About

 

My name is Nick Nikiforakis and I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University.

I am interested in all sorts of practical, hands-on security and privacy. The topics that I have been the most active in are:

  • Analysis of online ecosystems
  • Understanding domain squatting
  • Measurement and countermeasures against unwanted tracking
  • Assessment of the security of remote servers using mostly passive techniques
  • Client-side defense mechanisms against phishing and web application attacks

I received my B.Sc. ('07) and M.Sc. ('09) in Computer Science from the University of Crete, and my Ph.D. ('13) in Computer Science from KU Leuven. Before joining Stony Brook, I worked, for a year, as a Postdoctoral Researcher in KU Leuven.


Downloadable CV

Teaching

 

Spring 2016CSE 659, Computer Security Seminar
Fall 2015CSE 509, System Security
Spring 2015CSE 508, Network Security
Fall 2014CSE 509, System Security

Publications

 

    2016

  1. No Honor Among Thieves: A Large-Scale Analysis of Malicious Web Shells,
    Oleksii Starov, Johannes Dahse, Syed Sharique Ahmad, Thorsten Holz, Nick Nikiforakis
    to appear in the Proceedings of the 25th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2016

  2. It's Free for a Reason: Exploring the Ecosystem of Free Live Streaming Services,
    Zubair Rafique, Tom Van Goethem, Wouter Joosen, Christophe Huygens, Nick Nikiforakis
    to appear in the Proceedings of the 23rd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2016
      Media Coverage: BBC

  3. Are You Sure You Want to Contact Us? Quantifying the Leakage of PII via Website Contact Forms,
    Oleksii Starov, Phillipa Gill, Nick Nikiforakis
    to appear in the Proceedings of the 16th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), 2016.

    4. 2015

  4. The Clock is Still Ticking: Timing Attacks in the Modern Web,
    Tom Van Goethem, Wouter Joosen, Nick Nikiforakis
    in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2015.

  5. Maneuvering Around Clouds: Bypassing Cloud-based Security Providers,
    Thomas Vissers, Tom Van Goethem, Wouter Joosen, Nick Nikiforakis
    in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2015.

  6. Drops for Stuff: An Analysis of Reshipping Mule Scams,
    Shuang Hao, Kevin Borgolte, Nick Nikiforakis, Gianluca Stringhini, Manuel Egele, Michael Eubanks, Brian Krebs, Giovanni Vigna
    in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2015.

  7. PriVaricator: Deceiving fingerprinters with Little White Lies,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Wouter Joosen, Benjamin Livshits
    in Proceedings of the 24th International World Wide Web Conference
    (WWW 2015)

  8. Parking Sensors: Analyzing and Detecting Parked Domains,
    Thomas Vissers, Wouter Joosen, Nick Nikiforakis
    in Proceedings of the 22nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2015)

  9. Seven Months' Worth of Mistakes: A Longitudinal Study of Typosquatting Abuse,
    Pieter Agten, Wouter Joosen, Frank Piessens, Nick Nikiforakis
    in Proceedings of the 22nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2015)

    10. 2014

  10. Soundsquatting: Uncovering the use of homophones in domain squatting,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Marco Balduzzi, Lieven Desmet, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen
    in Proceedings of the 17th Information Security Conference (ISC 2014), Hong Kong (Best Paper Award)

  11. Clubbing Seals: Exploring the Ecosystem of Third-party Security Seals,
    Tom Van Goethem, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen, Nick Nikiforakis
    in Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2014), Scottsdale, Arizona, USA


  12. Security Analysis of the Chinese Web: How well is it protected?
    Ping Chen, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Christoph Huygens
    in the Workshop of Cyber Security Analytics and Automation
    (SafeConfig 2014), Scottsdale, Arizona, USA

  13. Crying Wolf? On the Price Discrimination of Online Airline Tickets,
    Thomas Vissers, Nick Nikiforakis, Nataliia Bielova, Wouter Joosen
    in the 7th Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
    (HotPETs 2014), Amsterdam, Netherlands

  14. Large-scale Security Analysis of the Web: Challenges and Findings,
    Tom Van Goethem, Ping Chen, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Wouter Joosen
    in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Trust & Trustworthy Computing
    (TRUST 2014), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

  15. Monkey-in-the-browser: Malware and vulnerabilities in augmented browsing script markets,
    Steven Van Acker, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 9th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS 2014), Kyoto, Japan

