Nabil Schear
About Me
I'm currently pursuing my PhD degree in computer science in the area of systems/networking/security at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign working with Nikita Borisov. In 2007, I received an MS degree in systems and networking at UCSD working with Amin Vahdat. I got a BS in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2004. While there I was an undergraduate research assistant for Wenke Lee. Since 2001, I have been employed at Los Alamos National Lab where I work as a security researcher.
My areas of research include covert communications, system and network forensics, and traffic analysis. While at UCSD I worked on a project called Glavlit which is a system to prevent information leaks from protected networks. I also worked on a data policy management system called Neon. My latest work at UIUC is on traffic analysis prevention and high-speed intrusion detection. I have a great deal of code that has supported the research described below in my publications. If you are interested in getting a copy, please contact me via email. In the future, I hope to be better about preemptively posting the code for others to use.
I like skiing, theatre, and movies. I also love taking pictures of my new baby daughter, Alina. Check out my pictures site at smugmug.
Publications and Other Work
MAVMM: Lightweight and Purpose Built VMM for Malware Analysis,
Anh Nguyen, Nabil Schear, HeeDong Jung, Apeksha Godiyal, Samuel T. King, Hai D. Nguyen,
Twenty-Fifth Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, ACSAC 2009,
Honolulu, Hawaii, December 2009.
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Bibtex]
Preventing SSL Traffic Analysis with Realistic Cover Traffic (Poster),
Nabil Schear and Nikita Borisov, 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2009 Poster Session, Chicago, Illinois, November 2009.
[Extended Abstract],
[Poster]
Models of Privacy Preserving Traffic Tunneling,
David M. Nicol and Nabil Schear,
SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International, Sep 2009; vol. 85: pp. 589 - 607.
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Bibtex]
(if you are unable to access a copy of this paper through the
publisher's link, contact me via email.)
High-Speed Matching of Vulnerability Signatures,
Nabil Schear, David R. Albrecht, Nikita Borisov,
11th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 2008
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Publisher],
[Talk],
[Bibtex]
Performance Analysis of Real Traffic Carried with Encrypted Cover Flows,
Nabil Schear and David Nicol, 22nd ACM/IEEE/SCS Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS) ,
Rome, Italy, June 2008.
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Talk],
[Bibtex]
Best Paper Award
The Design and Implementation of Glavlit: A Transparent Data Confinement System,
Nabil Schear,
Master's Thesis,
University of California at San Diego,
2007.
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Bibtex]
Glavlit: Preventing Exfiltration at Wire Speed,
Nabil Schear, Carmelo Kintana, Qing Zhang, and Amin Vahdat,
Proceedings of the 5th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-V),
Irvine, CA, November 2006.
[Abstract],
[PDF],
[Talk],
[Bibtex]
File Scrub is a security and forensics tool used by the US federal government to review files before they are "downgraded" from a classified system to an unclassified system. File Scrub reviews complex file formats like MS Office and PDF files and removes extraneous meta-data from them before a trusted (byte-by-byte) transfer to external media. I've worked on this project at Los Alamos since 2001 as a researcher and developer. I am currently the principle investigator and development lead for this project.
That's it, check back for more details.
Last updated 8-Jan-2010