Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Virginia Tech
Google Scholar
Contact
Email: vbimal@vt.edu
Gilbert Place
Room #4302
220 Gilbert Street
Blacksburg, VA 24060
Phone: 540-231-8702
Room #4302
220 Gilbert Street
Blacksburg, VA 24060
Phone: 540-231-8702
My research interests are in security and privacy. I am particularly interested in topics at the intersection of machine learning and security. Three research directions include: (1) Attacks using ML: Investigating how recent developments in ML can be misused for harm. (2) Attacks on ML systems: Understanding vulnerabilities of ML systems and improving robustness. (3) ML for better security/privacy: Leveraging advances in ML to build robust defenses.
I am a recipient of the Distinguished Paper Award (SOUPS 2014), Best Paper Award (COSN 2015), and the AI2000 Most Influential Scholar Award Honorable Mention for being among the top 100 most cited scholars in computer networking from 2009-2019.
I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Before joining VT, I spent ~2 years as a Postdoc in SAND lab (at UCSB). Prior to that, I spent a year as a Researcher at Nokia Bell Labs, Stuttgart.
Our research is supported by CCI, NSF and 4-VA.
August 2025: I am on sabbatical this coming term. If you are looking for speakers, feel free to reach out.
August 2025: New NSF SaTC Medium funding to address data challenges in ML-based security tasks using Generative AI.
July 2025: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
January 2025: Our NeuralCleanse work (IEEE S&P’19) is listed among the Normalized Top-100 Security Papers and also the Top-100 Security papers from 1980 to 2025.
August 2023: Invited to participate in the AI Technology Initiative organized by the Bipartisan Virginia Technology and Innovation Caucus. This initiative is to “explore opportunities, risks, and impacts associated with Artificial lntelligence (AI) and technology use in government processes and decision-making.”
July 2023: Our work on deepfake text detection (IEEE S&P'23 paper) was featured in a CACM article by Neil Savage.
February 2023: New NSF SaTC funding to study security of open-domain chatbots.
November 2022: New TechXpore article about our upcoming IEEE S&P'23 paper.
August 2025: New NSF SaTC Medium funding to address data challenges in ML-based security tasks using Generative AI.
July 2025: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
January 2025: Our NeuralCleanse work (IEEE S&P’19) is listed among the Normalized Top-100 Security Papers and also the Top-100 Security papers from 1980 to 2025.
August 2023: Invited to participate in the AI Technology Initiative organized by the Bipartisan Virginia Technology and Innovation Caucus. This initiative is to “explore opportunities, risks, and impacts associated with Artificial lntelligence (AI) and technology use in government processes and decision-making.”
July 2023: Our work on deepfake text detection (IEEE S&P'23 paper) was featured in a CACM article by Neil Savage.
February 2023: New NSF SaTC funding to study security of open-domain chatbots.
November 2022: New TechXpore article about our upcoming IEEE S&P'23 paper.
I am delighted to work with the following fantastic students:
- Sifat Muhammad Abdullah (PhD, Spring 2021 - Present, published in IEEE S&P'24, IEEE S&P'23, ACSAC'23)
- Xavier Pleimling (PhD, Fall 2024 - Present)
- Nicholas Kong (MS 2024)
- Connor Weeks (MS 2023, published in ACSAC'23)
- Jiameng Pu (PhD 2022, published in IEEE S&P'20, IEEE EuroS&P'20, ACSAC'20, USENIX Security'21, WWW'21, IEEE S&P'23)
- Cristian Vives (MS 2022) -> Software Engineer at CVENT
- Kavya Sundaram (Undergraduate research, published in WWW'21)
- Abdullah Rehman (Undergraduate research + summer intern, published in IEEE S&P'23 )
- Yusuf Elnady (Graduate research + summer intern, 2021 )
- Steve T K Jan (PhD 2020, co-advised with Gang Wang, published in IEEE S&P'20)
- Ibrahim Asadullah Tahmid (Summer intern, published in USENIX Security'21)
- Ahmadreza Azizi (MS 2020, published in USENIX Security'21)
- Tianrui Hu (MS 2020, co-advised with Gang Wang, published in IEEE S&P'20) -> Northeastern University PhD program
- Yoonjin Kim (PhD research intern, summer 2020, published in IEEE S&P'23)
- Neal Mangaokar (Undergraduate researcher 2020, published in IEEE EuroS&P'20, ACSAC'20, USENIX Security'21, WWW'21) -> University of Michigan PhD program
- Lauren Kelly (Undergraduate researcher 2020, published in WWW'21) -> IT Software Engineer, University of North Florida
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We Have a Package for You! A Comprehensive Analysis of Package Hallucinations by Code Generating LLMs
Joseph Spracklen, Raveen Wijewickrama, AHM Nazmus Sakib, Anindya Maiti, Bimal Viswanath, and Murtuza Jadliwala
USENIX Security'25, Seattle, WA, August 2025. To Appear.
