Dr Georgios Theodorakopoulos

Reader

School of Computer Science and Informatics

My research interests span privacy, security, and (computational) trust in mobile networks.

Privacy is my main current focus, and these are the questions I try to answer:

In what ways do we disclose private information (through smartphone apps, social networks, Internet-enabled devices)?
How can we protect our information without going off the grid (by adding some sort of noise)?
Most importantly, how can we reason concretely and quantitatively about privacy attacks and defences (e.g. in order to provide privacy guarantees, or to monetize private information appropriately)?

Date
Type

2024

Al Lelah, T., Theodorakopoulos, G., Javed, A. and Anthi, E. 2024. Detecting the abuse of cloud services for C&C infrastructure through dynamic analysis and machine learning. Presented at: 2024 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), Washington DC, USA, 22-25 October 20242024 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC). IEEE pp. 1-7., (10.1109/isncc62547.2024.10758940)
Alali, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2024. An RFP dataset for Real, Fake, and Partially fake audio detection. Presented at: Springer 9th International Conference on Cyber Security, Privacy in Communication Networks (ICCS2023), Cardiff, Wales, UK, 11-12 December 2023AI Applications in Cyber Security and Communication Networks. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems Vol. 1032. Springer, (10.1007/978-981-97-3973-8_1)
Alali, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2024. Review of existing methods for generating and detecting fake and partially fake audio. Presented at: 10th ACM International Workshop on Security and Privacy Analytics (IWSPA 2024), Porto, Portugal, 21 June 2024IWSPA '24: Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Workshop on Security and Privacy Analytics. New York, NY, USA: ACM pp. 35-36., (10.1145/3643651.3659894)

2023

Al lelah, T., Theodorakopoulos, G., Javed, A. and Anthi, E. 2023. Machine learning detection of cloud services abuse as C&C Infrastructure. Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy 3(4), pp. 858-881. (10.3390/jcp3040039)
Al lelah, T., Theodorakopoulos, G., Reinecke, P., Javed, A. and Anthi, E. 2023. Abuse of cloud-based and public legitimate services as command-and-control (C&C) infrastructure: a systematic literature review. Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy 3(3), pp. 558-590. (10.3390/jcp3030027)

2022

Subahi, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2022. Automated approach to analyze IoT privacy policies. In: Cagáňová, D. and Horňáková, N. eds. Industry 4.0 Challenges in Smart Cities. Cham: Springer, pp. 163-186., (10.1007/978-3-030-92968-8_12)
Theodorakopoulos, G., Panaousis, E., Liang, K. and Loukas, G. 2022. On-the-fly privacy for location histograms. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 19(1), pp. 566-578. (10.1109/TDSC.2020.2980270)

2021

Bostanipour, B. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2021. Joint obfuscation of location and its semantic information for privacy protection. Computers and Security 107, article number: 102310. (10.1016/j.cose.2021.102310)
Murakonda, S. K., Shokri, R. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2021. Quantifying the privacy risks of learning high-dimensional graphical models. Presented at: 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), virtual, 13-15 April 2021. pp. 2287-2295.

2020

Barati, M., Theodorakopoulos, G. and Rana, O. 2020. Automating GDPR compliance verification for cloud-hosted services. Presented at: 2020 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), Virtual, Canada, 20-22 October 20202020 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC). IEEE pp. 1-6., (10.1109/ISNCC49221.2020.9297309)
Alodhyani, F., Theodorakopoulos, G. and Reinecke, P. 2020. Password managers—it’s all about trust and transparency. Future Internet 12(11), article number: 189. (10.3390/fi12110189)
Xu, Y., Huang, Y., Shao, J. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2020. A flexible n/2 adversary node resistant and halting recoverable blockchain sharding protocol. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience 32(19), article number: e5773. (10.1002/cpe.5773)
Pratomo, B., Burnap, P. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2020. BLATTA: early exploit setection on network traffic with recurrent neural networks. Security and Communication Networks 2020, article number: 8826038. (10.1155/2020/8826038)
Alrayes, F., Abdelmoty, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2020. Modelling perceived risks to personal privacy from location disclosure on online social networks. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 34(1), pp. 150-176. (10.1080/13658816.2019.1654109)
Barati, M., Rana, O., Petri, I. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2020. GDPR compliance verification in Internet of Things. IEEE Access 8, pp. 119697-119709. (10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3005509)
Loukides, G. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2020. Location histogram privacy by sensitive location hiding and target histogram avoidance/resemblance. Knowledge and Information Systems 62, pp. 2613-2651. (10.1007/s10115-019-01432-4)

