NIDS Lab
Networked Intelligence and Distributed Security · Wayne State University
Our vision is to advance the design and security of networked and distributed systems through cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. We develop innovative technologies that ensure robust, scalable, and secure knowledge convergence across various platforms - fostering safer cyber environments that promote scientific and technological progress.
Research Areas
Probabilistic (Sketch) Algorithms
We design lightweight probabilistic data structures including counting sketches and HyperLogLog for high-speed network measurement. Our work covers diffusion model-based inference for slow-and-low threat detection, noise minimization in spread estimation, and per-flow systematic sampling via sketch saturation events.
Emerging Infrastructure
We offload security functions directly onto programmable network hardware using P4. Our systems include a high-quality per-flow feature extractor for security-aware data planes, a distributed in-network data collection system for enhanced attack detection, a robust counting sketch for data-plane intrusion detection, and a scalable dynamic ACL enforcement mechanism.
Malware Analysis
We study the robustness and limitations of ML-based malware detectors. Our work covers adversarial example detection in CFG-based classifiers, fine-grained hierarchical malware classification with deep learning, systematic robustness evaluation of IoT malware detectors, and exposing failures under concept drift.
AI & ML Applications
We develop and explain AI/ML models for security and privacy. Our contributions include AttCAT, an attention-based explanation method for Transformers, DFD, an adversarial learning defense against website fingerprinting, and Seq2Seq-based untargeted code authorship evasion.
Selected Publications
ISOC NDSS 2025
USENIX Security 2024
Current Members
SM
Seyed Mohammad Mehdi Mirnajafizadeh
Ph.D. Student
Joined 2022
FK
Fatima Kamal Khaja
Ph.D. Student
Joined 2024
Alumni
- Ashwin Raam Sethuram (2024) → WSU, Industrial Engineering, Ph.D. Program