Hamed Okhravi, Ph.D.


Senior Staff Member
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group

Contact


Office Phone: 781-981-4113
Mailing Address: 244 Wood St.
Lexington, MA 02421

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Research Interests

  • Systems Security
  • Science of Security
  • Security Evaluation
  • Operating Systems


Awards

* Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transition (2024)

* R&D 100 Award, Technology: TASR (2022)

* Distinguished Paper Award, NDSS Symposium (2022)

* Best Reviewer Award, ACM CCS (2021)

* Outstanding Paper Award, IEEE RTSS Symposium (2021)

* R&D 100 Award, Technology: TRACER (2020)

* Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2020)

* Best Invention Award, MIT Lincoln Laboratory (2019)

*
R&D 100 Award, Technology: DFI (2018)

* Team Award, MIT Lincoln Laboratory (2015)

* NSA's Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award (2015)

* Early Career Technical Achievement Award, MIT Lincoln Laboratory (2014)

Services

* Program Chair:
  • Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS 2025-26)
  • ACM CCS Workshop on Moving Target Defense (MTD 2022, 2020, and 2017)
* Organizing Committee:
  • Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2023 - Now)
* Associate Program Chair:
  • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (2024)
* Career Mentor:
  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory (2024 - Now)
* Journal Editorship:
  • Associate Editor, IEEE Security & Privacy (IEEE S&P), 2019 - Now
  • Guest Editor, IEEE Security & Privacy, Memory Safety (IEEE S&P), 2024
  • Guest Editor, IEEE Security & Privacy, Hacking without Humans (IEEE S&P), 2018
* Study Chair:
  • DARPA ISAT Study on Automated Coding (2023)
  • DARPA ISAT Study on Cyber Competition (2022)
  • DARPA ISAT Study on Cybersecurity Moonshot (2021)
* Steering Committee Member:
  • ACM CCS Workshop on Moving Target Defense (MTD 2015 - Now)
  • Boston University-MIT/LL Workshop on Cybersecurity 2014 - 2016
* Poster Chair:
  • IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev 2017)
* Program Committee Member:
  • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2024, 2023
  • USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Sec) 2025, 2024, 2022, 2021
  • ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2017
  • Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018
  • IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC) 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021
  • Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses (RAID) 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2014
  • IEEE Cybersecurity Development Conference (SecDev) 2021, 2020, 2018, 2017
  • IEEE Military Communications (MILCOM) 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
  • ACM CCS Workshop on Moving Target Defense (MTD) 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014
  • International Conference On Computer Aided Design (ICCAD) 2020, 2019
  • ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) 2018, 2017
  • International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) 2017

In the News

* MIT News: Cybersecurity software wins a 2024 Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award (2024)

* International Defense, Security, & Technology : Cyber Moonshot and Accelerating Security of Systems with Emerging Technologies (ASSET) (2022)

* MIT News: Hamed Okhravi is named co-chair of DARPA cybersecurity study (2021)

* MIT Lincoln Laboratory News: Hamed Okhravi charts a vision for a cybersecurity moonshot (2021)

* MIT News: Lincoln Laboratory earns a 2020 Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2021)

* R&D World: R&D 100 winner of day: Timely Randomization Applied to Commodity Executables at Runtime (TRACER) (2020)

* MIT News: Cyber protection technology moves from the lab to the marketplace (2019)

* MIT Lincoln Laboratory News: New cyber protection technology moves from the lab to the marketplace (2019)

* Network World: 7 really cool network and IT research projects (2017)

* MIT News: Foiling cyberattackers with rerandomization (2016)

* Network World: Solution to JIT-ROP cyber attacks: Scramble code quickly (2016)

* NSA News: NSA Announces Winner of Annual Cybersecurity Research Paper Competition (2015)

Open Source

* VulSim: Deep-Learning-Based Software Vulnerability Detection (2024) Repo Paper

* Spotlight: Security analysis tool for Intent-Based Networks (2024) Repo Paper

* HAKC: Hardware-Assisted Kernel Compartmentalization (2022) Repo Paper

* Galeed: Rust Heap Safety (2021) Repo Paper

* TORTIS: Try Once Real-Time Software Transactional Memory (2021) Repo Paper

* PicoSDN: Causal Analysis for Software-Defined Networking Attacks (2021) Repo Paper

* EventScope: Automated Discovery of Cross-Plane Event-Based Vulnerabilities in Software-Defined Networking (2020) Repo Paper

Former students

* Kelly Casteel, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2013   
* Eric Soderstrom, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2014 
* Isaac Evans, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2015
* Julian Gonzalez, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2015
* Sam Fingeret, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2015
* Ulziibayar Otgonbaatar, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2015
* Ronald Gil, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2017
* Jakob Weisblat, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2018
* Madeleine Dawson, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2018
* Tiffany Tang, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2019
* Justin Restivo, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2020
* Jennifer Switzer, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2020
* Claire Nord, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2020
* Alexander Huang, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2020

* Ashley Kim, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2020
* Elijah Rivera, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2021
* Yianni Giannaris, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2021
* Yosef Mihretie, Master of Engineering in EECS, 2022

Bio

Dr. Hamed Okhravi is a Senior Staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he leads programs and conducts research in the area of systems security. His research interests include systems security, science of security, security evaluation, and operating systems. He is the recipient of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer (2024), two Best Paper Awards (NDSS'22 and RTSS'21), three R&D 100 Awards (2022, 2020, and 2018), Best Reviewer Award (CCS'21), Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2020), MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Best Invention Award (2019), Team Award (2015), National Security Agency's Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award (2015), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Early Career Technical Achievement Award (2014) for his work in computer security.

He is the Program Chair of the Network and Distributed Systems Securitm Symposium (NDSS '25-26) as well as the Associate Editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy journal. He has also served three times as the Program Chair of the ACM Moving Target Defense (MTD) workshop (2022, 2020, and 2017), the Poster Chair of the IEEE Secure Development Conference, and twice as the editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy (Special Issues on Memory Safety and Hacking without Humans). In addition, he serves on the Organizing Committee of ACSAC (2024-present) and on the program committee of various top-tier academic conferences, including IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS, RAID, ACM AsiaCCS, IEEE DAC, IEEE SecDev, IEEE MILCOM, ICCAD, and ACNS, among others. He has also served on the National Science Foundation's Panel for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.

Dr. Okhravi actively contributes to various national, laboratory, and division-level strategic planning activities, and has led the development of multiple national-level R&D roadmaps. He has served as the chair of multiple DARPA ISAT studies and has led the development of multiple systems security technologies that have successfully transitioned outside and inside Lincoln Laboratory. His work has resulted in four U.S. patents and 70+ publications, many in top-tier venues.

Dr. Okhravi’s current focus is researching and developing a new computer system design in which security is the core focus and multiple large classes of vulnerabilities are prevented by design.

Dr. Okhravi earned his MS and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 and 2010, respectively.