I'm an Assistant Professor (lecturer) at Newcastle University.
My main research interests include information security, privacy, and cryptography, with a focus on:
Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning (such as Federated Learning) and AI
Bank and Payment Fraud/Scam
Cryptanalysis
Financial Technology (FinTech)
Developing Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing, such as:
Private Set Intersection (PSI)
Secure Multi-party Computation (MPC)
Time-lock Encryptions/Puzzles
Oblivious Transfer
Blockchain and its Applications
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Verifiable Computation
Smart Contracts' Design, Implementation, and Applications
Cloud computing's Security
Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing
Improving the efficiency of cryptographic protocols with the use of data structures, including
Algebraic structures such as polynomial representations
Hash tables
Bloom filters
Merkle tree
Open Positions:
* I seek talented researchers to join my team at Newcastle University, either as PhD students or post-doctoral research fellows. If you are interested, please email me your CV along with a brief research proposal.
Awards:
The White House and UK Government Award: Our team has been awarded the joint FIRST PRIZE of the UK-US Privacy Enhancing Technology Prize Challenge (2023). Also, our project, called STARLIT, has been cited by both the White House and UK Government websites.
Euan Minto Prize: awarded to the author of the best paper authored by a research student in the Computer Science Department (University of Strathclyde, 2015).
Nominated for the “Staff Excellence Awards” (University of Gloucestershire, 2021).
My work can be categorised into:
(a) Research (theoretical & applied): designing provable cryptographic protocols,
(b) Software engineering: developing new (decentralised) cryptographic applications and smart contracts.
This diagram outlines my work.
Education/Academic qualification:
- PhD, Secure Multi-party Computation (i.e., PSI), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
- MSc, Computer Science, University of Leeds.
- BSc, Software Engineering, University of Lahijan, Iran.
- Diploma, Mathematics and Physics, Iran.
Latest News:
I will be giving a talk at the CERC'2024 conference in beautiful Kuwait City on the topic of privacy-preserving machine learning (Oct 2024).
Our poster paper has been accepted at CCS'24 (Aug 2024).
"Byzantine Discrepancy Attacks Against Calendar, Set-Intersection, and Nations"
Yvo Desmedt, Alireza Kavousi, Aydin Abadi
My new paper's eprint has been released now (Aug 2024).
"Verifiable Homomorphic Linear Combinations in Multi-Instance Time-Lock Puzzles"
Aydin Abadi
Our paper has been accepted at the ACR "International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security" (AsiaCrypt), 2024 (Aug 2024).
Alireza Kavousi, Aydin Abadi, and Philipp Jovanovic
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Jun 2024)
"Privacy-Preserving Data Deduplication for Enhancing Federated Learning of Language Models"
Aydin Abadi, Vishnu Asutosh Dasu, and Sumanta Sarkar
My new paper's eprint has been released now (Jun 2024)
"Tempora-Fusion: Time-Lock Puzzle with Efficient Verifiable Homomorphic Linear Combination"
Aydin Abadi
It is available through this link.
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Jun 2024)
"Supersonic OT: Fast Unconditionally Secure Oblivious Transfer"
Aydin Abadi and Yvo Desmedt
It is available through this link.
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (Jun 2024)
"Delegated-Query Oblivious Transfer and its Practical Applications"
Yvo Desmedt and Aydin Abadi
It is available through this link.
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (January 2024)
"Starlit: Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning to Enhance Financial Fraud Detection"
Aydin Abadi, Mohammad Naseri, George Theodorakopoulos, Sasi Kumar Murakonda, Suzanne Weller, et al.
It is available via this link.
I will be giving a talk at the Nethemind Summit in Istanbul on the topic of "Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle" (Nov 2023)
I will be giving a talk at the Cybersecurity Education & Research Conference in Kuwait (Oct 2023)
It has been organised by the British Embassy in Kuwait
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (September 2023)
"Decentralised Repeated Modular Squaring Service Revisited: Attack and Mitigation''
Aydin Abadi
It is available here
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (August 2023)
"Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle''
Aydin Abadi, et al.
It is available here
Our new paper's eprint has been released now (July 2023)
"Timed Secret Sharing''
Alireza Kavousi, Aydin Abadi, Philipp Jovanovic
It is available here
I will be giving talks at:
University of Oxford, on the topic of "Time-Release Encryption/Puzzle" (in June 2023)
Royal Holloway University, on the topic of "Private Set Intersection with Reward Mechanisms", in London Crypto Day (in June 2023)
Our new paper's eprint version has been released now (May 2023)
"Safeguarding Physical Sneaker Sale Through a Decentralized Medium''
Marwan Zeggari, Aydin Abadi, Renaud Lambiotte, and Mohamad Kassab
It is available here
Our paper has been accepted at ACM AsiaCCS 2023 (April 2023)
"Payment with Dispute Resolution: a Protocol for Reimbursing Frauds Victims''
Our paper has been accepted at IEEE Euro S&P 2023 (April 2023)
"Recurring Contingent Service Payment''
Our STARLIT project has been mentioned on THE WHITE HOUSE and UK Government websites.
Our team from UCL Computer Science led by myself, Privitar, and Cardiff University has been awarded the joint FIRST PRIZE of the UK-US Privacy Enhancing Technology (PETs) Prize Challenge (March 2023).
"STARLIT" aims to advance the use of PETs in financial fraud prevention.
The UCL press release can be fine here.
Our new project will be funded by the UK national research centre, REPHRAIN (Feb 2023).
"Protecting (Young) Victims of Cryptocurrency Fraud"
Program Committee Membership:
Web-for-Good Workshop 2024.
The Security Track at the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SEC@SAC) 2023 & 2024.
Other Academic Services:
Member of the REPHRAIN College of Peer Reviewers (2022-present).
Technical consultant to Lyzis Labs