Adam J. Aviv

About Me

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the George Washington University. I have broad research interests, primarily in the area of computer security/cybersecurity, privacy, and usable security. I am the lead for the George Washington University/Usable Security and Privacy Lab (gwusec). If you are interested in joining the lab or collaborating on research, more information can be found there.

Office Hours Fall 2024

Am I listed as your MS Academic Advisor?

Interested in having me as a mentor for your PhD?

Undergrad or masters student at GW interested in research?

News

• 2024 News
• Bad News (Nov 2024) One paper rejected from PAM 2025
• Bad News (Nov 2024) One paper rejected from CHI 2025
• Good News (Oct 2024) We have two accepted papers at SP 2025
• Collins W. Munyendo, Kentrell Owens, Faith Strong, Shaoqi Wang, Adam J. Aviv, Tadayoshi Kohno and Franziska Roesner. "You Have to Ignore the Dangers": User Perceptions of the Security and Privacy Benefits of WhatsApp Mods. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP'25). May 2025.
• Elisa Shioji, Ani Meliksetyan, Lucy Simko, Ryan Watkins, Adam J. Aviv and Shaanan Cohney. It's been lovely watching you'': Institutional Decision-Making on Online Proctoring Software. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP'25). May 2025.
• Good News (Aug 2024) We have an accepted papers at EuroUSEC 2045
• Elena Korkes, Collins W. Munyendo, Alvin Isaac, Victoria Hennemann and Adam J. Aviv. "I'm going to try her birthday": Investigating How Friends Guess Each Other's Smartphone Unlock PINs in the Lab. 2024 European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC'24). October 2024.
• Good News (July 2024) We have two accepted papers at CCS 2024
• Wentao Guo, Aditya Kishore, Adam J. Aviv, and Michelle L. Mazurek. A Qualitative Analysis of Practical De-identification Guides. The ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security (CCS). 2024
• Lucy Simko, Adryana Hutchinson, Alvin Isaac, Evan Fries, Micah Sher, and Adam J. Aviv "Modern problems require modern solutions": Community-Developed Techniques for Online Exam Proctoring Evasion. The ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security (CCS). 2024
• Good News (July 2024) We have an accepted paper at TOCHI
• Yixin Zou, Khue Le, Peter Mayer, Alessandro Acquisti, Adam J. Aviv, and Florain Schaub. Nudging Users to Change Breached Passwords Using the Protection Motivation Theory. To appear in Transactions on Computer Human Interaction.
• Bad News (July 2024) One paper early rejected from IMC 2024
• Good News (May 2024) We have an accepted paper at SOUPS 2024
• David G. Balash, Mir Masood Ali, Chris Kanich and Adam J. Aviv. "I would not install an app with this label": Privacy Label Impact on Risk Perception and Willingness to Install iOS Apps. Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy. 2024.
• Good News (May 2024) We have an accepted paper at the Workshop on Accessible Security & Privacy (WASP 2024)
• Mindy Tran, Xinru Tang, Adryana Hutchinson, Adam J. Aviv, and Yixin Zou. Position Paper: Exploring Security and Privacy Needs of d/Deaf Individuals. First Workshop on Accessible Security & Privacy (WASP). 2024.
• Bad News (May 2024) One paper rejected from SOUPS
• Bad News (May 2024) One paper rejected from USENIX
• Good News (May 2024) We have an accepted paper at PoPETS 2024
• Mir Masood Ali, David G. Balash, Monica Kodwani, Chris Kanich, and Adam J. Aviv. Honesty is the Best Policy: On the Accuracy of Apple Privacy Labels Compared to Apps' Privacy Policies. To appear in the Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2024.
• Good News (Mar 2024) We have an accepted paper at CHI's Late Breaking Work as an extended asbtract
• Adryana Hutchinson, Collins W. Munyendo, Peter Mayer, and Adam J. Aviv. An Analysis of Password Managers' Password Checkup Tools. ACM CHI Extend Abstracts '2024.
• Bad News (Mar 2024) One paper rejected from IEEE S&P
• Good News (Jan 2024) We have an accepted talk at PrivacyCon 2024 for our paper
• Peter Mayer, Yixin Zou, Bryon M. Lowens, Hunter A. Dyer, Khue Lee, Florian Schaub, and Adam J. Aviv. Awareness, Intention, (In)Action: Individuals' Reactions to Data Breaches.
• Bad News (Jan 2024) One paper rejected from USENIX
• Good News (Jan 2024) One paper accepted to USEC 2024
