The Analytics for Cyber Defense (ACyD) Lab, led by Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, an Associate Professor of FIU’s Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, focuses on the security and dependability problems for general networks and cyber-physical systems (CPS). Within cyber systems, including clouds, software-defined networking, and network function virtualization, research is conducted on security metrics, secure and resilient architecture synthesis, network security by deception, and proactive defense modeling. With regards to CPS, the lab’s focus is on security analysis and resource management in smart grids, industrial control systems, microgrids, vehicle-to-grid, Internet of Things (IoT), smart manufacturing, and autonomous vehicles.
Please find presentation videos/demos on various ACyD Lab’s research works on its YouTube Channel. Please visit its LinkedIn page for announcements on the published works and other achievements.
The Lab is located in EC 3753
News & Events
Recent
- [July 2026] Our paper, “ Data-Driven Resilient Wide-Area Damping Controller for Power Networks Under False Data Injection Attacks,” in the 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (IEEE CDC 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [June 2026] Congratulations to Muneeba Asif for her successful PhD Dissertation defense and graduation in Summer 2026.
- [April 2026] Our paper, “ SLEIGHT: Real-Time Closed-Loop Attack Analytics Framework for Holistic Intrusion Detection Systems in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” has been recently published in the 4th USENIX Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy (VehicleSec ’26). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “Context-Aware Evasion of PMU- Based Intrusion Detection Systems in Wide-Area Control,” has been recently published in the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “Topology Switching as Proactive Agility Against Adversarial Cyberattacks,” has been recently published in the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “Enhancing Cyber-resilience of Automatic Generation Control Through Moving Target Defense,” has been recently published in the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Congratulations to Mohammad Kumail Kazmi for his successful Thesis defense and graduation in Spring 2026.
- [March 2026] Congratulations to Ahsan Waseem for his successful Thesis defense and graduation in Spring 2026.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “ RAPTOR: Adversarially Robust Path Planning for LiDAR-Based Autonomous Robotic Vehicles,” has been recently published in the 50th IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications (COMPSAC 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “Evidence-Based Reliability Estimation in Deep Neural Networks using Dempster-Shafer Theory,” has been recently published in the 50th IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications (COMPSAC 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [March 2026] Our paper, “Adversarially Robust Intrusion Detection for PMU-Enhanced Power Grids: Detecting Stealthy Attacks in a Wide Area Control Framework,” has been recently published in the IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [January 2026] Our co-authored paper “MISGUIDE: Security-Aware Attack Analytics for Smart Grid Load Frequency Control” has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [February 2026] Our paper, “ Leveraging LLMs to Close Simulation-to-Reality Gap in Wireless Mesh Network Configuration,” has been recently published in the 22nd Annual International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [January 2026] We have been granted a U.S. Patent: US12509242B1, titled “Systems and methods for control and intrusion detection in unmanned aerial vehicles.” Congratulations to the inventors: Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, Kemal Akkaya, and Muneeba Asif.
- [January 2026] Our paper, “TinyQL: A Quantum Machine Learning Framework at Edge for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices” has been recently published in the 27th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED’26). Congratulation to all authors for their work.
- [December 2025] Muneeba Asif was recently awarded the 2025 ECE Ph.D. First-Author Publication Incentive Award, for her work titled “SHEATH: Defending Horizontal Collaboration for Distributed CNNs against Adversarial Noise” published in TIFS. Congratulations to Muneeba Asif for her accomplishment.
- [December 2025] Our paper, “PHANTOM: Physics-Aware Adversarial Attacks against Federated Learning-Coordinated EV Charging Management System” was recently published in the 21st ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2026). Congratulations to all authors for their work.
- [October 2025] Alvi Ataur Khalil and Dr. Rahman recently published their paper “xPoz-Hub: Privacy Infiltration in Payment Channel Hubs through Balance Probing and Transaction Discovery” in the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2025). Congratulations to Alvi and Dr. Rahman for their published work.
