J. Alex Halderman

» curriculum vitae Research and advising

My research focuses on computer security and privacy, with an emphasis on problems that broadly impact society and public policy. Topics that interest me include software security, network security, security measurement, privacy and anonymity, election cybersecurity, censorship resistance, computer forensics, and online crime. I'm also interested in the interaction of technology with law and policy, politics, and international affairs.

Members of my lab include: Braden Crimmins, Erik Chi, and Dhanya Narayanan. Alumni include: Allison McDonald, Matthew Bernhard, Benjamin VanderSloot, David Adrian, Zakir Durumeric, Drew Springall, Eric Wustrow, James Kasten, Max Froehlich, Rose Howell, Steve Sprecher, Travis Finkenauer, Scott Wolchok, Mingye Chen, Nakul Bajaj, Kartikeya Kandula, Gabrielle Beck, Ben Burgess, Carson Hoffman, Ariana Mirian, Deepak Kumar, Josiah Walker. Colleen Swanson, Will Scott.

» past semesters Teaching

Fall 2024 — EECS 388: Introduction to Computer Security

Fall 2024 — EECS 498.8: Election Cybersecurity

Coursera — Securing Digital Democracy (massive online course)

» all publications Selected publications

DVSorder: Ballot Randomization Flaws Threaten Voter Privacy  (site) Braden Crimmins, Dhanya Narayanan, Drew Springall, and J. Alex Halderman
33rd USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’24, Philadelphia, August 2024 — Best paper award

The Antrim County 2020 Election Incident: An Independent Forensic Investigation J. Alex Halderman
31st USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’22, Boston, August 2022 — Best paper award

OpenVPN is Open to VPN Fingerprinting Diwen Xue, Reethika Ramesh, Arham Jain, Michalis Kallitsis, J. Alex Halderman, Jedidiah R. Crandall, and Roya Ensafi
31st USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’22, Boston, August 2022 — Best paper award — Internet Defense Prize

Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices J. Alex Halderman and Drew Springall
Expert report submitted on behalf of plaintiffs Donna Curling, et al. in Curling v. Raffensperger, Civil Action No. 1:17-CV-2989-AT, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, July 1, 2021 — blog post; CISA advisory

Can Voters Detect Malicious Manipulation of Ballot Marking Devices? Matthew Bernhard, Allison McDonald, Henry Meng, Jensen Hwa, Nakul Bajaj, Kevin Chang, and J. Alex Halderman
41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
Oakland ’20, San Francisco, May 2020 — Best student paper award

Let’s Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web Josh Aas, Richard Barnes, Benton Case, Zakir Durumeric, Peter Eckersley, Alan Flores-López, J. Alex Halderman, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, James Kasten, Eric Rescorla, Seth Schoen, and Brad Warren
26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
CCS ’19, London, November 2019

DROWN: Breaking TLS using SSLv2  (site) Nimrod Aviram, Sebastian Schinzel, Juraj Somorovsky, Nadia Heninger, Maik Dankel, Jens Steube, Luke Valenta, David Adrian, J. Alex Halderman, Viktor Dukhovni, Emilia Käsper, Shaanan Cohney, Susanne Engels, Christof Paar, and Yuval Shavitt
25th USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’16, Austin, TX, August 2016 — Pwnie Award for best crypto attack

Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice  (site) David Adrian, Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Zakir Durumeric, Pierrick Gaudry, Matthew Green, J. Alex Halderman, Nadia Heninger, Drew Springall, Emmanuel Thomé, Luke Valenta, Benjamin VanderSloot, Eric Wustrow, Santiago Zanella-Béguelin, and Paul Zimmermann
22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
CCS ’15, Oct. 2015; reprinted in Commun. ACM, 2019 — Best paper award

Neither Snow nor Rain nor MITM: An Empirical Analysis of Email Delivery Security Zakir Durumeric, David Adrian, Ariana Mirian, James Kasten, Elie Bursztein, Nicholas Lidzborski, Kurt Thomas, Vijay Eranti, Michael Bailey, and J. Alex Halderman
15th ACM Internet Measurement Conference
IMC ’15, Tokyo, October 2015 — Applied Networking Research Prize

The Matter of Heartbleed  (site) Zakir Durumeric, Frank Li, James Kasten, Johanna Amann, Jethro Beekman, Mathias Payer, Nicolas Weaver, David Adrian, Vern Paxson, Michael Bailey, and J. Alex Halderman
14th ACM Internet Measurement Conference
IMC ’14, Vancouver, November 2014 — Best paper award

ZMap: Fast Internet-wide Scanning and its Security Applications  (site) Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, and J. Alex Halderman
22nd USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’13, Washington, D.C., August 2013

Mining Your Ps and Qs: Widespread Weak Keys in Network Devices  (site) Nadia Heninger, Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, and J. Alex Halderman
21st USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’12, Bellevue, WA, August 2012 — Best paper award — Test of time award

Telex: Anticensorship in the Network Infrastructure  (site) Eric Wustrow, Scott Wolchok, Ian Goldberg, and J. Alex Halderman
20th USENIX Security Symposium
Sec ’11, San Francisco, August 2011 — PET award runner-up

Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines  (video) Scott Wolchok, Eric Wustrow, J. Alex Halderman, Hari K. Prasad, Arun Kankipati, Sai Krishna Sakhamuri, Vasavya Yagati, and Rop Gonggrijp
17th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
CCS ’10, Chicago, October 2010

Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys  (video) J. Alex Halderman, Seth Schoen, Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, William Paul, Joseph A. Calandrino, Ariel Feldman, Jacob Appelbaum, and Edward W. Felten
17th USENIX Security Symposium — Best student paper award
Sec ’08, San Jose, CA, August 2008; reprinted in Commun. ACM, May 2009