• Adryana Hutchinson, Jinwei Tang, Adam J. Aviv, and Peter Story. Measuring the Prevalence of Password Manager Issues Using In-Situ Experiments. Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC) 2024.
• 2023 News
• Good News (Dec 2023) One paper accepted at PoPETS 2024
• Florian M. Farke, David G. Balash, Maximilian Golla and Adam J. Aviv. How Does Connecting Online Activities to Advertising Inferences Impact Privacy Perceptions?. To appear in the Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2024.
• Good News (Oct 2023) One poster accepted to CCS
• David G. Balash, Mir Masood Ali, Monica Kodwani, Xiaoyuan Wu, Chris Kanich, and Adam J. Aviv. 2023. Poster: Longitudinal Measurement of the Adoption Dynamics in Apple's Privacy Label Ecosystem. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '23). (pdf)
• Bad News (Oct 2023) One paper major-revision and then withdrawn from CSCW
• Bad News (Oct 2023) One proposal rejected from Google
• Good News (July 2023) One paper accepted at EuroUSEC 2023
• Daniel V. Bailey,Collins W. Munyendo,Hunter A. Dyer, Miles Grant, Philipp Markert,and Adam J. Aviv. ”Someone Definitely Used 0000”: Strategies, Performance, and User Perception of Novice Smartphone-Unlock PIN-Guessers. The 2023 European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC’23). Oct 2023.
• Good News (July 2023) One paper paper accepted at CCS 2023
• Collins W. Munyendo, Peter Mayer, and Adam J. Aviv. “I just stopped using one and started using the other”: Motivations, Techniques, and Challenges When Switching Password Managers. Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS’23). ACM. Nov 2023.
• Bad News (July 2023) One paper early rejected from USENIX Security 2024
• Bad News (July 2023) One grant proposal rejected
• Good News (June 2023) New paper accepted at CSET'23
• Harel Berger, Adam J. Aviv, and Micah Sher. Cadence: A Simulator for Human Movement-based Communication Protocols. Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET’23). May 2023.
• Bad News (June 2023) One paper early rejected from CCS 2023
• Bad News (June 2023) One paper rejected from USENIX Security 2023
• Good News (May 2023) Our paper on cyber cafes in Keny with Collins Munyendo and Yasemin Acar won distinguished paper award at IEEE Security and Privacy Sympoisum
• Good News (May 2023) New NSF Awards
• Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Small: Measuring, Validating and Improving upon App-Based Privacy Nutrition Labels is a new three year aard to study privacy labels, along with my collaborators Chris Kanich and Serge Egelman
• Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law and Society (TRAILS) is a new institute charted for five-years to study society issues around AI. Participating as Senior Personel (SP) with Hal Daume PI, and Co-PIs Susan Aarons, David Broniatowski, Katherine Shilton, and Thomas Goldstein.
• Bad News (Mar 2023) One paper early rejected from SOUPS 2023
• Good News (Mar 2023) New paper acceptd to IEEE Security & Privacy '23 (Oakland)
• Collins Munyendo, Yasemin Acar, and Adam J. Aviv. "In Eighty Percent of the Cases, I Select the Password for Them": Security and Privacy Challenges, Advice, and Opportunities at Cybercafes in Kenya To appear at the IEEE Security and Privacy Smposium (IEEE SP23). May. 2023.
• Bad News (Mar 2023) Two papers rejected from IEEE S&P 2023
• Bad News (Feb 2023) Fulbright Scholar application denied
• Good News (Feb 2023) New paper acceptd to USENIX Security 2023
  • David G. Balash, Rahel A. Fainchtein, Elena Korkes, Miles Grant, Micah Sherr, and Adam J. Aviv. Educators’ Perspectives of Using (or Not Using) Online Exam Proctoring. To appear at the 34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Sec23). Aug. 2023.
• Bad News (Feb 2023) Paper rejected from EuroS&P
• Good News (Jan 2023) New journal article accepted to ToCHI
  • Peter Mayer, Yixin Zou, Bryon M. Lowens, Hunter A. Dyer, Khue Lee, Florian Schaub, and Adam J. Aviv. Awareness, Intention, (In)Action: Individuals' Reactions to Data Breaches. To appear in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
• 2022 News -- Starting in 2022, I include both good and bad news.
• Good News (Dec 2022) Proposal to organize the 2023 NSF SaTC Aspring PI Workshop was funded by NSF
  • The event will bring together aspiring PIs int he SaTC program to learn more about the SaTC program and how to write a successfully proposal.