- [October 2025] ACyD Lab hosted visitors from INL, highlighting novel innovations in security for nuclear reactors and power systems. ACyD Lab Students presented their current ongoing works in the power system and nuclear systems to the visitors.
- [October 2025] Our ACyD Lab students presented their work during the summer at the CREPES workshop symposium held at FIU. Congratulations to all. Students highlighted their summer involvements including internship and research. Congratulations to all involved.
- [October 2025] Dr. Rahman was recently awarded the FIU Faculty Senate Research Excellence Award from FIU. Congratulations to Dr. Rahman.
- [September 2025] Dr. Rahman have started to serve on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM). Congratulations to Dr. Rahman.
- [September 2025] Dr. Rahman will serve on the Technical Program Committee of IEEE/IFIP DSN 2026. Congratulations to Dr. Rahman.
- [July 2025] Our REU scholars of the AI-ReHab REU site presented their posters at the FIU Summer Research Symposium. The REU students highlighted their contribution and hard work over the summer. Congratulations to all who presented.
- [July 2025] We would like to congratulate PhD. Alvi Ataur Khalil for his successful dissertation and graduation. Dr. Khalil has been at ACyD Lab since 2021 working in the fields of UAV, healthacare and blockchain security.
- [June 2025] We presented our work “Vision-Driven Fault Detection and Diagnostic in Nuclear Power Plants Using Large Language Models” at ANS’s NPIC & HMIT 2025. Congratulations to all involved.
- [June 2025] We presented our work “I will always be by your side: A Side Channel Aided PWM-based Hollistic Attack Recovery for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” at IEEE/IFIP DSN 2025. Congratualations to all involved.
- [June 2025] Dr. Rahman visited Sandia National Lab and met with different power grid security and resiliency researchers. Dr. Brian Pierre, Manager, Electric Power System Research Department, hosted this visit.
- [May 2025] The AI-ReHaB REU site is hosting 7 undergraduate students from different universities across the nation this summer.
- [April 2025] Our paper, “OptiGame: Game-Theoretic Enhancements for Optimistic Rollups through Bayesian Strategies”, was accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 21st EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm). Congratulations to authors Alvi Ataur Khalil Md Golam Moula Mahedi and Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman.
- [April 2025] Our paper, “PEARL: A Reinforcement Learning-Based Attack Analysis Approach for Security and Robustness Assessment of Smart Home Systems”, was accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 21st EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm). Congratulations to authors Nur Imtiazul Haque, Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, Selcuk Uluagac, and Laurent Y. Njilla.
- [April 2025] Our paper, ““I will always be by your side”: A Side-Channel Aided PWM-based Holistic Attack Recovery for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”, was accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 55th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2025). Congratulations to authors Muneeba Asif, Jean C Tonday Rodriguez, Mohammad Kumail Kazmi, Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman and Kemal Akkaya.
- [April 2025] Our paper, “ROLLGUARD: Defending RPC Manipulation Attacks in Optimistic Rollups with Graph ML”, was accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED 2025). Congratulations to the authors Alvi Ataur Khalil and Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman.
- [March 2025] Our journal article, “SHEATH: Defending Horizontal Collaboration for Distributed CNNs Against Adverserial Noise” was accepted for publishing in the 2025 IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS). Congratulations to authors Muneeba Asif, Kumail Kazmi, Dr. Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, Syed Rafay Hasan, and Soamar Homsi.
- [March 2025] Our paper “Vision-Driven Fault Detection and Diagnostic in Nuclear Power Plants Using Large Language Models” was accepted at the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human Machine Interface Technology 2025. Congratulations to authors Jean C Tonday Rodriguez, Dipan Sandekeen, Dr. Rahman, and Dr. Alam.
- [January 2025] Our paper “Adversarially Robust Intrusion Detection for PMU-Enhanced Power Grids: Detecting Stealthy Attacks in a Wide Area Control Framework” was accepted at the IEEE PES General Meeting 2025. Congratulations to authors Muneeba Asif, Probin Mali, Mohammad Zakaria Haider, Lingy Ren, Dr. Paudyal, and Dr. Rahman.