  16. Stranger Danger: Exploring the Ecosystem of Ad-based URL Shortening Services,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Federico Maggi, Gianluca Stringhini, M Zubair Rafique, Wouter Joosen, Christopher Kruegel, Frank Piessens, Giovanni Vigna, Stefano Zanero in Proceedings of the 23rd International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2014), Seoul, Korea

    17. 2013

  17. A Dangerous Mix: Large-scale analysis of mixed-content websites,
    Ping Chen, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Christophe Huygens in Proceedings of the 16th Information Security Conference (ISC 2013), Dallas, Texas, USA

  18. FPDetective: Dusting the web for fingerprinters,
    Güneş Acar, Marc Juárez Miró, Nick Nikiforakis, Claudia Diaz, Seda Gürses, Frank Piessens, Bart Preneel in Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2013), Berlin, Germany

  19. HeapSentry: Kernel-assisted Protection against Heap Overflows,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA 2013), Berlin, Germany

  20. Bitsquatting: Exploiting bit-flips for fun, or profit?,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Steven Van Acker, Wannes Meert, Lieven Desmet, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 22nd International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2013), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  21. Cookieless Monster: Exploring the Ecosystem of Web-based Device Fingerprinting,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Alexandros Kapravelos, Wouter Joosen, Christopher Kruegel, Frank Piessens, Giovanni Vigna in Proceedings of the 34th IEEE Symposium of Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2013), San Francisco, CA, USA

  22. TabShots: Client-side detection of tabnabbing attacks,
    Philippe De Ryck, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 8th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS 2013), Hangzhou, China

    23. 2012

  23. You Are What You Include: Large-scale Evaluation of Remote JavaScript Inclusions,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Luca Invernizzi, Alexandros Kapravelos, Steven Van Acker, Wouter Joosen, Christopher Kruegel, Frank Piessens and Giovanni Vigna in Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2012), Raleigh, NC, USA

  24. FlowFox: a Web Browser with Flexible and Precise Information Flow Control,
    Willem De Groef, Dominique Devriese, Nick Nikiforakis, and Frank Piessens
    in Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2012), Raleigh, NC, USA

  25. There is Safety in Numbers: Preventing Control-Flow Hijacking by Duplication,
    Job Noorman, Nick Nikiforakis, and Frank Piessens in Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems (NordSec 2012), Karlskrona, Sweden

  26. DEMACRO: Defense against Malicious Cross-domain Requests,
    Sebastian Lekies, Nick Nikiforakis, Walter Tighzert, Frank Piessens and Martin Johns in Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Research In Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2012), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  27. Serene: Self-Reliant Client-Side Protection against Session Fixation,
    Philippe De Ryck, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Frank Piessens and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 7th International Federated Conference on Distributed Computing Techniques (DAIS 2012), Stockholm, Sweden

  28. Exploring the Ecosystem of Referrer-Anonymizing Services,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Steven Van Acker, Frank Piessens and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 12th Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium (PETS 2012), Vigo, Spain

  29. Recent Developments in Low-Level Software Security,
    Pieter Agten, Nick Nikiforakis, Raoul Strackx, Willem De Groef and Frank Piessens in Proceedings of the 6th Workshop in Information Security Theory and Practice (WISTP 2012), London, UK

  30. FlashOver: Automated Discovery of Cross-site Scripting Vulnerabilities in Rich Internet Applications,
    Steven Van Acker, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Wouter Joosen and Frank Piessens in Proceedings of the 7th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS 2012), Seoul, South Korea

  31. HyperForce: Hypervisor-enForced Execution of Security-Critical Code,
    Francesco Gadaleta, Nick Nikiforakis, Jan Tobias Muhlberg and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 27th IFIP International Information Security and Privacy Conference (IFIP SEC 2012), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    32. 2011

  32. RIPE: Runtime Intrusion Prevention Evaluator,
    John Wilander, Nick Nikiforakis, Yves Younan, Mariam Kamkar and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 27th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2011), Orlando, US [source]

  33. Hello rootKitty: A lightweight invariance-enforcing framework,
    Francesco Gadaleta, Nick Nikiforakis, Yves Younan and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 14th Information Security Conference (ISC 2011), Xi'an, China [Video Demo]

