Brief bio
I am an associate professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University (2013--present), and Executive Director of Northeastern's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (2021-2023).
My research is primarily in the areas of distributed systems and
networking, with a recent focus on privacy, security, transparency, and mobile systems.
I am a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the ACM/CRA Computing Innovation Fellowship, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in EECS at Northwestern University.
Outcomes of my research have been covered by the popular press including the New York Times, CBS News, PBS, NPR, the Boston Globe, NBC News, WIRED, Vice News, and Science Magazine, and my research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, Measurement Lab, Google Research, Comcast, Verizon, ARCEP, and the Data Transparency Lab.
Before joining Northeastern, I was a postdoctoral research associate in Tom Anderson's
group at the University of
Washington. This work has been generously funded by the CI Fellows program.
I earned my PhD in Computer Science from Northwestern University in
June, 2010, where I was awarded two Cabell Fellowships and 2009/2010
Outstanding Dissertation in EECS. Prior to that, I graduated from Amherst College, magna cum
laude, in 2002 with a double-major in Physics and French. Since the
job market for francophone physicists dried up, I was left with no
choice but to pursue a career in the textbook-authorship business with
Deitel & Associates. In two
years, I worked on three books, two of which I coauthored. After that,
I decided it was time for me to stop writing about others' work and
start making my own to write about. Fortunately, Fabián saw
fit to entertain this notion.
CV
Also available as a PDF.
Tel. [on request only]
E-mail:
E-mail: choffnes *at* ccs <dot> neu <dot> edu
PGP key
Research Interests
My research interests are broadly in the areas of networking,
distributed systems, and mobile computing. My recent focus is
improving the performance and reliability of Internet and mobile
systems. Please see my research statement
and publications list for details.
Academic Appointments
- Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Executive Director, Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, 2021-present
- Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Associate Professor, 2019-present
- Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Assistant Professor, 2013-2019
- University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Postdoctoral
Research Associate, 2010-2013
Mentor: Tom Anderson
- Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
M.S. in
Computer Science December, 2006
Ph.D. in Computer Science. June,
2010
Dissertation defense
slides, Dissertation document
Advisor: Fabián
E. Bustamante
- Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA
B.A. in Physics &
French, May, 2002
Honors
- Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) Community Contribution Award, 2019.
- DNSSEC paper (USENIX Security 2018) selected for the IRTF's Applied Networking Research Prize
- NSF CAREER Award, 2018.
- Best of CCR Award for FreeBasics paper (presented at SIGCOMM 2018)
- Cisco Network Security Best Paper Award (NDSS 2018)
- QUIC paper (IMC 2017) selected for the IRTF's Applied Networking Research Prize
Selected Publications (full list)
- Daniel J. Dubois, Roman Kolcun Anna Maria Mandalari, Muhammad Talha Paracha, David Choffnes, Hamed Haddadi. When Speakers Are All Ears: Characterizing Misactivations of IoT Smart Speakers. In Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), 2020.
(PDF | Code and data)
- Community Contribution Award Jingjing Ren, Daniel J. Dubois, David Choffnes, Anna Maria Mandalari, Roman Kolcun, Hamed Haddadi. Information Exposure From Consumer IoT Devices: A Multidimensional, Network-Informed Measurement Approach. In Proc. of IMC, 2019. (PDF | Code and data)
- Fangfan Li, Arian Niaki, David Choffnes, Phillipa Gill, Alan Mislove. A Large-Scale Analysis of Deployed Traffic Differentiation Practices. In Proc. of SIGCOMM, 2019. (PDF)
- Applied Networking Research Prize Award Winner Arash Molavi Kakhki, Samuel Jero, David Choffnes, Alan Mislove, Cristina Nita-Rotaru.
Taking a Long Look at QUIC: An Approach for Rigorous Evaluation of Rapidly Evolving Transport Protocols.
In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC'17), London, UK, November 2017. (PDF)
- Jingjing Ren, Ashwin Rao, Martina Lindorfer, Arnaud Legout, David Choffnes. ReCon: Revealing and Controlling PII Leaks in Mobile Network Traffic.
