Sumanth Rao

About Me

I am a CS PhD student at UC San Diego advised by Stefan Savage and Geoff Voelker. My research focuses on improving security and privacy through empirical means. I am also a research intern at Corelight, in the Corelight Labs team. At UCSD, I'm a part of the Sysnet and CryptoSec research groups. My hometown is Bengaluru, India.

Research

• "Unfiltered: Measuring Cloud-based Email Filtering Bypasses" [talk] [poster]
  Sumanth Rao, Enze Liu, Grant Ho, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage.
  ACM Web Conference (WWW), Singapore, May 2024.
• "IRRegularities in the Internet Routing Registry"
  Ben Du, Katherine Izhikevich, Sumanth Rao, Gautam Akiwate, Cecilia Testart, Alex C. Snoeren, and kc claffy.
  ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Montréal, Canada, October 2023.
• "No Privacy Among Spies: Assessing the Functionality and Insecurity of Consumer Android Spyware Apps" [poster]
  Enze Liu, Sumanth Rao, Sam Havron, Grant Ho, Stefan Savage, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Damon McCoy.
  Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2023.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science

University of California, San Diego. Sep 2021 - Present.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

PES University, Bengaluru. May 2016 - Jul 2020.

Specialization in Data Science

Research in the News

• "Cloud Email Filtering Bypass Attack Works 80% of the Time" - DarkReading, ACM TechNews, TL;DR Sec.
• "This is What Happens When Your Phone is Spying on You" - UC San Diego News, UC News, CACM News, Hacker News, Tech Xplore.

Industry Experience

Talks

• [May 2024] Web Conference 2024: Unfiltered: Measuring Cloud-based Email Filtering Bypasses
• [March 2024] FTC's PrivacyCon 2024, Panel 6: Mobile Device Security
• [Nov 2022] Having a great GSoC as an Open Source Newbie! (Google Open Source YouTube)

Awards & Scholarships

• GPSA fall travel grant award for WWW 2024
• Finalists, NatSec Hackathon 2024 (Stanford DEFCON and Shield Capital)
• Conference travel grant recipient for PETS'23 and IMC'23
• Recipient of the JN Tata Scholarship from The JN Tata Endowment (2021 - 2022)
• Recipient of Prof. C N R Rao Merit Scholarship at PES University (2016 - 2020)
• Winners, Pravega IBM Hackathon, IISc Bangalore (Jan 2019)
• Winners, Idea to Pitch Contest, PES University (Jun 2018)

Teaching Experience

As a Teaching Assistant at UC San Diego for:

• CSE 127: Introduction to Computer Security (Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022)
• CSE 221: Graduate Operating Systems (Winter 2023)

Services

• GradWIC Board Member, UCSD Graduate Women in Computing (2024)
• VP External, Jacobs Student Graduate Council (2021 - 2023)
• Sergeant at arms, Citrix Orators Toastmasters Club (2020 - 2021)

Open Source

I'm a big advocate for Open Source and have been involved in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for a few years now. I've mentored five GSoCers (2020 (1), 2020 (2), 2021, 2024) during this time. In fact, I was myself a GSoC student in 2019 with the Zulip Open Source Project.

Hobbies

I love to go hiking and running! Some of my favourite Himalayan hikes/treks have been - Hampta Pass, Brahmatal, and Valley Of Flowers. I've ventured on some beautiful hikes near San Diego - Strawberry Junction on Mt San Jacinto, Anza Borrego Desert Hike, Fortuna Mtn Trail, Black Mountain Trail on Mt San Jacinto, Cowles Mountain, Torrey Pines. Musically, I play the piano. Checkout our performance at the CSE Holiday Party 2024.

Gallery