• Good News (Nov 2022) One proposal accepted by Google in the ASPIRE program
  • Measuring the Evolution and Migration of Android Malware with Gianluca Stringhini at Boston University
• Bad News (Nov 2022) One proposal rejected from Google
• Bad News (Oct 2022) One paper rejected from NDSS 2023
• Good News (Oct 2022) Two papers accessed from ACSAC 2022
  • Rahel A. Fainchtein, Adam J. Aviv, and Micah Sherr. User Perceptions of the Privacy and Usability of Smart DNS. Annual Computer Security Applications Conference. (ACSAC'22). 2022
  • Xiaoyuan Wu, Collins W. Munyendo, Eddie Cosic, Genevieve A. Flynn, Olivia Legault, and Adam J. Aviv. User Perceptions of Five-Word Passwords. Annual Computer Security Applications Conference. (ACSAC'22). 2022
• Good News (Sep 2022) New NSF (CICI) grant awarded on Supporting Scientists as End-Users in Managing Security and Privacy
• Bad News (Aug 2022) One papers early rejected from ACSAC 2022
• Bad News (July 2022) One papers early rejected from IMC 2022
• Good News (May 2022) A new paper accepted to USENIX Security 2022
• Peter Mayer, Collins Munyendo, Michelle L. Mazurek, and Adam J. Aviv. Why Users (Don't) Use Password Managers at a Large Educational Institution. USENIX Security Symposium (Sec'22). Aug, 2022.
• Bad News (May 2022) Two papers rejected from SOUPS 2022
• Bad News (April 2022) NSF Grant Declined (SaTC Frontier)
• Good News (April 2022) A new paper accepted to IEEE Security and Privacy 2022
• Collins Munyendo, Yasemin Acar, and Adam J. Aviv. "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures:" User Concerns with Mobile Loan Apps in Kenya. Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy - Oakland’22. May, 2022
• Bad News (April 2022) NSF Grant Declined (SaTC Small)
• Good News (April 2022) New NSF Grant Awarded
• NSF SaTC EDU: Security and Privacy Implications of Remote Proctoring for School Policies and Practices
• With Mich Sherr (Georgetown) and Ryan Watkins
• Good News (Feb 2022) A new paper accepted to USENIX Security 2022
• Collins W. Munyendo, Philipp Markert, Alexandra Nisenoff, Miles Grant, Elena Korkes, Blase Ur, and Adam J. Aviv. "The Same PIN, Just Longer": On the (In)Security of Upgrading PINs from 4 to 6 Digits. USENIX Security Symposium (Sec'22). Aug, 2022.
• 2021 News (click to reveal)
• Good News (Dec 2021) A new paper accepted to CHI 2022
• Jaron Mink, Amanda Rose Yuile, Uma Pal, Adam J. Aviv and Adam Bates. Users can Deduce Sensitive Locations Protected by Privacy Zones on Fitness Tracking Apps. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'22). May, 2022
• Good News (Oct 2021) A new journal paper has been published at ACM TOPS
• Philipp Markert, Daniel V. Bailey, Maximilian Golla, Markus Dürmuth, and Adam J. Aviv. On the Security of Smartphone Unlock PINs. ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS). Vol. 24 (4). ACM. Sep 2021
• Open Access Article here
• Good News (Sep 2021) A new paper accepted to USENIX Security 2022
• David G. Balash, Xiaoyuan Wu, Miles Grant, Irwin Reyes, and Adam J. Aviv. Security and Privacy Perceptions of Third-Party Application Access for Google Accounts. 31st USENIX Security Symposium (Security'22). Aug, 2022.
• Good News (June 2021) Three new publications at SOUPS 2021
• Collins Munyendo, Miles Grant, Philipp Markert, Timothy J. Forman, and Adam J. Aviv. Using a Blocklist to Improve the Security of User Selection of Android Patterns. 17th Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS '21)
• David G. Balash, Dongkun Kim, Darika Shaibekova, Rahel A. Fainchtein, Micah Sherr, and Adam J. Aviv. Examining the Examiners: Students' Privacy and Security Perceptions of Online Proctoring Services. 17th Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS '21)
• Daniel V. Baily, Philipp Markert, and Adam J. Aviv. ``I have no idea what they're trying to accomplish:'' Enthusiastic and Casual Signal Users' Understanding of Signal PINs. 17th Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS '21)
• Good News (June 2021) Three new publications at USENIX Security 2021
• Noel Warford, Collins W. Munyendo, Ashna Mediratta, Adam J. Aviv, and Michelle L. Mazurek. Strategies and Perceived Risks of Sending Sensitive Documents. 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21). USENIX Association. Aug 2021.
• Arxiv here