Arxiv Code and dataset Distinguished Paper Award
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An Analysis of Recent Advances in Deepfake Image Detection in an Evolving Threat Landscape
Sifat Muhammad Abdullah, Aravind Cheruvu, Shravya Kanchi, Taejoong Chung, Peng Gao, Murtuza Jadliwala and Bimal Viswanath
IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2024, San Francisco, CA, May 2024.
Arxiv Code and dataset
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A First Look at Toxicity Injection Attacks on Open-domain Chatbots
Connor Weeks (co-lead), Aravind Cheruvu (co-lead), Sifat Muhammad Abdullah, Shravya Kanchi, Daphne Yao, and Bimal Viswanath
ACSAC 2023, Austin, Texas, December 2023.
PDF Code and dataset
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Deepfake Text Detection: Limitations and Opportunities
Jiameng Pu, Zain Sarwar, Sifat Muhammad Abdullah, Abdullah Rehman, Yoonjin Kim, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Mobin Javed, and Bimal Viswanath
IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2023, San Francisco, CA, May 2023.
PDF Code and dataset
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T-Miner: A Generative Approach to Defend Against Trojan Attacks on DNN-based Text Classification
Ahmadreza Azizi, Ibrahim Asadullah Tahmid, Asim Waheed, Neal Mangaokar, Jiameng Pu, Mobin Javed, Chandan K. Reddy and Bimal Viswanath
USENIX Security'21, Online, August 2021
PDF (arxiv) Video Code
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Deepfake Videos in the Wild: Analysis and Detection
Jiameng Pu (co-lead), Neal Mangaokar (co-lead), Lauren Kelly, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Kavya Sundaram, Mobin Javed, Bolun Wang, and Bimal Viswanath
WWW'21, Online, April 2021
PDF (arxiv) Video Deepfake dataset
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NoiseScope: Detecting Deepfake Images in a Blind Setting
Jiameng Pu, Neal Mangaokar, Bolun Wang, Chandan K. Reddy, and Bimal Viswanath
ACSAC'20, Online, December 2020
PDF BIBTEX Video Code
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Jekyll: Attacking Medical Image Diagnostics using Deep Generative Models
Neal Mangaokar, Jiameng Pu, Parantapa Bhattacharya, Chandan K. Reddy, and Bimal Viswanath
IEEE EuroS&P 2020, Online, September 2020
PDF BIBTEX Video
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Throwing Darts in the Dark? Detecting Bots with Limited Data using Neural Data Augmentation
Steve T.K. Jan, Qingying Hao, Tianrui Hu, Jiameng Pu, Sonal Oswal, Gang Wang, and Bimal Viswanath
IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2020, Online, May 2020
PDF BIBTEX
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What Happens After You Leak Your Password: Understanding Credential Sharing on Phishing Sites
Peng Peng, Chao Xu, Luke Quinn, Hang Hu, Bimal Viswanath, and Gang Wang
ASIACCS 2019, Auckland, New Zealand, July 2019
PDF BIBTEX
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Neural Cleanse: Identifying and Mitigating Backdoor Attacks in Neural Networks
Bolun Wang, Yuanshun Yao, Shawn Shan, Huiying Li, Bimal Viswanath, Haitao Zheng, and Ben Y. Zhao
IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2019, San Francisco, CA, USA, May 2019
PDF BIBTEX Code
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With Great Training Comes Great Vulnerability: Practical Attacks against Transfer Learning
Bolun Wang, Yuanshun Yao, Bimal Viswanath, Haitao Zheng, and Ben Y. Zhao
USENIX Security 2018, Baltimore, MD, USA, August 2018
PDF BIBTEX Code
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I Spy with My Little Eye: Analysis and Detection of Spying Browser Extensions
Anupama Aggarwal, Bimal Viswanath, Liang Zhang, Saravana Kumar, Ayush Shah, and Ponnurangam Kumaraguru
IEEE EuroS&P 2018, London, UK, April 2018
PDF BIBTEX
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Towards Reliable Application Deployment in the Cloud
Ruichuan Chen, Istemi Ekin Akkus, Bimal Viswanath, Ivica Rimac and Volker Hilt
CoNEXT 2017, Seoul, South Korea, December 2017
PDF BIBTEX
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Sieve: Actionable Insights from Monitored Metrics in Distributed Systems
Jörg Thalheim, Antonio Rodrigues, Istemi Ekin Akkus, Pramod Bhatotia, Ruichuan Chen, Bimal Viswanath, Lei Jiao, Christof Fetzer
Middleware 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 2017
PDF BIBTEX Website Technical report
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Complexity vs. Performance: Empirical Analysis of Machine Learning as a Service
Yuanshun Yao, Zhujun Xiao, Bolun Wang, Bimal Viswanath, Haitao Zheng and Ben Y. Zhao
IMC 2017, London, UK, November 2017
PDF BIBTEX
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Automated Crowdturfing Attacks and Defenses in Online Review Systems
Yuanshun Yao, Bimal Viswanath, Jenna Cryan, Haitao Zheng and Ben Y. Zhao
CCS 2017, Dallas, TX, USA, October 2017
PDF BIBTEX
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Strengthening Weak Identities Through Inter-Domain Trust Transfer
Giridhari Venkatadri, Oana Goga, Changtao Zhong, Bimal Viswanath, Krishna P. Gummadi and Nishanth Sastry
WWW 2016, Montreal, Canada, April 2016
PDF BIBTEX
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Strength in Numbers: Robust Tamper Detection in Crowd Computations
Bimal Viswanath, M. Ahmad Bashir, M. Bilal Zafar, Simon Bouget, Saikat Guha, Krishna P. Gummadi, Aniket Kate, and Alan Mislove
