My main research interests include information security, privacy, and cryptography, with a focus on:
Bank and Payment Fraud/Scam.
Cryptanalysis.
Developing Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) such as:
Private Set Intersection (PSI)
Secure Multi-party Computation (MPC)
Time-lock Encryptions/Puzzles
Blockchain and its Applications
Verifiable Computation
Smart Contracts' Design, Implementation, and Applications
Cloud computing's Security
Improving the efficiency of cryptographic protocols with the use of data structures, including
Algebraic structures such as polynomial representations
Hash tables
Bloom filters
Merkle tree
Awards:
The White House and UK Government Award: Our team has been awarded the joint FIRST PRIZE of the UK-US Privacy Enhancing Technology Prize Challenge (2023). Also, our project, called STARLIT, has been cited by both the White House and UK Government websites.
Euan Minto Prize: awarded to the author of the best paper authored by a research student in the Computer Science Department (University of Strathclyde, 2015).
Nominated for the “Staff Excellence Awards” (University of Gloucestershire, 2021).
My work can be categorised into:
(a) Research (theoretical & applied): designing provable cryptographic protocols,
(b) Software engineering: developing new (decentralised) cryptographic applications and smart contracts.
This diagram outlines my work.
Education/Academic qualification:
- PhD, Secure Multi-party Computation (i.e., PSI), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
- MSc, Computer Science, University of Leeds.
- BSc, Software Engineering, University of Lahijan, Iran.
- Diploma, Mathematics and Physics, Iran.
Latest News:
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (January 2024)
"Starlit: Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning to Enhance Financial Fraud Detection"
Aydin Abadi, Mohammad Naseri, Steven J. Murdoch, George Theodorakopoulos, Sasi Kumar Murakonda, Suzanne Weller, et al.
It is available via this link.
I will be giving a talk at the Nethemind Summit in Istanbul on the topic of "Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle" (Nov 2023)
I will be giving a talk at the Cybersecurity Education & Research Conference in Kuwait (Oct 2023)
It has been organised by the British Embassy in Kuwait
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (September 2023)
"Decentralised Repeated Modular Squaring Service Revisited: Attack and Mitigation''
Aydin Abadi and Steven J. Murdoch
It is available here
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (August 2023)
"Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle''
Aydin Abadi, Steven J. Murdoch, et al.
It is available here
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (July 2023)
"Timed Secret Sharing''
Alireza Kavousi, Aydin Abadi, Philipp Jovanovic
It is available here
I will be giving talks at:
University of Oxford, on the topic of "Time-Release Encryption/Puzzle" (in June 2023)
Royal Holloway University, on the topic of "Private Set Intersection with Reward Mechanisms", in London Crypto Day (in June 2023)
Our new paper's eprint version has been released now (May 2023)
"Safeguarding Physical Sneaker Sale Through a Decentralized Medium''
Marwan Zeggari, Aydin Abadi, Renaud Lambiotte, and Mohamad Kassab
It is available here
Our paper has been accepted at ACM AsiaCCS 2023 (April 2023)
"Payment with Dispute Resolution: a Protocol for Reimbursing Frauds Victims''
Aydin Abadi and Steven J. Murdoch
Our paper has been accepted at IEEE Euro S&P 2023 (April 2023)
"Recurring Contingent Service Payment''
Aydin Abadi, Steven J. Murdoch, and Thomas Zacharias
Our STARLIT project has been mentioned on THE WHITE HOUSE and UK Government websites.
Our team from UCL Computer Science (Prof. Steven Murdoch and Aydin Abadi), Privitar, and Cardiff University has been awarded the joint FIRST PRIZE of the UK-US Privacy Enhancing Technology (PETs) Prize Challenge (March 2023).
"STARLIT" aims to advance the use of PETs in financial fraud prevention.
The UCL press release can be fine here.
Our new project will be funded by the UK national research centre, REPHRAIN (Feb 2023).
"Protecting (Young) Victims of Cryptocurrency Fraud"
Aydin Abadi and Steven J. Murdoch
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Jan 2023).
"Earn While You Reveal: Private Set Intersection that Rewards Participants''
Aydin Abadi and Steven J. Murdoch
It is available here
We have been teaching "Private Set Intersection" (PSI) within our module called Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) (2021--2023).
Aydin Abadi, Steven Murdoch
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Aug 2022).
"Glass-Vault: A Generic Transparent Privacy-preserving Exposure Notification Analytics Platform''
Lorenzo Martinico, Aydin Abadi, Thomas Zacharias, and Thomas Win
It is available here
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Aug 2022).
"A Forward-secure Efficient Two-factor Authentication Protocol''
Steven J. Murdoch and Aydin Abadi
It is available here
Our paper has been accepted at FC 2022.
"Multi-party Updatable Delegated Private Set Intersection''
Aydin Abadi, Changyu Dong, Steven J. Murdoch, and Sotirios Terzis
It is available here.
Program Committee Membership:
Other Academic Services:
Member of UCL Computer Science Research Ethics Committee (2022-present).
Member of the REPHRAIN College of Peer Reviewers (2022-present).
Technical consultant to Lyzis Labs