Saiid, how did you get into cybersecurity?
I studied Computer and Communications Engineering at AUB in Lebanon. We often had to do projects with machine learning or other topics that required some data. I found that I had some skills in extracting data from websites in different ways and writing scrapers and crawlers. At the same time, my father was also involved in cybersecurity in the public sector in Lebanon, which always inspired me to go into this field. The next step was to apply for an internship at EPFL, where I delved into web security specifically. And that is when it kind of took off.
Cybersecurity is a very broad field. What are your research interests?
My first projects were specifically related to extensions and adblockers. I studied web breakage under the influence of web extensions. Then I moved on to browser fingerprinting. During my time at CISPA, I was introduced to this project about authorization problems in requests due to insecure parameters. I am kind of doubling down on authorization and extensions, and trying to get closer to browsers and how they work.
You spent two months at CISPA this summer. What brought you to CISPA?
My advisor at EPFL, Professor Carmela Troncoso, was going on maternity leave. So, she thought it would be a good time for me to spend some time with someone who had a lot of experience with my topics and what I wanted to do. She suggested that I contact Ben Stock and some other people at CISPA. So, I met with Ben and Giancarlo Pellegrino and ended up joining Ben's group to work on this interesting project.
What did you enjoy about your time at CISPA?
I really enjoyed the active environment and the open offices, where you could go and ask deep questions about your own topic, and the lively discussions and the whole energizing vibe, especially of Ben's group. The graduate students I met and became close to are fantastic. I liked the exchange of ideas and the experience I got from Ben and his PhD students. I gained many insights during the weekly meetings we had as a group where we shared what we were doing, which helped me a lot with my research.
What was your biggest take-away from your time at CISPA?
The biggest take-away from my stay at CISPA was being introduced to a lot of pipelines, which means the technical infrastructure to run an experiment and other tools that I would use for my experimental setups. Also, many tips and tricks on how to optimize those setups and how to run experiments at scale. I also started to manage a group of volunteers to help scale some experiments for me. So that is also a nice first experience. Other than that, some general tips on how to write papers and general guidance on what projects to do next were also very useful.
Do you have any idea what direction you would like to take after your PhD?
This is an interesting question because I have been asking myself this since I started my PhD. I think it really depends on where I want to settle. For example, in Switzerland, if I wanted to continue in academia, I would have to go to ETH in Zurich because there is no other option. So, I might consider industry to broaden my options. But if I want to go to Germany or the US, for example, I might also consider academia. So, I keep my options open for now. But one constant factor is that I definitely want to have my own personal side project that I might take into a startup at some point, as a side to my main track, which could be either industry research or academia.
Foosball tournaments are an important part of social activities at CISPA. What was your impression of it?
It was really amazing and I have to tell you the whole story. When I arrived on the first day, Ben told me that foosball was such an integral part of their research routine and that it was basically one of my primary duties. Before that, I think I had played foosball once or twice in my life, very casually. I never got a chance to learn any of the tricks. My first match was against Ben and I got totally destroyed by his skills. That was when I started to get more interested in the different tricks you can do, the different strategies. We started playing almost every day after lunch. I think foosball is a very nice way to get people who might not normally be close to each other to talk and discuss, even across research groups. Over time, I was able to gain some experience, which I am very proud of, and to defend well and score moderately. This helped me during the tournament to keep my goal a bit clean and to get this first prize, which I think is the first prize for the Secure Web Applications Group led by Ben, which I am also very proud of.
Saiid, thanks for the conversation and your time.
