Patient Outreach against Phishing Attacks.” In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2024.
  • Benkraouda, H., Agrawal, A., Tychalas, D., Sazos, M., Maniatakos, M. 2023. “Towards PLC- Specific Binary Analysis Tools: An Investigation of Codesys-Compiled PLC Software Applications.” In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on CPS&IoT Security and Privacy (CPSIoTSec ’23).
  • Mink, J., Benkraouda, H., Yang, L., Ciptadi, A., Ahmadzadeh, A., Votipka, D., Wang, G. “Everybody’s Got ML, Tell Me What Else You Have: Practitioners’ Perception of ML-Based Security Tools and Explanations.” In Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2023 (IEEE S&P).
  • Sarkar, E., Benkraouda, H., Krishnan, G., Gamil, H., Maniatakos, M. “FaceHack: Attacking Facial Recognition Systems using Malicious Facial Characteristics.” In IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science, 2022.
  • Benkraouda, H., Nahrstedt, K. “Image Reconstruction Attacks on Distributed Machine Learning Models.” DistributedML Workshop co-located with The 17th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNext), 2021.
  • Tychalas, D., Benkraouda, H., Maniatakos, M. “ICSFuzz: Manipulating I/Os and Repurposing Binary Code to Enable Instrumented Fuzzing in ICS Control Applications.” In Proceedings of The 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 2021.
  • Sarkar, E., Benkraouda, H., Maniatakos, M. “On Process-independent Automated Generation of Attacks on Industrial Control Systems.” ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security. 2020
  • Benkraouda, H., Chakkantakath, M., Keliris, A., Maniatakos, M. “SNIFU: Secure Network Interception for Firmware Updates in Legacy PLCs.” IEEE VLSI Test Symposium (VTS). 2020
  • Barka, E., Kerrache, C., Benkraouda, H., Shuaib, K., Ahmad, F., Kurugollu, F. “Towards a trusted unmanned aerial system using blockchain (BUAS) for the protection of critical infrastructure.” Wiley Transactions of emerging technologies. 2019

Honors & Awards

  • iMentor Workshop Travel Grant – CCS ’23
  • ACM CCS Student Travel Grant – CCS ’23
  • Grainger Engineering Diversity Ambassadors Scholarship – ’23 – ’25
  • ACM CCS Student Travel Grant – CCS ’22
  • Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program (ICSSP) ’21 – Declined
  • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Student Travel Grant ’21
  • ACM SIGSOFT CAPS – ICSE 21
  • NYU Merit based Scholarship Award
  • United Arab Emirates University Honors Graduate 
  • Sheikh Mohamed Ben Zayed’s Scholar