In Proceedings of MobiSys (MobiSys '16), Singapore, June 2016.
[PDF]
Selected Projects and Software Releases (full list)
- Mon(IoT)r Lab
Analyzing privacy and security implications of IoT devices.
(Project page)
- ReCon
Systems and analysis for improving consumer privacy transparency and control when using mobile apps.
(Project page)
- Wehe
System for detecting net neutrality violations from an app on your phone.
(Project page)
- Ono
Plugin for the Vuze (Azureus) BitTorrent client that
uses CDN-based measurements to improve performance and reduce P2P
impact on ISPs. Currently users and growing! (Project
page)
Professional Service
- Associate Editor:
2015-2017: SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review (CCR)
- General Chair:
2018: IMC
- PC Chair:
2019: Passive and Active Measurement (PAM) Conference
2018: Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW)
2016: MobiData Workshop (co-located with MobiSys), Internet-QoE Workshop (co-located with SIGCOMM)
2015: All Things Cellular (co-located with SIGCOMM)
2014: SIGCOMM Poster and Demo, NSF Workshop on Mobile Community Measurement Infrastructure (2014)
- Technical Program Committee member:
2021: PAM, ACM CCS (networking track)
2020: IEEE S&P (Oakland), NDSI, IMC
2019: IMC, CoNEXT
2018: NDSS
2017: NSDI, SIGCOMM, IMC, CoNEXT, MobiSys (External PC)
2016: IMC, TMA, CoNEXT
2015: CoNEXT, TMA, ANCS
2014: Mobisys, CoNEXT, IMC
2013:
SIGCOMM Poster and Demo, CoNEXT Student Workshop, PAM
2012:
PAM
2011: SIGCOMM '11 Workshop on
Measurements "Up the Stack" (W-MUST), ACM MM '11 "Media transport and
sharing"
2010: ICC '11 NGNI
2009: ICCCN 2009 P2PN (Peer-to-Peer Networking
Track)
- Journal Reviewer: ACM/IEEE ToN (Transactions on Networking),
Computer Networks, IEEE TPDS (Transactions on Parallel and Distributed
Systems), IEEE TVT (Transactions on Vehicular Technology)
- Guest Editor:
2015: Elsevier Computer Networks Special Issue on
Machine learning, data mining and Big Data frameworks for network monitoring and troubleshooting
Invited Talks
- 2016: Using the Middle to Meddle with Mobile, at Tufts University.
ReCon: Improving Transparency and Control for Privacy Leaks from Mobile Devices, at Harvard University.
Reverse Traceroute: Update on Public Availability, at AIMS Workshop.
- 2015:
ReCon: Improving Transparency and Control for Privacy Leaks from Mobile Devices, Presented at the Data Transparency Lab Conference
Herd: A Scalable, Traffic Analysis Resistant Anonymity Network for VoIP Systems, Presented at Israeli Networking Day 2015.
Using the Middle to Meddle with Mobile, at the HUJI Networking Summer, WPI, and Harvard.
- 2013: Can you ping me now? Understanding Mobile Performance, Dagstuhl Seminar on Critical Internet Infrastructure.
Improving Transparency and Control in Mobile Networks, IIT Bombay, MSR (Redmond and Beijing), Northeastern, Tsinghusa University, Peking University.
Improving Internet Reliabilty and Performance. UC Riverside, UBC,
UC Irvine, Waterloo, University of Toronto, UCL, MPI-SWS, Northeastern University, UCLA.
- 2012: Internet Path Diagnosis and Repair. MPI-SWS,
Telefonica Research.
- 2011: LIFEGUARD: Practical Repair of Persistent Route Failures.
UW Affiliates, CAIDA
- 2010: Crowdsouring Network Event Detection. Boston
University, Georgetown University, AT&T Labs-- Research, University of
Washington, Microsoft Research
- 2009: Using the Crowd to Monitor the Cloud. McGill
University, Harvard University
- 2008: Designing Distributed Systems to Ensure Sustainable Yield
in the Internet. Amherst College
Selected Popular Press
