College of Aeronautical Engineering
Researches CIPHER (Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Encryption Research)

CIPHER (Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Encryption Research)

Core Competencies

  • Cryptography and Hardware Layer Security
  • AI-powered System Security
  • IoT, Avionics and Embedded Systems Security
  • Space & Wireless Systems Security
  • Cyber Threat Intelligence

 

Description

Welcome to the CIPHER research group where we advance knowledge and develop innovative solutions across multiple frontiers of Information Security. Our work in Cryptography and Hardware Layer Security develops robust encryption and tamper-proof architectures to protect Avionics, Space and Communication systems. In AI-Powered System Security, we explore adversarial machine learning, deepfake detection, and autonomous defense mechanisms to counter evolving AI-driven threats. Our IoT, Avionics and System Security research contributes towards securing flight-critical systems, autonomous aviation, low-resource devices, and industrial control systems (ICS). In Space & Wireless Systems Security, we address vulnerabilities in satellites, 5G/6G, and next-gen communications. Finally, we are also actively doing research in the domain Cyber Threat Intelligence, employing cutting-edge standards and frameworks for security analytics and real-time threat fusion to anticipate and mitigate risks.

Through these interdisciplinary research interests and expertise, the group aims to build practical, robust, and resource-efficient security solutions for critical infrastructures.

 

Group Members

  1. Bilal Alam
  2. Mohsin Khalil (PI: Principal Investigator)
  3. Ali Rafique (Co-PI: Co-Principal Investigator)

Ancillary Members

  1. Mujahid Mohsin
  2. Muhammad Rizwan

 

Member Profiles

  1. Mujahid Mohsin: Serving as the Head of the Department of Avionics Engineering at CAE, NUST, Dr. Mohsin specializes in Embedded Systems and Information Security. His research focuses on security analytics, system design, GNSS security, Information Security, IoT and Security Formal Methods in Security.
  2. Bilal Alam: Dr. Alam’s expertise lies in Cryptology and Information Security, with interests in AI/ML integration into communication security systems. He is serving as the Head of the Department of Professional Continuing Education at CAE, NUST,
  3. Muhammad Rizwan: Engr. Rizwan’s research interests encompass information security, cryptography, tactical data links emphasizing physical layer transmission security, digital signal processing, and embedded system security.
  4. Mohsin Khalil: Engr. Mohsin’s expertise in Network Performance Optimization and 5G/6G Networks is complemented by his work in securing Adhoc networks and drones communication.
  5. Muhammad Ali Rafique: Focusing on Computer Communication and Networks, Mr. Rafique’s research includes wireless networks, peer-to-peer systems, and cryptographic protocols to enhance network security

