Bushra Sabir

Introduction

Cybersecurity Research Scientist | AI & Adversarial Machine Learning | Secure AI | CSIRO’s Data61

With over 14 years of experience in AI, cybersecurity, and secure software systems, I specialise in Adversarial Machine Learning and its applications in cyber defence, networking, software engineering and security-critical infrastructures. Currently, I work as a Cybersecurity Research Scientist at CSIRO’s Data61, where I contribute to multiple projects and grants at the intersection of AI, Cybersecurity, Networking, and Software Engineering. Prior to this, I completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship, focusing on adversarial attacks on 6G AI-enabled Spectrum Management systemsand secure code generation. My PhD, supported by a Data61 scholarship and awarded a Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence, focused on securing machine learning models against advanced threats such as data exfiltration attacks. A Gold Medallist in my Master’s and top of my class in Software Engineering during my Bachelor's, I bring a strong academic foundation. I have published in top-tier venues including IEEE TDSC, NAACL, MSR, and ACM Computing Surveys. Before joining Data61, I spent six years as a Senior Lecturer and two years in software engineering roles, providing me with deep cross-functional insight across research, teaching, and industry deployment.

Research Highlights

Soft Skills: Technical Paper Writing | Supervision | Collaboration | Conflict Management | Effective Communication

Education Highlights

PhD in Computer Science (2018-2023)

Institution: The University of Adelaide, CSIRO DATA61, Australia
Thesis Title: Towards Robust Machine Learning-based Cybersecurity: Investigating Adversarial Evasion Attacks in Data Exfiltration Systems
GPA/ Award: Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence, Data61 Scholarship Holder

Masters in Software Engineering (2010-2013)

Institution: National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
Thesis Title: Automated Scene Analysis Using Structural and Motion Information.
GPA/ Award: 4.0/4.0, Presidents Gold Medal

Bachelor’s in Software Engineering (2006 –2010)

Institution: National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
Thesis Title: Biological Inspired Determining of Salient Objects (BIDSO)
GPA/ Award: 3.62/4.0, 2nd position holder in UG course, Scholarship holder for securing more than 3.5 GPA

Journal Publications

Bushra Sabir, Muhammad Ali Babar, Alsharif Abuadbba, “Explainability-driven Defence for Adversarial Examples in Transformer-based Text Classification”, Transaction of Security and Privacy 2024, [Core Ranking: A | Status: Major Revision Submitted].
Bushra Sabir, David Nguyen, Nan Wu, Shuiqiao Yang, Sharif Abuadbba, Ding Ming, Wei Ni, Hajime Suzuki, Shangqi Lai, “AI/ML Spectrum Management and Adversarial Radio Characterisation: A Systemaitc Literature Survey on AI-Enabled Spectrum Management for 6G”, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (2024) [IF: 34.4 | Status: Revision in process]
Shigang Liu, Bushra Sabir, Seung Ick Jang, Yuval Kansal, Yansong Gao, Kristen Moore, Alsharif Abuadbba, Surya Nepal “SecCodeAgent: A Prompt-Driven Agent for Secure Code Generation”, (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.14321), [Status: Submitted to TIFs].
Abuadbba, Alsharif, Nicholas Rhodes, Kristen Moore, Bushra Sabir, Shuo Wang, and Yansong Gao. "Deepisign-g: Generic watermark to stamp hidden dnn parameters for self-contained tracking." arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.01260 (2024).
Bushra Sabir, M. Ali Babar, Raj Gaire and Alsharif Abuadbba. "Reliability and Robustness analysis of Machine Learning based Phishing URL Detectors”, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2022) [IF: 7.329 | Core Ranking: A | Status: Published]
Bushra Sabir, Faheem Ullah, M. Ali Babar, and Raj Gaire. "Machine learning for detecting data exfiltration: a review”, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, no. 3 (2021): 1-47. [IF: 16.6, Core Ranking: A* | Status: Published]
Shehzad Khalid, Bushra Sabir, Sohail Jabbar, and Naveen Chilamkurti. "Precise shape matching of large shape datasets using hybrid approach.” Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (2017). [IF: 3.73, Core Ranking: A | Status: Published]
Hassan, Rafia, Ali Rizwan, Sadaf Farhan, and Bushra Sabir, "Comparative study of conventional and satellite based agriculture information system.", International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering 11, no. 3 (2017): 341-346.[IF: 0.89 | Status: Published]

