Hanif Rahbari Headshot

Hanif Rahbari

Assistant Professor

Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

Office Location
GCI-3739
Office Mailing Address
100 Lomb Memorial Drive Rochester, NY 14623

Hanif Rahbari

Assistant Professor

Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

Education

BS, Sharif University of Technology (Iran); MS, Amirkabir University (Iran); Ph.D., University of Arizona

Bio

Hanif Rahbari received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona (UA) in 2016. His dissertation was a blend of theoretical and experimental (software radio-based) research on transmission fingerprints obfuscation in wireless communications. He joined RIT as an Assistant Professor of Computing Security in Spring 2018 after a short-term affiliation with UA as a Senior Research Specialist and a brief experience as a Postdoctoral Associate at Virginia Tech. His broad research area is wireless security and communications, with emphasis on jamming, privacy-preserving physical layer, connected vehicles security, Internet of Things (IoT), Wi-Fi security, and 5G/6G. He was the lead researcher in developing the first ever modulation obfuscation technique, and the swiftest but highly disruptive jamming attacks against Wi-Fi systems. He also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on wireless security.

For a complete list of Dr. Rahbari's publications, please see http://rahbari.csec.rit.edu/publications


Areas of Expertise

Select Scholarship

Published Conference Proceedings
Zhang, Zhengguang, Hanif Rahbari, and Marwan Krunz. "Expanding the Role of Preambles to Support User-defined Functionality in MIMO-based WLANs." Proceedings of the 39th Annual IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2020), Virtual Conference, July 2020. Ed. N/A. Piscataway, NJ, United States: IEEE, 2020. Print.
Rahbari, Hanif, et al. "Adaptive Demodulation for Wireless Systems in the Presence of Frequency-Offset Estimation Errors." Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM, Honolulu, HI, USA, April 2018. Ed. N/A. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 2018. Print.
Rahbari, Hanif, Jinshan Liu, and Jung-Min (Jerry) Park. "SecureMatch: Scalable Authentication and Key Relegation for IoT Using Physical-Layer Techniques." Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Beijing, China, June 2018. Ed. N/A. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 2018. Print.
Journal Paper
Siyari, Peyman, Hanif Rahbari, and Marwan Krunz. "Lightweight Machine Learning for Efficient Frequency-Offset-Aware Demodulation." IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 37. 11 (2019): 2544-2558. Print.
Full Patent
Krunz, Marwan M., et al. "Systems and Methods for Securing Wireless Communications." U.S. Patent 10,439,755. 8 Oct. 2019.
Krunz, Marwan M., et al. "Systems and Methods for Securing Wireless Communications." U.S. Patent US010069592B1. 4 Sep. 2018.

Currently Teaching

CSEC-490
3 Credits
This is a capstone course for students in the information security and forensics program. Students will apply knowledge and skills learned and work on real world projects in various areas of computing security. Projects may require performing security analysis of systems, networks, and software, etc., devising and implementing security solutions in real world applications.
CSEC-569
3 Credits
The goal of this course is to provide the students with an understanding of the concepts and principles of wireless communications and networks along with their vulnerabilities and security protocols. In addition, the students will gain practical experience via a series of attack/defense lab activities, and a software-defined radio project to explore mechanisms for analyzing and/or securing modern wireless networks. The course begins with a primer on wireless security concepts from a physical-layer perspective. It then covers various generations of security protocols for IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) systems, security of cellular networks, security of wireless protocols for Internet-of-Things (IoT), security of connected vehicles communications, and other selected trending topics.
CSEC-669
3 Credits
The goal of this course is to provide the students with an understanding of the concepts and principles of wireless communications and networks along with their vulnerabilities and security protocols. In addition, the students will gain practical experience via a series of attack/defense lab activities, a literature review on a selected topic, and a hands-on software-defined radio project to explore mechanisms for analyzing and/or securing modern wireless networks. The course begins with a primer on wireless security concepts from a physical-layer perspective. It then covers various generations of security protocols for IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) systems, security of cellular networks, security of wireless protocols for Internet-of-Things (IoT), security of connected vehicles communications, and other selected trending topics.
CSEC-769
3 Credits
This course focuses on security in current and emerging systems and protocols of the modern wireless ecosystems, aiming at advancing students’ understanding of these systems while providing an insight into state-of-the-art wireless security research trends. The course covers a primer on wireless communications and introduces prominent wireless systems and their security protocols. Along with reviewing research approaches in wireless security, students then study and discuss several recent papers on current topics, including Wi-Fi and cellular networks security; physical-layer security; security of wireless protocols for IoT, connected vehicles, and GPS; and other selected topics. Students will also practice the steps of a research process by completing a small project, from critically reviewing the literature to evaluating a novel idea on a hardware testbed, and finally presenting their findings.

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