Amjad is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech, advised by Dr. Muhammad Ali Gulzar from Virginia Tech and Dr. Zubair Shafiq from UC Davis. His research focuses on using software engineering techniques to tackle internet security and privacy challenges. He is also member of ProperData research group and Co-host at NothingToHide? podcast.
Websites often incorporate third-party code, such as JavaScript, to enhance features, but this code can also track users' online activities, raising privacy concerns. Traditional content blockers struggle to differentiate legitimate functionality from tracking behavior when the code originates from the same source. Amjadās research addresses this challenge by analyzing real-time code execution. He has developed tools and frameworks to capture and study the detailed execution context, including function call stacks and calling contexts. This understanding of context enables precise identification of code segments responsible for tracking. Furthermore, new code variants are generated to maintain the intended functionality while removing tracking components. These context-aware approaches provide an accurate method to detect tracking within complex code, enabling more effective content-blocking tools. Unlike basic filter lists that lack code understanding, Amjad's dynamic analysis frameworks offer a scalable and robust solution tailored to the modern web landscape. His research is paving the way for granular privacy protection without compromising the online experience.
For more: CV [Last updated May'24]
For more: Thesis [Last updated Feb'24]
Blocking Tracking JavaScript at the Function Granularity
Abdul Haddi Amjad, Shaoor Munir, Zubair Shafiq, Muhammad Ali Gulzar
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024
Blocking JavaScript without Breaking the Web: An Empirical Investigation
Abdul Haddi Amjad, Zubair Shafiq, Muhammad Ali Gulzar
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2023
TrackerSift: untangling mixed tracking and functional web resources
Abdul Haddi Amjad, Danial Saleem, Zubair Shafiq , Muhammad Ali Gulzar
Internet Measeurment Conference (IMC) 2021
Revolutionizing Privacy: Blocking Tracking JavaScript at the Function Granularity
Goole (Privacy sandbox team)
Remote, 2023
Not publically available
Demystifying the Mystery of Privacy-Invasive JS Functions
Ad-Filtering Developer Summit
Amsterdam, 2023
What's the next era of content blockers?
Ad-Filtering Developer Summit
Amsterdam, 2022
How to disentangle tracking code from functional?
Ad-Filtering Developer Summit
Remote, 2021
Data Privacy Research Intern
Summer 2023
Worked on Solana NFT token-gating for Web3 brave-talk calls
Graduate Research Assistant
August 2021 to Current
Ads and Privacy Research Engineer Intern
Summer 2022
Worked on testing E2E encryption for brave-talk calls
Educative Answers Technical Lead
May 2018 to May 2021
Ph.D Candidate
August 2021 to Current
Bachelor in Computer Science
August 2017 to August 2021
Co-author and Data Analyst for the JavaScript chapter of the 2024 Web Almanac
Member of the Artifacts Review Committee at PETS 2024
Got travel grant for PoPETS 2023
Got travel grant for IEEE S&P 2023