CyLab Seminar - Zakir Durumeric
September 14, 2026 12:00PM—1:00PM
Location:
In Person and Virtual - ET
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Panther Hollow Conference Room, Mehrabian Collaborative Innovation Center 4105
Speaker:
ZAKIR DURUMERIC,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
https://zakird.com/
Online hate and harassment shape the day-to-day experiences of many Internet users. Attacks range from anonymous peers breaking into a target's account to leak personal photos and creating non-consensual deepfake sexual imagery to sexual harassment campaigns coordinated across tens of thousands of attackers. In a recent Pew survey, 40% of people worldwide reported personally experiencing harassment and bullying online. In this talk, I argue that there exist parallels between the abuse that users face online and traditional cybersecurity attacks, as well as similarities in how we can build more effective defenses against them. I'll describe these similarities and present several of our recent investigations into understanding attacks online and building tools to protect against them.
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Zakir Durumeric is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Founder/CEO of Censys. His work considers how to defend against threats on the Internet ranging from cybercrime and nation-state prepositioning to harassment, censorship, and disinformation. Durumeric is a mixed-methods empiricist, but is most drawn to building systems to measure complex networked ecosystems and leveraging the resulting visibility to understand real-world behavior, uncover attacks, architect more resilient defenses, and guide public policy. His work has been recognized with a Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, USENIX Security "Test of Time" award, three IRTF Applied Networking Research Prizes, and Best Paper distinctions from USENIX Security, CCS, CSCW, and IMC. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.
In Person and Zoom Participation
⇢ CyLab seminar is open only to partners and CMU faculty, students, and staff.
For More Information:
bethbuch@andrew.cmu.edu