COSN 2015, Stanford University, CA, USA, November 2015
PDF BIBTEX Best Paper Award
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Towards Detecting Anomalous User Behavior in Online Social Networks
Bimal Viswanath, Muhammad Ahmad Bashir, Mark Crovella, Saikat Guha, Krishna P. Gummadi, Balachander Krishnamurthy and Alan Mislove
USENIX Security 2014, San Diego, CA, USA, August 2014
PDF BIBTEX
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Understanding and Specifying Social Access Control Lists
Mainack Mondal, Yabing Liu, Bimal Viswanath, Krishna P. Gummadi and Alan Mislove
SOUPS 2014, Menlo Park, CA, USA, July 2014
PDF BIBTEX Distinguished Paper Award
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Defending Against Large-scale Crawls in Online Social Networks
Mainack Mondal, Bimal Viswanath, Allen Clement, Peter Druschel, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alan Mislove, and Ansley Post
CoNEXT 2012, Nice, France, December 2012
PDF BIBTEX
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Keeping Information Safe from Social Networking Apps
Bimal Viswanath, Emre Kıcıman, and Stefan Saroiu
WOSN 2012, Helsinki, Finland, August 2012
PDF BIBTEX
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Canal: Scaling Social Network-based Sybil Tolerance Schemes
Bimal Viswanath, Mainack Mondal, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alan Mislove, and Ansley Post
EuroSys 2012, Bern, Switzerland, April 2012
PDF BIBTEX
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Understanding and Combating Link Farming in the Twitter Social Network
Saptarshi Ghosh (co-primary author), Bimal Viswanath (co-primary author), Farshad Kooti, Naveen Kumar Sharma, Korlam Gautam, Fabricio Benevenuto, Niloy Ganguly, and Krishna P. Gummadi
WWW 2012, Lyon, France, April 2012
PDF BIBTEX
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Exploring the Design Space of Social Network-based Sybil Defenses (Invited Paper)
Bimal Viswanath, Mainack Mondal, Allen Clement, Peter Druschel, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alan Mislove, and Ansley Post
COMSNETS 2012, Bangalore, India, January 2012
PDF BIBTEX
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Sharing Social Content from Home: A Measurement-driven Feasibility Study
Massimiliano Marcon, Bimal Viswanath, Meeyoung Cha, and Krishna P. Gummadi
NOSSDAV 2011, Vancouver, Canada, June 2011
PDF BIBTEX
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An Analysis of Social Network-based Sybil Defenses
Bimal Viswanath, Ansley Post, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Alan Mislove
SIGCOMM 2010, New Delhi, India, August 2010
PDF BIBTEX
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You Are Who You Know: Inferring User Profiles in Online Social Networks
Alan Mislove, Bimal Viswanath, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Peter Druschel
WSDM 2010, New York, NY, USA, February 2010
PDF BIBTEX
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On the Evolution of User Interaction in Facebook
Bimal Viswanath, Alan Mislove, Meeyoung Cha, and Krishna P. Gummadi
WOSN 2009, Barcelona, Spain, August 2009
PDF Original PDF (with Errata) Errata Note BIBTEX
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CCS (PC: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021)
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USENIX Security (PC: 2025, 2022, 2021, 2020)
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NDSS (PC: 2021, 2020)
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IMC (PC: 2019)
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ACSAC (PC: 2021, 2020, 2019)
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ICWSM (PC: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015)
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CS6604: Foundation Models and Security
Virginia Tech, Spring 2024.
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CS5914: Security Risks of Generative AI
Virginia Tech, Fall 2023.
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CS4274: Secure Computing Capstone
Virginia Tech, Fall 2021, Spring 2023, Spring 2024.
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CS5914: Defending Against ML-powered Adversaries
Virginia Tech, Fall 2022.
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CS6604: Hot Topics in Security and AI
Virginia Tech, Spring 2020, Spring 2022.
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CS5984: Security Analytics
Virginia Tech, Spring 2019, Spring 2021.
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CS4254: Network Architecture & Programming
Virginia Tech, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020.
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Security and Privacy in Social Computing Systems
Saarland University, Summer 2013.
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Deepfake Text Detection: Limitations and Opportunities (IEEE S&P'23)
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Automated Crowdturfing Attacks and Defenses in Online Review Systems (CCS 2017)
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Towards Detecting Anomalous User Behavior in Online Social Networks (Usenix Security 2014)
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Understanding and combating link farming in the Twitter social network (WWW 2012)
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You are who you know: Inferring user profiles in Online Social Networks (WSDM 2010)