Chandrika Mukherjee
Ph.D. Student in Computer Science
Purdue University
I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Purdue University working on systems security and privacy, advised by Prof. Z. Berkay Celik in the PurSec Lab.
Through system design, formal methods, machine learning, and user studies, my research secures emerging computing systems that perceive the physical world through sensor input and use artificial intelligence to reason about it and act on behalf of their users. I uncover how these systems reveal users' sensitive information or act against user intent, and I build practical defenses for commodity devices. My research approach is best illustrated by my work in extended reality (XR), and my future research extends it to other wearables and robots.
My research appears at USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS, and PETS. It has received the PETS Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award and a USENIX Security Honorable Mention, and has been featured in WIRED.
News
Scroll for earlier updates- Oct 2026Upcoming: I will give an invited talk at the IEEE Rising Star Symposium on Cyber-Physical Systems Security, Resilience, and Privacy on November 11, 2026, titled Securing the Immersive Web: From UI Attacks to Runtime Defenses.
- Oct 2026Presented a lightning talk and a poster of our ACM CCS 2026 paper, eXRpose, at the Midwest Security Workshop in Madison, WI (poster).
- Sep 2026Invited by Prof. Christina Garman to give a guest lecture on adversarial machine learning and AI agent security in Purdue's graduate course CS 526 - Information Security.
- Sep 2026My doctoral symposium paper, Characterizing and Enforcing Interaction Integrity on the Immersive Web, was accepted to the ACM CCS 2026 Doctoral Symposium. I will present it with eXRpose at CCS in the Netherlands in November, supported by a CCS student travel grant.
- Jul 2026Our paper eXRpose: Runtime UI-based Attack Detection in WebXR was accepted to ACM CCS 2026.
- Jul 2026Our PETS 2026 paper received the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award and the Best Presented Best Student Paper Award.
- Jul 2026Our PETS 2026 paper was featured in WIRED.
- Jul 2026Featured in Meta's Summer 2026 Intern Spotlight.
- May 2026Started my second internship at Meta in Menlo Park, CA, with the Similarity Understanding team.
- May 2026Our paper on the privacy risks of military-marketed mobile apps, with Florida International University, the Army Cyber Institute, and the United States Military Academy, was accepted to PETS 2026. Congratulations, Joshua!
- Feb 2026Gave a guest lecture on XR security and privacy in Purdue's CS 197 - Freshman Honors Seminar.
- Oct 2025Accepted a return internship offer from Meta for Summer 2026.
- Sep 2025Received the Faculty Choice Best Poster Award at the Midwest Security Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington.
- Aug 2025Our paper on GPU-based side-channel inference in XR, with Iowa State University, was accepted to NDSS 2026. Congratulations, Seonghun!
- Aug 2025Presented Shadowed Realities: An Investigation of UI Attacks in WebXR at USENIX Security 2025 in Seattle. The paper received an Honorable Mention Award.
- Jul 2025Received a USENIX Security 2025 student travel grant.
- Jun 2025Presented Demo: UI Based Attacks in WebXR at ACM MobiSys 2025 in Anaheim, CA.
- May 2025Started my internship at Meta in Seattle with the Data Flows (Privacy) team.
- May 2025Presented Towards Secure User Interaction in WebXR at the HumanSys workshop at CPS-IoT Week, UC Irvine, and gave an invited talk at UC Irvine.
- Apr 2025Received the ACM SIGBED student travel grant for CPS-IoT Week 2025 and the Purdue Women in Science Program (WISP) travel grant.
- Mar 2025Received a Meta Bug Bounty Award for our joint work with Iowa State University on GPU-based side-channel vulnerabilities in XR.
- Mar 2025Gave a guest lecture on XR security and privacy in Purdue's CS 361 - Great Issues in Computer Science.
- Jan 2025Our work on UI attacks in WebXR was accepted to USENIX Security 2025.
Education
- 2022 – PresentPh.D. in Computer SciencePurdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USAGPA 3.83/4.00
Thesis: Enabling Secure User Interaction in Extended Reality
Advisor: Prof. Z. Berkay Celik - 2021 – 2023M.S. in Computer SciencePurdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USAGPA 3.83/4.00
- 2015 – 2019B.Tech. in Computer Science and EngineeringNational Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur, IndiaFirst Class with Distinction, GPA 9.16/10.00
Awards and Honors
- Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award
- Best Presented Best Student Paper Award
- Honorable Mention Award (Top 6%)
- Faculty Choice Best Poster Award
- Meta Bug Bounty Award, for collaborative work on “GPU-based Side-Channel Vulnerabilities in XR”
Travel Grants ACM CCS Student Travel Grant (2026) · USENIX Security Symposium Student Travel Grant (2025) · ACM SIGBED Student Travel Grant, CPS-IoT Week (2025) · Purdue Women in Science Program (WISP) Travel Grant (2025)
Selected Publications
All publications- CCS 2026eXRpose: Runtime UI-based Attack Detection in WebXRACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2026 (to appear).
- PETS 2026No Privacy for Privates: How Military Communities Experience and Perceive the Privacy Risks of Military-Marketed Mobile AppsProceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), 2026. (Acceptance Rate: 22.4%)
- NDSS 2026Side-channel Inference of User Activities in AR/VR Using GPU ProfilingNetwork and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2026. (Acceptance Rate: 17.9%)
- USENIX Security 2025Shadowed Realities: An Investigation of UI Attacks in WebXRUSENIX Security Symposium, 2025. (Acceptance Rate: 17.1%)