• Florian Farke, David G. Balash, Maximilian Golla, Markus Dürmuth, and Adam J. Aviv. Are Privacy Dashboards Good for End Users? Evaluating User Perceptions and Reactions to Google's My Activity. 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21). USENIX Association. Aug 2021.
• Arxiv here
• Flynn Wolf, Adam J. Aviv, and Ravi Kuber. Security Obstacles and Motivations for Small Businesses from a CISO’s Perspective. 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21). USENIX Association. Aug 2021.
• Good News (Apr 2021) Good News publication at USENIX Security 2021
• Peter Mayer, Yixin Zou, Florian Schaub, and Adam J. Aviv. "Now I'm a bit angry:" Individuals' Awareness, Perception, and Responses to Data Breaches that Affected Them. 30th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 21). (Sec'21). USENIX Association. Aug 2021.
• Article here
• Good News (Feb 2021) Good News publication at NDSS 2021
• Ian Martiny, Gabriel Kaptchuk, Adam J. Aviv, Daniel S. Roche, and Eric Wustrow. Improving Signal’s Sealed Sender. In the proceedings of the 2021 Network and Distributed Systems Symposium. NDSS'21. Feb 2021.
• Article here
• 2020 News (click to reveal)
• Good News (Nov 2020) I have two new conference articles to appear at PoPETS 2021
• Hirak Ray, Flynn Wolf, Ravi Kuber, Adam J. Aviv. ``Warn Them'' or ``Just Block Them''?: Comparing Privacy Concerns of Older and Working Age Adults
• Rahel A. Fainchtein, Adam A. Aviv, Micah Sherr, Stephen Ribaudo, and Armaan Khullar. Holes in the Geofence: Privacy Vulnerabilities in “Smart” DNS Services.
• Expanded version of the paper available on the arxiv
• Good News (Oct 2020) I have new conference article appearing at USENIX Sec'2021
• Hirak Ray, Flynn Wolf, Ravi Kuber, Adam J. Aviv. Why Older Adults (Don't) Use Password Managers. In the proceedings of the 2021 USENIX Security Symposium. Aug. 2021.
• Preprint on the arxiv
• Good News (Aug 2020) I have two new conference article appearing at ACSAC'2020
• Timothy J. Forman and Adam J. Aviv. Double Patterns: A Usable Solution to Increase the Security of Android Unlock Patterns. In the proceedings of the 2020 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC'20). Dec. 2020.
• Hassan Khan, Jason Ceci, Jonah Stegman, Adam J. Aviv, Rozita Dara, Ravi Kuber. Widely Reused and Shared, Infrequently Updated, and Sometimes Inherited: A Holistic View of PIN Authentication in Digital Lives and Beyond. In the proceedings of the 2020 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC'20). Dec. 2020.
• Good News (Apr 2020) I have a new conference article appearing at SOUPS'2020
• Raina Samuel, Philipp Markert, Adam J. Aviv, and Iulian Neamtiu. Knock, Knock. Who's There? On the Security of LG's Knock Codes. 2020 Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS'20). Pgs. 1-24. USENIX. 2020.
• Paper is available here
• Checkout the video presentation and talk slides
• Read more about the project in the news: fastcompany Science Daily
• Preprint on the arxiv
• Good News (Feb. 2020) We have a new gwusec lab page!
• Good News (Feb. 2020) Three new students are joining the research group at GW: David Balash, Nelson Jaimes, and Collins Munyendo. Welcome!
• 2019 News (click to reveal)
• Good News (Nov. 2019) I have a new conference article appearing at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland)
• P. Markert, D. V. Bailey, M. Golla, M. Duermuth, and A. J. Aviv. This PIN Can Be Easily Guessed: Analyzing the Security of Smartphone Unlock PINs. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. May 2020.
• You can find a pre-print on the arxiv
• Find our data sets on the project page: https://this-pin-can-be-easily-guessed.github.io/
• Read more about the project from the press coverage.
• Good News (Nov. 2019) I've been awarded a Google Faculty Research Award for work on in-app authentication usage on Android.
• Good News (Oct. 2019) USNA undergraduate Tim Forman and myself have an accepted Late Break Work paper accepted at CHI'20. .
• Timothy J. Forman, Adam J. Aviv, and Daniel S. Roche. Twice as Nice? A Preliminary Evaluation of Double Android Unlock Patterns. To appear in CHI'20 Extended Abstracts.
• I'm hiring I'm looking to admit 2 to 3 Ph.D. students in the next 2 years. Please reach out if you're interested.
• Good News (Aug. 2019) I've been awarded the NSF CAREER award for my work on mobile authentication.
• Big News (Jul 2019) I started a new position at GW