2019

Subahi, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2019. Detecting IoT user behavior and sensitive information in encrypted IoT -app traffic. Sensors 19(21), article number: 4777. (10.3390/s19214777)
Anthi, E., Williams, L., Malgorzata, S., Theodorakopoulos, G. and Burnap, P. 2019. A supervised intrusion detection system for smart home IoT devices. IEEE Internet of Things 6(5), pp. 9042-9053. (10.1109/JIOT.2019.2926365)

2018

Subahi, A. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2018. Ensuring compliance of IoT devices with their Privacy Policy Agreement. Presented at: 2018 IEEE 6th International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud), Barcelona, Spain, 6-8 August2018 IEEE 6th International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud). Barcelona, Spain: IEEE pp. 100-107., (10.1109/FiCloud.2018.00022)
Anthi, E., Ahmad, S., Rana, O., Burnap, P. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2018. EclipseIoT: A secure and adaptive hub for the Internet of Things. Computers and Security 78, pp. 477-490. (10.1016/j.cose.2018.07.016)

2017

Mamais, S. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2017. Behavioural verification: preventing report fraud in decentralized advert distribution systems. Future Internet 9(4), article number: 88. (10.3390/fi9040088)
Anthi, E., Javed, A., Rana, O. F. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2017. Secure data sharing and analysis in cloud-based energy management systems. Presented at: Second EAI International Conference, IISSC 2017 and CN4IoT 2017, Brindisi, Italy, 20-21 April 2017 Presented at Longo, A. et al. eds.IISSC 2017, CN4IoT 2017: Cloud Infrastructures, Services, and IoT Systems for Smart Cities, Vol. 189. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering Springer pp. 228-242., (10.1007/978-3-319-67636-4_24)
Mamais, S. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2017. Private and secure distribution of targeted advertisements to mobile phones. Future Internet 9(2), article number: 16. (10.3390/fi9020016)
Theodorakopoulos, G. 2017. An open framework for flexible plug-in privacy mechanisms in crowdsensing applications. Presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops), Kona, HI, USA, 13-17 March 2017Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops), 2017 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE pp. 237-242., (10.1109/PERCOMW.2017.7917564)
Anthi, E. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2017. Sensitive data in Smartphone Applications: Where does it go? Can it be intercepted?. Technical Report.

2016

Shokri, R., Theodorakopoulos, G. and Troncoso, C. 2016. Privacy games along location traces: a game-theoretic framework for optimizing location privacy. ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security 19(4), article number: 11. (10.1145/3009908)
Galini, T., Theodorakopoulos, G., Hugh, L. and Mahesh, M. 2016. On the inference of user paths from anonymized mobility data. Presented at: 1st IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, Saarbrücken, Germany, 21-24 March 2016.

2015

Theodorakopoulos, G. 2015. The same-origin attack against location privacy. Presented at: 22nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Denver, Colorado, USA, 12-126 October 2015 Presented at Ray, I., Hopper, N. and Jansen, R. eds.WPES '15 Proceedings of the 14th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. ACM pp. 49-53., (10.1145/2808138.2808150)

2014

Shokri, R., Theodorakopoulos, G., Papadimitratos, P., Kazemi, E. and Hubaux, J. 2014. Hiding in the mobile crowd: location privacy through collaboration. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 11(3), pp. 266-279. (10.1109/TDSC.2013.57)
Petri, I., Punceva, M., Rana, O. F., Theodorakopoulos, G. and Rezgui, Y. 2014. A broker based consumption mechanism for social clouds. International Journal of Cloud Computing 2(1), pp. 45-57.

