V.N. Venkatakrishnan

Greetings!!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at University of Illinois at Chicago. I am also the co-director for the Center for RITES (Research and Instruction in Technologies for Electronic Security) at UIC. In this page, you'll find out about my academic and personal interests.

Wondering how to spell my name? (Venkat is shorter and easier to pronounce - VEN-CAT). If you are adventerous, and would like to spell my full name, it is VEN-CAT-A-CREE-SH-NUN).

Research Interests

My research areas broadly span topics in Computer Systems Security, with use of ideas from compilers, operating systems and formal methods for defending cyber attacks. My recent work has focused on the topics given below.

My complete publication list available here.

• Preventing injection attacks on web based systems. SQL injection (ACM CCS 2007), Cross-site Scripting (DIMVA 2008).
• Browser Security : Security for Firefox Extensions (DIMVA 2007), Browser support for XSS Prevention (W2SP08).
• Runtime approaches for privacy and information flow policies : See the Data Sandboxing (ACSAC'06) and Runtime checking for information flow policy enforcement(published in ICICS'06) papers.
• CMV: Using static analysis and model checking techniques for ensuring complete mediation in authorization systems. (ASIACCS'08).
• Secure execution of untrusted programs : Safe-execution environments (NDSS 2005), Secure Software Installation (DIMVA 2008).

Professional Activities

• TPC member. 24th Annual Computer Applications Security Conference (ACSAC). Anaheim, California, December 2008.
• TPC member and tutorial chair. Fourth International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS). Hyderabad, India, December 2008.
• Program Chair, Fifth Midwest Security Workshop (MSW), Indianapolis, Apr 2008.

Education

Prior to that I was at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India.

Teaching

Students

• Current

  • Michelle Zhou (Ph.D)
  • Mike Ter-Louw (Ph.D)
  • Prithvi Bisht (Ph.D)
  • Kalpana Gondi (Ph.D) (co-advise with Prof. Prasad Sistla)
  • Hilary Branske (M.S)
  • Pat Zurek (M.S)

• Past

  • Raj Swaminathan (M.S with project). Dec 2006. First employment: Motorola Research Labs.
  • Tejas Khatiwala (M.S with thesis). Dec 2006. First employment: VMWare Inc.
  • Michael Leonhard (B.S with senior project) Dec 2006. First employment: Amazon Inc.
  • Jin Soon Lim (M.S with project). Aug 2007. First employment: Microsoft Inc.
  • Doo San Sim (M.S. with project). Dec 2007. First employment: VMWare Inc.

Fun stuff

• Gene Siskel Film Center
• Museum of Science and Industry