School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Faculty Syed Taha Ali

Syed Taha Ali

Associate Professor
Summary

I am Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS) in Islamabad. I graduated with a BS in Electronics Engineering from GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, followed by a Masters of Engineering Science from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). I did my PhD, also from UNSW, under the supervision of Vijay Sivaraman and Diet Ostry. My research consisted of devising lightweight security solutions for bodyworn healthcare devices. I have about three years industry experience, working at WorldCALL Broadband Ltd., in various engineering roles. As a researcher, I’ve worked at CSIRO and UNSW on projects including green WiFi, software-defined networks, and data forensics, and, more recently at Newcastle University, in Feng Hao‘s group, where I worked on secure election protocols and cryptocurrencies. On the side, I sometimes contribute reviews and articles to local media (DAWN, Express Tribune, etc.).

Academic Background
PhD (Network Security) University of New South Wales July 01, 2008 - June 06, 2012
Honours and Awards
Publications
False data injection attacks on networked control systems September 26, 2023 Journal of Control and Decision - Pages 1-10
Cerberus: A Blockchain-Based Accreditation and Degree Verification System August 01, 2023 IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems - Volume: 10, Issue: 4, Page(s): 1503-1514, INSPEC Accession Number: 23515488
Merging engine implementation for intra-frame sharing in multi-tenant virtual passive optical networks April 01, 2023 Journal of Optical Communications and Networking - Volume:15, Issue:4, Page:209-218
A First Look at Private Communications in Video Games using Visual Features April 27, 2021 Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies - Volume 2021 (3), Pages 433–452
Secure Opportunistic Contextual Logging for Wearable Healthcare Sensing Devices March 01, 2021 IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing - Volume 18, Issue 2, Pages 753-764
Forensic Verification of Health Data from Wearable Devices using Anonymous Witnesses November 01, 2020 IEEE Internet of Things Journal - Volume 7, Issue 11, Pages 10745-10762
An Overview of End-to-End Verifiable Voting Systems September 30, 2020 Book on Real-World Electronic Voting: Design, Analysis and Deployment - 1st Edition, Chapter 8,
ZombieCoin 2.0: managing next-generation botnets using Bitcoin August 01, 2018 International Journal of Information Security - Vol:17, Pages411–422
SRoWM: Smart Review on Wormhole Mitigation December 30, 2017 International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security - Volume: 17, Issue: 12, Pages 178-187
A Survey of Securing Networks Using Software Defined Networking September 01, 2015 IEEE Transactions on Reliability - Volume:64, Issue:3, Page:1086-1097
Greening residential Wi-Fi networks under centralized control March 01, 2015 IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing - Volume:14, Issue:3, Page:552-564
Eliminating reconciliation cost in secret key generation for body-worn health monitoring devices December 01, 2014 IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing - Volume:13, Issue:12, Page:2763-2776
Securing first-hop data provenance for bodyworn devices using wireless link fingerprints December 01, 2014 IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security - Volume:9, Issue:12, Page:2193-2204
Authentication of lossy data in body-sensor networks for cloud-based healthcare monitoring June 01, 2014 Future Generation Computer Systems - Volume:35, Page:80-90
Secure key loss recovery for network broadcast in single-hop wireless sensor networks August 01, 2010 Ad Hoc Networks - Volume:8, Issue:6, Page:668-679
Conferences
A Game of Forms: a Decade of Rigged Elections in Pakistan July 08, 2024 - July 12, 2024 Syed Taha Ali, Hassan Mahmood, Ronan McDermott, 4th Annual Virtual Electoral Integrity Conference
End-to-end verifiable voting for developing countries - what’s hard in Lausanne is harder still in Lahore October 05, 2022 - October 07, 2022 Hina Binte Haq, Syed Taha Ali, Ronan McDermott, EVoteID
Pakistan's Internet Voting Experiment October 01, 2019 - October 04, 2019 Hina Binte Haq, Ronan McDermott, Syed Taha Ali, Fourth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting E-Vote-ID 2019
Navigating the Cryptocurrency Landscape: An Islamic Perspective November 14, 2018 - November 15, 2018 Hina Binte Haq, Syed Taha Ali, 6th International Conference on Islam and Liberty
End to End Security is Not Enough March 20, 2018 - March 22, 2018 Dylan Clarke, Syed Taha Ali, Cambridge International Workshop on Security Protocols
Why Preventing a Cryptocurrency Exchange Heist Isn?t Good Enough March 19, 2018 - March 21, 2018 Patrick McCorry, Malte Moser, Syed Taha Ali, Cambridge International Workshop on Security Protocols
Secure lightweight context-driven data logging for bodyworn sensing devices April 26, 2017 - April 28, 2017 Muhammad Siddiqi, Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, 2017 5th International Symposium on Digital Forensic and Security (ISDFS)
Bitcoin: Perils of an unregulated global P2P currency March 31, 2015 - April 02, 2015 Syed Taha Ali, Dylan Clarke, Patrick McCorry, Cambridge International Workshop on Security Protocols
ZombieCoin: Powering next-generation botnets with bitcoin January 26, 2015 - January 30, 2015 Syed Taha Ali, Patrick McCorry, Peter Hyun-Jeen Lee, Feng Hao, International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2015
Improving Secret Key Generation Performance for On-Body Devices November 07, 2012 - November 08, 2012 Linjia Yao, Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Diethelm Ostry, 6th International ICST Conference on Body Area Networks
Authentication of lossy data in body-sensor networks for healthcare monitoring June 18, 2012 - June 21, 2012 Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Diethelm Ostry, 2012 9th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON)
Decorrelating secret bit extraction via channel hopping in body area networks June 09, 2012 - June 12, 2012 Linjia Yao, Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Diethelm Ostry, 2012 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications - (PIMRC)
Zero reconciliation secret key generation for body-worn health monitoring devices April 16, 2012 - April 18, 2012 Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Diethelm Ostry, 5th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
Secret key generation rate vs. reconciliation cost using wireless channel characteristics in body area networks December 11, 2010 - June 13, 2010 Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Diethelm Ostry, 2010 IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing
A per-hop security scheme for highly dynamic wireless sensor networks October 12, 2009 - October 15, 2009 Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Ashay Dhamdhere, 2009 IEEE 6th International Conference on Mobile Adhoc and Sensor Systems
A key loss recovery scheme for secure broadcasts in wireless sensor networks September 15, 2008 - September 18, 2008 Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman, Ashay Dhamdhere, Diethelm Ostry, 2008 IEEE 19th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications
Research Associate Newcastle University February 05, 2015 - February 07, 2017