2013

Theodorakopoulos, G., Le Boudec, J. Y. and Baras, J. S. 2013. Selfish response to epidemic propagation. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 58(2), pp. 363-376. (10.1109/TAC.2012.2209949)

2012

Shokri, R., Theodorakopoulos, G., Troncoso, C., Hubaux, J. and Le Boudec, J. 2012. Protecting location privacy: Optimal strategy against localization attacks. Presented at: 19th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2012), Raleigh, NC, USA, 16-18 October 2012 Presented at Yu, T., Danezis, G. and Gligor, V. D. eds.Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS'12, Raleigh, NC, USA, October 16-18, 2012. ACM 2012. New York, NY: ACM pp. 617-627., (10.1145/2382196.2382261)

2011

Shokri, R., Theodorakopoulos, G., Le Boudec, J. and Hubaux, J. 2011. Quantifying location privacy. Presented at: 2011 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), Berkeley, CA, USA, 22-25 May 2011 Presented at O’Conner, L. ed.Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE pp. 247-262., (10.1109/SP.2011.18)

2010

Baras, J. and Theodorakopoulos, G. 2010. Path problems in networks. Synthesis Lectures on Communication Networks. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. (10.2200/S00245ED1V01Y201001CNT003)

2008

Theodorakopoulos, G. and Baras, J. 2008. Game theoretic modeling of malicious users in collaborative networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 26(7), pp. 1317-1327. (10.1109/JSAC.2008.080928)

2007

Theodorakopoulos, G. 2007. Robust network trust establishment for collaborative applications and protocols. PhD Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park.

2006

Theodorakopoulos, G. and Baras, J. S. 2006. On trust models and trust evaluation metrics for ad hoc networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 24(2), pp. 318-328. (10.1109/JSAC.2005.861390)

2004

Theodorakopoulos, G. and Baras, J. S. 2004. Trust evaluation in ad-hoc networks. Presented at: WiSe '04:3rd ACM workshop on Wireless security, 1 October 2004 Presented at Jakobsson, M. and Perrig, A. eds.WiSe '04 Proceedings of the 3rd ACM workshop on Wireless security. New York, NY: ACM pp. 1-10., (10.1145/1023646.1023648)

I teach cryptography, malware analysis, and penetration testing.

George Theodorakopoulos received the Diploma degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2002, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, in 2004 and 2007, all in electrical and computer engineering.

He is a Reader at the School of Computer Science & Informatics, Cardiff University. From 2007 to 2011, he was a Senior Researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He is a coauthor (with John Baras) of the book Path Problems in Networks (Morgan & Claypool, 2010).

He received the Best Paper award at the ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, October 2004, for "Trust evaluation in ad-hoc networks" and the 2007 IEEE ComSoc Leonard Abraham prize for "On trust models and trust evaluation metrics for ad hoc networks." He coauthored the paper "Quantifying Location Privacy," which was runner-up for the 2012 PET Award (Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies) and received a Test of Time award at 2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

Education and qualifications

2007: PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
2004: MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
2002: Diploma (5yr BSc) in Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Honours and awards

2021 - IEEE Security and Privacy Test-of-Time Award at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, for "Quantifying Location Privacy"
2012 - Runner-up for the PET Award (Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies), for "Quantifying Location Privacy"
2007 - IEEE Communication Society Leonard G. Abraham prize, for "On trust models and trust evaluation metrics for ad hoc networks"
2004 - Best Paper award at the ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, for "Trust evaluation in ad-hoc networks"

Professional memberships

Member of the IEEE

Academic positions

2018 - present: Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University, School of Computer Science and Informatics
2012 - 2018: Lecturer, Cardiff University, School of Computer Science and Informatics
2011 - 2012 Lecturer, University of Derby, School of Computing and Mathematics
2007 - 2011 Senior Researcher, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

Committees and reviewing

Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Grant reviewer for EPSRC, Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust, Dutch Research Council (NWO), German Research Foundation (DFG), Swiss Research Council (SNF)
Book proposal reviewer for Elsevier, CRC Press - Taylor & Francis Group, NOW Publishers (Foundations and Trends in Privacy and Security)

I am open to new topics, but I am particularly interested in supervising PhD students on

security and privacy in IoT devices and networks
privacy in machine learning

Please look at my publications to see more details about the topics I am working on and about the methods I use in my research. I am more likely to supervise students that show me they have some idea of my research.

Current supervision

Turki Al Lelah Al Lelah

Research student

Contact Details

TheodorakopoulosG@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 29208 74855
Abacws, Room 4.15, Senghennydd Road, Cathays, Cardiff, CF24 4AG

Research themes

Specialisms

Cybersecurity and privacy
Data security and protection