Conference Papers

Bushra Sabir, Seung Ick Jang, Alsharif Abuadbba, Ding Ming, Wei Ni, Hajime Suzuki, Surya Nepal “AdvPilotNet: Adversarial Attack Pilot Transmission targetting One-Bit ADC Systems for Channel Estimation", [Status: To be Submitted].
Bushra Sabir, Shigang Liu, Seung Ick Jang, Yansong Gao, Kristen Moore, Alsharif Abuadbba, Surya Nepal “Does Teaming-Up LLMs Improve Secure Code Generation? A Comprehensive Evaluation with Multi-LLMSecCodeEval”, [Status: Submitted to ASIACCS].
Nguyen Khoi Tran, Bushra Sabir, Muhammad Ali Babar, Nini Cui, Mehran Abolhasan and Justin Lipman, “ProML: A Decentralised Platform for Provenance Management of Machine Learning Software Systems”, 16th European Conference on Software Architecture (2022). [Core Ranking: A | Status: Published Nominated for: Best Paper Award]
Bushra Sabir, M. Ali Babar, and Raj Gaire. "Reinforce Bug: A framework to generate adversarial textual examples.", In the Proceedings of the 2021 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies [Core Ranking: A | Status: Published]
Le.Triet Huynh Minh, Bushra Sabir, and M. Ali Babar. "Automated software vulnerability assessment with concept drift.", 2019 IEEE/ACM 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR). IEEE, 2019. [Core Ranking: A | Status: Published]
Bushra Sabir and Mr Zuhaib Musaddiq. "Heuristic Based Labelling Using Edgelet Based Contour Detection for Low Resolution Small to Medium Scaled Monocular Pedestrian Detection.", In Proceedings of the 2015 17th UKSIM-AMSS International Conference on Modelling and Simulation, pp. 275-280. 2015. [Status: Published]

Experience

Research Scientist (Full-Time | March 2025- Present)

· Organization: Distributed Systems Security | CSIRO's Data61, Australia

· Job Responsibilities: Writing proposal for grants, working on research projects, supervision, writing and publishing technical papers, improving science excellence, collaborating, and developing world-class research.

Postdoctoral Research (Full-Time | May 2023- March 2025)

· Organization: Distributed Systems Security | CSIRO's Data61, Australia

· Job Responsibilities: Working on research projects, supervision, writing and publishing technical papers, improving science excellence, collaborating, and developing world-class research.

· Awards: Non-cash reward for your praiseworthy achievement in the SCS Biannual Awards, Non-cash reward in recognition of alignment to the CSIRO value of collaboration.

Teaching Assistant (Part-Time | May 2022- April 2023)

· Organization: Department of Computer Science | University of Adelaide, Australia

· Job Responsibilities: Conducting Python Lab for Master of Cyber Security and Data Science students, delivering tutorials, marking the assignments based on the rubrics, collaborating with tutor based on students feedback to improve the course content.

Senior Lecturer (Full-Time | Jan 2014- Jun 2018)

· Organization: Dept of Computer Engineering | Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

· Job Responsibilities: Conducting lectures and lab related to software engineering courses, creating assessments, and marking the students based on the course Rubrics, developing, and maintaining lab manuals, supervising undergraduate final year projects, participating, and organizing conference and national student events.

· Award: Recognition for arranging BYTE (a national talent program) and its website development.

Lecturer (Full-Time | Feb 2013 to Jan 2014)

· Organization: Dept of Computer Science | Iqra University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Software Engineer (Full-Time | Feb 2011- Oct 2012)

· Organization: R&D Lab MCS | National Radio Telecommunication Cooperation (NRTC), Haripur, Pakistan.

· Job Responsibilities: Analysing user requirements, reviewing existing software and proposing improvements, implementing the improvements using C++ and testing code periodically, developing software simulation for testing results, analysing the results.

Projects

Post-Doctoral Project Titles

· Adversarial Attacks and Defences for AI Spectrum Management and Adversarial Radio Characterisation in 6G

· Secure Code Intelligence: Towards Secure Large Language Model for Code Generation

Supervision Project Titles

· Security Assessment of Large Language Models

· Security Alignment for Large Language Models for Code Generation

· Secure Machine Learning (Defence against word-level evasion attack)

· Universal Evasion Perturbation Attacks on Deep Learning Models

· Accountable Machine Learning

· Secure Machine Learning Against Denial of Service Induced by Poisoning Attacks

· Short Text Spam Detection (Twitter)

· Automated Lung nodule detection (Co-supervisor)

· Intelligent Eye (Crowd Density, activity recognition with firearm detection)

· Smart Traffic Congestion Control and Ambulance Detection System

· Power Management Based on the Face Detection

· Cursive Handwriting Recognition using Slant and Skew Detection

PRESENTATIONS

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