Author Archives: nikifor

Why you should apply to Stony Brook if you want to pursue a PhD in computer security and privacy

Posted on November 21, 2016 by nikifor

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was entering the second year of my MS degree in Computer Science, when I realized that I wanted to pursue a PhD in Security outside of Greece. Where should I apply? … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellanea | 2 Comments

Poor reasons to reject a computer security paper, Part 2

Posted on July 27, 2016 by nikifor

I was surprised with the popularity of Part 1 of my series “Poor reasons to reject a computer security paper”. I am interpreting this as a sign that I may be on to something. If you haven’t read Part 1, please do … Continue reading →

Posted in Poor Reasons | Leave a comment

Poor reasons to reject a computer security paper, Part 1

Posted on July 23, 2016 by nikifor

In 2016, at the time when I am writing this (July), I have been a PC member for seven different security conferences including two of the top ones, CCS and USENIX Security, and I have reviewed upwards of 80 papers. … Continue reading →

Posted in Poor Reasons | 1 Comment

ShapeShifter: The emperor’s new web security technology

Posted on January 22, 2014 by nikifor

Disclaimer: Everything that I say in this blog post about ShapeSecurity and their ShapeShifter product, is based on their YouTube video, their description of their product on their pages, and an article on PandoDaily. As such, the product may be … Continue reading →

Posted in Breaking stuff | 6 Comments

Detecting Ghostery

Posted on June 10, 2013 by nikifor

I discovered Ghostery in the summer of 2012, when I was researching web-tracking and specifically web-tracking done through web fingerprinting. Ghostery is a really cool browser extension which helped me identify the domains that popular web fingerprinters used to deliver … Continue reading →

Posted in Breaking stuff | 19 Comments

You are what you include: Large-scale evaluation of Remote JavaScript inclusions

Posted on October 21, 2012 by nikifor

Today, I am back to Belgium, after spending one week in the US. I was in Raleigh, NC, to attend the 19th ACM conference on Computer and Communication Security and to present our paper titled You Are What You Include: … Continue reading →

Posted in Paper summaries | 2 Comments

Breaking McAfee’s Social Protection

Posted on September 13, 2012 by nikifor

On my usual daily visit of Slashdot, I read that McAfee introduced a new application called “McAfee Social Protection” for Facebook. In a nutshell, you install their plugin, allow their application to control quite a bit of your Facebook and … Continue reading →

Posted in Breaking stuff | 8 Comments

Google AdChoices…

Posted on June 26, 2012 by nikifor

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. How about, two pictures? So, the important points of the above text are: “It’s our goal to make these ads as relevant and useful as possible for you. Google doesn’t create … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellanea | 3 Comments

To Google Chrome: Relax less…

Posted on March 23, 2012 by nikifor

I’ve been recently reading Michal Zalewski’s “The Tangled Web”, a book which tries to map the whole security landscape around browsers and Web applications in about 300 pages… it does a pretty good job 🙂 Now, in Chapter 9, he … Continue reading →

Posted in Breaking stuff | 1 Comment

El cheapo hosting, le open redirect…

Posted on March 14, 2012 by nikifor

Did you know that if you use a popular cheap web hosting product and you haven’t changed the default error pages of your sites, you are most likely hosting an open redirect? If not, read on 🙂 Suppose for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Breaking stuff | Leave a comment