About Me

I am a 3rd Year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at University of California, Davis. I am advised by Professor Zubair Shafiq. I’m also part of the ProperData Research Group.

I completed my Bachelors of Technology in Computer Science from The LNM Institute of Information Technology, India in 2020. My undergraduate advisor was Professor Sakthi Balan. I was also briefly co-advised by Dr. Nicolas Kourtellis and Professor Nishanth Sastry.

Broadly, my research interests include Security, Privacy and Applied Machine Learning. My focus is towards making our web more secure and private with the use of ML-based techniques. I carry out web-based large-scale Internet measurements to study and improve the dynamics of web. Specifically, my current research is focused at studying and improving security, transparency, and privacy issues in the online advertising ecosystem.

Updates

Sep 24th, 2024 : My research on “Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs” featured in New Scientist (Preprint).
Aug 21st, 2024 : Serving on PC of USENIX Security 2025. Consider submitting your research.
Jul 17th, 2024 : Invited for a talk on “Uncovering hidden security and privacy threats in online advertising” at UCL.
Jul 17th, 2024 : Presented poster for my research on “Tracking Pixels” at Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2024.
May 21st, 2024 : Presented my research on ad-fraud “dark pooling” at IEEE S&P (“Oakland”).
Mar 13th, 2024 : Received “GGCS PhD Fellowship 2024” ($10K)
Mar 1st, 2024 : Chairing the session on “Program Language Security on the Web” at MADWeb 2024 in San Diego.
Jan 1st, 2024 : Serving on PC of ACM CCS 2024. Consider submitting your research.
Nov 8th, 2023 : Serving on PC of MADWeb 2024. Consider submitting your research.
Sep 28th, 2023 : My research on “Auditing Compliance of Twitter’s Advertising Policies” featured in FastCompany (Preprint).
Sep 18th, 2023 : Attended 3rd ProperData Symposium 2023 at Northeastern University.
Jul 10th, 2023 : My paper accepted to IEEE S&P (“Oakland”) 2024.
May 16th, 2023 : Gave a talk: “Be Aware: Dark Pooling Uncovered” at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O at MGM Las Vegas.
Feb 23rd, 2023 : Selected as a Cybersecurity Summer Fellow at Georgia Tech (CSI).
Sep 22nd, 2021 : Started my Ph.D. at UC Davis.

Selected Publications

Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs
Gianluca Anselmi, Yash Vekaria, Alexander D’Souza, Patricia Callejo, Anna Maria Mandalari, Zubair Shafiq (*joint first-authors)
24th ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), 2024
[PDF] [Code] [Dataset]

The Inventory is Dark and Full of Misinformation: Understanding the Abuse of Ad Inventory Pooling in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain
Yash Vekaria, Rishab Nithyanand, Zubair Shafiq
Accepted at IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (Oakland), 2024
[PDF] [Video] [Code] [Dataset]