Vyas Sekar
Tan Family Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vyas Sekar is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and is affiliated with the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute. His research is at the intersection of networking, security, and systems. Sekar's current research focuses on systems for accelerating the deployment of innovative network middleboxes, and designing content distribution mechanisms to improve user experience.
Sekar received his Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in 2010. He has been the recipient of multiple awards, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016. He earned his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he was awarded the President of India Gold Medal. His work has been recognized with best paper awards at ACM SIGCOMM, ACM CoNext, and ACM Multimedia. In addition to being a professor of electrical and computer engineering, Sekar is affiliated with the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute.
Network Security: Making the Internet a Safer Place
Improving Video Streaming
Education
2010 Ph.D., Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
2003 BS, Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Chennai
Affiliations
Research Interests
- access control and authorization
- AI and ML for security
- anonymity
- Applications of security and privacy
- authentication and passwords
- automotive and transportation security and privacy
- autonomy
- censorship resistance and measurement
- cloud security
- computer security
- computer/storage systems
- cyber physical systems security and privacy
- cyberphysical systems (CPS)
- cybersecurity
- distributed systems
- embedded systems security
- emerging applications security
- energy and critical infrastructure security
- Formal methods
- formal methods for security
- hardware security
- information networking
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- intrusion and anomaly detection and prevention
- IoT security and privacy
- manufacturing security
- Measurement and analysis
- ML and AI
- mobile and app security and privacy
- mobile systems
- network security
- protocol security
- secure systems
- security and privacy economics
- smart infrastructure
- systems security
- threat analysis and modeling
- Usability and human behavior
- verification
- web security
Media mentions
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab researchers discover novel class of vehicle cyberattacks
The new class of vulnerabilities was disclosed in a new study presented at last month’s IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, held virtually.
TechRepublic
Sekar interviewed about hacking
ECE/CyLab’s Vyas Sekar was interviewed by TechRepublic about the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack by the hacker group Darkside.
CMU College of Engineering
Engineering faculty awarded professorships
ECE faculty Franz Franchetti, Gianluca Piazza, Shawn Blanton, Maysam Chamanzar, and Vyas Sekar were awarded professorship titles in April and May 2021.
Popular Mechanics
Sekar and Kumar quoted on security
CyLab/ECE’s Vyas Sekar and Swarun Kumar were quoted in Popular Mechanics on how outdated technology could pose a security risk.
Bank Info Security
Sekar quoted on cyber attacks
ECE’s Vyas Sekar was quoted on Bank Info Security about the consequences of a successful cyber attack.
Business Insider
Sekar quoted on preventing hacking
ECE/CyLab’s Vyas Sekar was quoted in Business Insider about preventing your phone from being hacked.
Lifewire
Sekar quoted on online hacking
ECE/CyLab’s Vyas Sekar was quoted on Lifewire about possible computer hacking of self-driving cars.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Third round of Secure and Private IoT Initiative funded projects announced
Carnegie Mellon CyLab’s Secure and Private IoT Initiative (IoT@CyLab) has announced its third round of funding, which will support 12 Internet of Things (IoT)-related projects for one year.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CMU-Africa and CyLab aim to improve financial inclusion in emerging economies
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) CyLab and CMU-Africa have established the CyLab-Africa initiative, which aims to improve the cybersecurity of financial systems in Africa and other emerging economies.
CyLab
Fanti, Sekar, and Lin quoted on privacy research
ECE Ph.D. student Zinan Lin created a new tool that helps maintain online privacy when companies work together. His advisors are ECE’s Vyas Sekar and Giulia Fanti.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
World’s fastest open-source intrusion detection is here
Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab have developed the fastest-ever open-source intrusion detection system—one that achieves speeds of 100 gigabits per second using a single server.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Four years since the Mirai-Dyn attack…is the Internet safer?
Four years after the Mirai-Dyn attack that brought down much of the Internet, a team of CyLab researchers are assessing the Internet’s resilience if a similar attack were to occur today.