TOSS: The TOronto Systems Security Lab
I have had the opportunity to work with a group of awesome students at the University of Toronto with a from both computer science and electrical and computer engineering. Students work in a collaborative environment on teams of 2-4 on related problems. After graduation, my students easily find positions at top companies, as professors and as post-doctoral fellows. Some have even gone on to found or join startup companies related to their research! When we’re not doing cutting edge research, we can usually be found getting some of Toronto’s excellent food.
You can find my current and former students below. If you are interested in joining my group, please consult the Prospective students section on my main web page.
Post-doctoral Fellows
- Ivan Pustogarov
PhD Students
- Wei Huang, MAsc(ECE): UnityFS: A File System for the Unity Block Store
- Michelle Wong, MASc(ECE): Targeted Dynamic Analysis for Android Malware
- Sukwon Oh, MS(CS): Efficiently Crawling CMS Applications
- Mariana D’Angelo, MASc(ECE): Correlating Sensitive Behaviours with User Interaction on Android
- Adelin Travers (ECE, Co-supervised with Nicolas Papernot)
- He (Shawn) Shuang, MASc(ECE): Using Context to Verify User Intent
- Mingyue (Shirley) Yang, MASc(ECE): Using Machine Learning to Detect Software Vulnerabilities
Masters Students
- Diego Velasquez, (ECE)
- Rongzhen (Gavin) Cui (ECE)
- Shengjie (John) Xu (ECE)
- Akshay Kawlay (ECE)
- Wenjun (Wendy) Qiu (ECE)
Alumni
Post-doctoral Fellows
- Mohammed Mannan, 2009-2011. Last known position: Associate Professor at Concordia University.
- Viau Zhao, 2018-2019. Last known position: Assistant Professor at Carleton University.
PhD Students
- Lionel Litty, PhD(CS): Architectural Introspection and Applications, 2010. MSc(CS): Hypervisor-based Intrusion Detection, 2005. Last known position: Menlo Security.
- Phillipa Gill, PhD(CS): Improving Dependability for Internet Scale Services, 2012. Last known position: Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
- Zhen Huang, MASc(ECE): Automatically Identifying Configuration Files, PhD(ECE): Fixing Software Vulnerabilities and Configuration Errors, 2018. Last known position: Assistant Professor at DePaul University.
- Beom Heyn (Ben) Kim, MSc(CS): Automated Virtual Machine Replication and Transparent Machine Switch Support for An Individual Personal Computer User, PhD(CS): Detecting Consistency Violations in Distributed Storage Systems, 2020.
Masters Students
- Kurniadi Asrigo MASc(ECE): Virtual Machine Monitor Support for Kernel Monitoring, 2005. Last known position: SAP Canada.
- Tom Hart MSc(CS): Comparative Performance of Memory Reclamation Strategies for Lock-free and Concurrently-readable Data Structures, 2005. Last known position: IBM Canada.
- Richard Ta-Min MASc(ECE): Splitting Interfaces: Making Trust Between Applications and Operating Systems Configurable, 2006. Last known position: Oanda Corp.
- Ian Sin MASc(ECE): Kernel Support for Redundant Execution on Multiprocessors, 2007. Last known position: IBM Canada.
- Jesse Pool MASc(ECE): Kernel Support for Deterministic Redundant Execution of Shared Memory Workloads on Multiprocessor Systems, 2007. Last known position: VMware.
- Stan Kvasov MASc(ECE): DREM: Architectural Support for Deterministic Redundant Execution of Multithreaded Programs, 2009. Last known position: MediaTek.
- Lee Chew MASc(ECE): System for Detecting, Preventing and Exposing Atomicity Violations in Multithreaded Programs, 2009. Last known position: AMD.
- Adam Zarek MSc(CS): OpenFlow Timeouts Demystified, 2012. Last known position: Google.
- Kathy Au MASc(ECE): PScout: Analyzing the Android Permission Specification, 2012. Last known position: Google.
- Zheng Wei MSc(CS): LazyTainter: Memory-Efficient Taint Tracking in Managed Runtimes, 2014. Last known position: Google.
- Dhaval Miyani MASc(ECE): BinPro: A Tool for Binary Backdoor Accountability in Code Audits, 2016. Last known position: Nvidia.
- Peter Sun (ECE): Investigating the Effectiveness of Android Privacy Policies, 2018. Last known position: Bloomberg.
- Vasily Rudchenko, (ECE): Transforming Existing Stateful Network Protocol Applications into Effective Protocol-Specific Security Testing Tools, 2019. Last known position: Intel.
- Pushkar Bettadpur, (ECE): Privacy Protection against Passive Monitoring using SDNs, 2019. Last known position: IBM.
- Weicheng Cao (ECE)
Graduate Student Advice
Some accmulated wisdom for current graduate students or potential graduate students:
- What to Ask When You’re Applying to Grad School
- Survival Guide
- Hitchhiker’s Guide
- The illustrated guide to a Ph.D
Here are some orientation slides for new graduate students I used when I was Associate Chair, Grad studies. Warning, they are very likely out of date, but hopefully some of the information is still useful.
If you are planning to apply for NSERC or OGS awards, here is some advice I’ve assembled for the 2013-2014 competition (disclaimer: some information may be out of date):