Mujtahid Akon 

a.k.a. Mujtahid Al-Islam Akon

Ph.D. Student (2nd year)

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Pennsylvania State University

W362 Westgate Bldg, University Park, PA 16802

Email: mba5773@psu.edu, mujtahid.akon@gmail.com

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University, currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. Syed Rafiul Hussain. Prior to this, I served as a lecturer in the Department of CSE at BRAC University and gained valuable industry experience as a software engineer (iOS) at Reve Systems.

My research interest lies in security and privacy, with a focus on computer networks and systems, including cellular networks, embedded devices, and the IoT. I aim to address security and privacy concerns by systematically analyzing and developing security technologies for emerging communication systems and protocols, utilizing formal methods, program analysis, software testing, and cryptography. 

My research carrier of 1.5 years has already begun making an impact in the field. My recent research has uncovered significant access control vulnerabilities on the 5G core network, earning me recognition and commendation from the GSMA mobile security research.

I completed my Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. Engg.) from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in September 2017. 

In gratitude to my community, I volunteered as an associate editor at Byapon, a national youth science magazine published bi-monthly, from 2015 to 2022. My role involved promoting science among secondary and higher secondary grade students.

News

Publicatons

Peer-Reviewed Conference

[C2] Abdullah Al Ishtiaq, Sarkar Snigdha Sarathi Das, Syed Md Mukit Rashid, Ali Ranjbar, Kai Tu, Tianwei Wu, Zhezheng Song, Weixuan Wang, Mujtahid Akon, Rui Zhang, Syed Rafiul Hussain, Hermes: Unlocking Security Analysis of Cellular Network Protocols by Synthesizing Finite State Machines from Natural Language Specifications, Accepted for publication on the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium, 2024.
[C1] Mujtahid Akon, Tianchang Yang, Yilu Dong, Syed Rafiul Hussain, Formal Analysis of Access Control Mechanism of 5G Core Network, Accepted for publication at the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2023.


Peer-Reviewed Journal

[J1] Mujtahid Akon, Muntashir Akon, Mohimenul Kabir, M Saifur Rahman, M Sohel Rahman, ADACT: a tool for analysing (dis)similarity among nucleotide and protein sequences using minimal and relative absent words, Bioinformatics, Volume 37, Issue 10, May 2021, Pages 1468–1470