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 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 Related Work

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 12-June-2009