Publications

  1. Hamza, Muhammad Ameer, Mujahid Mohsin, Mohsin Khalil, and Syed M. Kazam Abbas Kazmi. “MAVLink Protocol: A Survey of Security Threats and Countermeasures.” In 2024 4th International Conference on Digital Futures and Transformative Technologies (ICoDT2), pp. 1-8. IEEE, 2024.
  2. Syed M. Kazam Abbas Kazmi, Nayyer Aafaq, Muhammad Saad Umer, Mujahid Mohsin, Mansoor Ahmed Khan, “The Art of Deception: Adversarial Network Strategies in Thwarting Airborne Object Detection”, Dec, 2024
  3. Muhammad Waqas Bashir Rajput, Syed Khurram Mahmud, Mujahid Mohsin, Muhammad Usman, Sohaib Yaqoob Chaudhry, and Muhammad Farhan Shahid, “Study on GNSS Receivers’ Vulnerabilities; State-of-the-Art Insights, Solutions, and Performance Analysis”, 21st International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology, Pakistan, 20-23 August, 2024.
  4. Muhammad Hassan Naeem, Imran Hafeez Abbasi, and Mujahid Mohsin. “An Autonomous Intrusion Detection System for Ethernet-Based Avionics Communication Bus.” In 2021 International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET), pp. 1-6. IEEE, 2021.
  5. Shah Zahid Khan, Mujahid Mohsin, and Waseem Iqbal. “On GPS spoofing of aerial platforms: a review of threats, challenges, methodologies, and future research directions.” PeerJ Computer Science 7 (2021): e507, 2021.
  6. Syed Affan Ahmed, Mujahid Mohsin, and Syed Muhammad Zubair Ali. “Survey and technological analysis of laser and its defense applications.” Defence Technology 17, no. 2 (2021): 583-592.
  7. Faizana Naeem, Mujahid Mohsin, Usman Rauf, and Liaqat Ali Khan. “Formal approach to thwart against drone discovery attacks: A taxonomy of novel 3D obfuscation mechanisms.” Future Generation Computer Systems 115 (2021): 374-386.
  8. Tauha Nomani, Mujahid Mohsin, Zahid Pervaiz and M. Shafique, “xUAVs: Towards Efficient Approximate Computing for UAVs—Low Power Approximate Adders with Single LUT Delay for FPGA-Based Aerial Imaging Optimization.” in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 102982-102996, 2020.
  9. Bilal Habib, Ussama Maqbool, Mujahid Mohsin, “Safeguarding Against GNSS Spoofing Threats-A Survey of Viable Techniques and their Tradeoffs”, ICASE, 2019 (12-14 Nov, 2019).
  10. Tauha Nomani and Mujahid Mohsin, “A Novel Approximate Adder Design Methodology with Single LUT Delay for Fault-tolerant FPGA-based Systems.” Second International Conference on Latest trends in Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (INTELLECT), 2019, pp. 1-6.
  11. Muhammad Yaseen, Mian Muhammad Waseem Iqbal, Imran Rashid, Haider Abbas, Mujahid Mohsin, Kashif Saleem “MARC: A Novel Framework for Detecting MITM Attacks in eHealthcare BLE Systems”, Journal of Medical Systems, Vol 43, No 324, 2019.
  12. Usman Rauf, Mujahid Mohsin, and Wojciech Mazurczyk, “Cyber Regulatory Networks: Towards A Bio-inspired Auto-resilient Framework for Cyber-Defense”, 11th EAI International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies (BICT 2019), 13-14 March 2019, Pittsburgh, USA.
  13. Hassan Talat, Tauha Nomani, Mujahid Mohsin and S. Sattar, “A Survey on Location Privacy Techniques Deployed in Vehicular Networks”, 16th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technology (IBCAST), Islamabad, Pakistan, 8-12 Jan, 2019, pp. 604-613.
  14. Mujahid Mohsin, Muhammad Usama Sardar, Osman Hasan, and Zahid Anwar, “IoTRiskAnalyzer : A Probabilistic Model Checking Based Framework for Formal Risk Analytics of the Internet of Things”, IEEE Access, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 5494-5505, 2017, Special Section on “Security and Privacy in Applications and Services for Future Internet of Things”.
  15. Mujahid Mohsin, Zahid Anwar, Farhat Zaman, Ehab Al-Shaer, “IoTChecker : A Data-driven Framework for Security Analytics of Internet of Things Configurations”, Elsevier Journal of Computers and Security, Vol 70, pp. 199-223, 2017.
  16. Mujahid Mohsin, Zahid Anwar, Farhat Zaman, “Towards a Generic Model for Risk Analysis of the Internet of Things (IoT)”, NUST Journal of Engineering Sciences (NJES), Vol 9, No 2,
  17. Mujahid Mohsin, Zahid Anwar, Ghaith Husari, Ehab Al-Shaer, Mh. Ashiqur Rehman, “IoTSAT: A Formal Framework for Security Analysis of the Internet of Things (IoT)”, IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS),17-19 October, 2016, Philadelphia, PA, USA, pp. 180-188.
  18. Mujahid Mohsin, Zahid Anwar, “Where to Kill the Cyber Kill-Chain: An Ontology-Driven Framework for IoT Security Analytics”, Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT), 19-21 December, 2016, Islamabad, Pakistan, pp. 23-28.
  19. Alam, Bilal, Ferruh Özbudak, and Oğuz Yayla. “Classes of weak Dembowski–Ostrom polynomials for multivariate quadratic cryptosystems.” Journal of Mathematical Cryptology 9, no. 1 (2015): 11-22.
  20. Awan, and M. A. Rafique. “MCPSC: Memory conservation protocol for secure communication in Wireless Sensor Networks”, 17th IEEE International Multi Topic Conference 2014, pp. 31-35. IEEE, 2014.
  21. Alam, Bilal, and Oguz Yayla. “Recent attacks against HFE/Multi-HFE MQ cryptosystems and Connection with Ore’s p-polynomial decomposition.”
  22. Mujahid Mohsin, Mehreen Afzal, Mh. Arif Wahla, “Think before your LFSRs Jump”, at 10th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT 2010), Bradford, UK.
  23. Mujahid Mohsin, “Review and Analysis of Information-Theoretic Secure Threshold Secret Sharing Schemes”, at National Conference on Information Assurance (NCIA-2010), Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