  34. Abusing Locality in Shared Web Hosting,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Wouter Joosen and Martin Johns in Proceedings of the 4th European Workshop on System Security (EuroSec 2011), Salzburg, Austria

  35. Exposing the Lack of Privacy in File Hosting Services,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Marco Balduzzi, Steven Van Acker, Wouter Joosen and Davide Balzarotti in Proceedings of the 4th USENIX Workshop on Large-scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET 2011), Boston, US

  36. SessionShield: Lightweight Protection against Session Hijacking,
    Nick Nikiforakis,Wannes Meert, Yves Younan, Martin Johns and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS 2011), Madrid, Spain

    37. 2010 and earlier

  37. ValueGuard: Protection of native applications against data-only buffer overflows,
    Steven Van Acker, Nick Nikiforakis, Pieter Philippaerts, Yves Younan and Frank Piessens in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS 2010), Gujarat, India

  38. HProxy: Client-side detection of SSL stripping attacks,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Yves Younan and Wouter Joosen in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2010, Bonn, Germany

  39. Monitoring three National Research Networks for Eight Weeks: Observations and Implications,
    Demetris Antoniades, Michalis Polychronakis, Nick Nikiforakis, Evangelos P. Markatos, Yiannis Mitsos in the 6th IEEE Workshop on End-to-End Monitoring Techniques and Services (E2EMon). April 2008, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

  40. When Appmon met Stager,
    Nikos Nikiforakis, Demetres Antoniades, Evangelos P. Markatos, Sotiris Ioannidis, Arne Olesbo, in the 6th IEEE Workshop on End-to-End Monitoring Techniques and Services (E2EMon). April 2008, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

  41. Alice, what did you do last time? Fighting Phishing Using Past Activity Tests,
    Nikos Nikiforakis, Andreas Makridakis, Elias Athanasopoulos, and Evangelos P. Markatos in Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Computer Network Defense (EC2ND). October 2007, Heraklion, Greece.

Articles

 

  1. Protected Web Components: Hiding Sensitive Information in the Shadows
    Philippe De Ryck, Nick Nikiforakis, Lieven Desmet, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen in IEEE IT Pro magazine, January/February 2015

  2. Browse at your own risk
    Nick Nikiforakis and Gunes Acarin in IEEE Spectrum, Volume 41, Issue 8, August 2014

  3. On the Workings and Current Practices of Web-based Device Fingerprinting,
    Nick Nikiforakis, Alexandros Kapravelos, Wouter Joosen, Christopher Kruegel, Frank Piessens, Giovanni Vigna in IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, Issue 99, 2013

  4. Direct Object Reference or, How a Toddler can hack your Web application,
    Nick Nikiforakis in Hackin9, Volume 1, Number 3, 2011

  5. IPv6 Resiliency Study,
    Sotiris Ioannidis,George Apostolopoulos, Kostas Anagnostakis, Nick Nikiforakis, Andreas Makridakis and Charalampos Gkikas with the collaboration of ENISA STA staff

Service

 

Program Committee Chair Chair

  • OWASP AppSec Europe 2015 - Research Track


Program Commitee member

  • USENIX Security Symposium: 2015, 2016
  • Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime): 2016
  • Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA): 2015, 2016
  • Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY): 2016
  • International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS): 2015, 2016
  • Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS): 2015
  • ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec): 2015
  • International World Wide Web Conference (WWW): 2015
  • European Workshop on System Security (EuroSec): 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
  • IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC): 2014
  • IFIP Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS): 2012, 2013
  • International Conference on Emerging Ubiquitous Systems and Pervasive Networks (EUSPN): 2013
  • IEEE Workshop on Network Measurements (IEEE WNM): 2013
  • OWASP AppSec Europe 2013 - Research Track (AppSec EU): 2013

Contact Information

Email
nick[at]cs.stonybrook.edu

Address
Nick Nikiforakis
Computer Science Department
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2424
USA

Recent News

  • Paper with Oleksii and Sharique accepted at WWW 2016!
  • Paper with Zubair accepted at NDSS 2016!
  • Paper with Oleksii accepted at PETS 2016!
  • Three papers accepted at CCS 2015!
  • Our paper got accepted at WWW 2015!
  • Two papers accepted at NDSS 2015!!
  • New cybersquatting paper accepted at ISC 2014
  • Paper with Tom accepted at CCS 2014 !

Elsewhere

  1. Twitter
  2. Google Scholar