 

PG / UG Student Members (last 03 years)

  1. Nadeem Ahmed (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  2. Muhammad Ameer Hamza (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  3. Hammad Ahmed (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  4. M Hassan Naeem (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  5. M Farhan Shahid (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  6. Faizana Naeem (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  7. Shah Zahid Khan (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  8. Tuaha Umair Nomani (MS Electrical Engineering, CAE)
  9. Shah Fahad (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)
  10. Abdul Ghaffar Bin Sarfraz (BE Avionics Engineering, CAE)

 

MS Thesis

  1. Thesis: Improving Security and Privacy of MAVLink Protocol. Student: M Ameer Hamza, Supervisor Dr. Mujahid Mohsin. Status: Completed
  2. Thesis: Security ASD-B Communication through Hybrid Novel Approach using Encryption Schemes and Key Distribution Schedule. Student: Hammad Ahmed, Supervisor DR. Haibat Khan.
  3. Thesis: An Autonomous Intrusion Detection System for Ethernet-Based Avionics Communication Bus. Student: M Hassan Naeem, Supervisor Dr Imran Hafeez.
  4. Thesis: Development of adversarial Attack Against Aerial Imaging Object Detectors. Student: Syed M Kazam Abbas Kazmi, Supervisor Dr. Nayyer Afaq. Status: Completed
  5. Thesis: Attenuation and Deception Based 3D Obfuscation Techniques for Location Privacy of Aerial Vehicles. Student: Faizana Naeem, Supervisor xxxxx. Status: Completed
  6. Thesis: Design and Proof-of-Concept Implementation of Novel GPS Spoofing Algorithm for Controlling Hostile UAVs. Student: Shah Zahid Khan, Supervisor xxxxx. Status: Completed
  7. Thesis: FPGA-Based Performance Enhancements for on-Board ISR Computations of UAVs. Student: Tuaha Umair Nomani, Supervisor xxxxx. Status: Completed.
  8. Project: Design and Implementation of an Adaptive Interference Cancellation System for Aircraft Cockpit Communication. Student: Shah Fahad, Supervisor Dr. Zohaib Ahmad Khan. Status: Ongoing.
  9. Project: Machine Learning-Based Network Intrusion Detection System. Student: Abdul Ghaffar Bin Sarfraz, Supervisor: Engr. Amir
  10. Project: Visual Sentiment Analysis for Threat Detection. Student: Engr M. Saim Nasir, Supervisor: Dr. Nayyer Afaq, Status: Completed
  11. Project: DL Techniques for Generation of Steganographic Images with Hidden Audio Message. Student: M Imran Raza, Supervisor: Dr. Ijaz Khan, Status: Completed
  12. Project: Machine Learning-based Real-Time Facial Recognition Security System. Student: Muhammad Abdullah, Supervisor: Engr Mohsin, Status: Completed
  13. Project: Radar Camera Fusion for Security Surveillance. Student: Engr Aashir Ahmed Farooqui, Supervisor: Dr Ammar, Status: Completed
  14. Project: Deepfake detection of images / videos using deep learning. Student: M. Haseeb Akber, Supervisor: Dr Nayyer Afaq, Status: Completed
  15. Project: Perturbations for machine vision disruptions. Student: Frass Iqbal, Supervisor: Dr Nayyer Afaq, Status: Completed

Funding

  1. None

Collaboration (Academia / Industry)

  1. None

Equipment & Resources

  1. None

Recent Researches