- [December 2024] AcyD Lab Students accompanied Dr. Rahman to the NELMS Anual IoT Conference located at the University of Florida, where Dr. Rahman hosted a session.
- [September 2024] Dr. Paudyal and I hosted a session in the 3rd CREPES Workshop hosted by Florida International University.
- [September 2024] Our paper “An Intelligent Hierarchical Framework for Efficient Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Nuclear Power Plants” has been accepted for publication in the 6th Joint Workshop on CPS & IoT Security and Privacy, co-located with ACM CCS 2024.
- [August 2024] We would like to congratulate Dr. Nur Imtiazul Haque for his successful dissertation defense and graduation in Summer 2024.
- [August 2024] AI-ReHab visiting REU students successfully presented their completed work over the summer.
- [July 2024] I presented our work “ConFIDe: A PWM-Driven Control-Fused Intrusion Detection System” at the 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS).
- [June 2024] I presented our work “PAROLE: Profitable Arbitrage in Optimistic Rollup with ERC-721 Token Transactions” at the 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Network (DSN).
- [June 2024] Our lab welcomed REU students from 2024 AI-ReHab to work alongside in innovative projects utilizing Artificial Intelligence for Health Care solutions.
- [May 2024] Dr. Rahman was an invited panelist at the Workshop on “Data Analytics, Control, and Computing for Cyber-Physical Security in Power Systems.” organized by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
- [March 2024] DOE has announced a $2.5M Department of Energy (DOE) award to FIU to enhance the cybersecurity of energy systems by introducing cyber and physical agility into the system. Dr. Rahman is the Lead PI of this project, where he haspartnered with collaborators at different universities, national labs, industries, and utilities.
- [March 2024] Our paper titled “PAROLE: Profitable Arbitrage in Optimistic Rollup with ERC-721 Token Transactions” has been accepted for publication at the 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Network (DSN).
- [March 2024] Our paper titled “ConFIDe: A PWM-Driven Control-Fused Intrusion Detection System” has been accepted for publication at the 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS).
- [January 2024] Our paper titled “Formal Threat Analysis of Machine Learning-Based Control Systems: A Study on Smart Healthcare Systems” has been accepted to be published in Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks (SEGAN), Elsevier.
- [January 2024] Our paper titled “Side-channel-driven Intrusion Detection System for Mission Critical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” has been accepted for publication at the International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED).
- [January 2024] Our paper titled “Formal Threat Analysis of Machine Learning-Based Control Systems: A Study on Smart Healthcare Systems” has been accepted to be published in Computers & Security (COSE), Elsevier.
2023
- [November 2023] Our paper titled “Adversarial and Generative Data-Augmented Resilient Intrusion Detection Systems for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” has been accepted to be published in the Special Session: Privacy and Security of Big Data of IEEE International Conference on Big Data.
- [September 2023] Dr. Rahman gave a talk titled “Control and Defense-Aware Attack-Resiliency Analytics for Cyber-Physical Systems” in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University.
- [September 2023] Dr. Rahman gave a talk on “Artificial Intelligence-Driven Noninvasive Security Analytics for Smart Systems” in the Systems Research Seminar Series in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University.
- [September 2023] Our paper titled “Feasibility Analysis for Sybil Attacks in Shard-Based Permissionless Blockchains” has been accepted to be published in ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies.
- [August 2023] Our paper, “Optimal False Data Injection Attack Against Load-Frequency Control in Power Systems,” has been accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
- [August 2023] Dr. Rahman gave a talk titled “Control-Aware Attack-Resiliency Analytics for Machine Learning-Driven Cyber-Physical Systems” in the Cyber Resilient Electric Vehicle Charging Station & Critical Infrastructure Workshop at the University of Memphis.
- [August 2023] Our paper, “FAKey: Fake Hashed Key Attack on Payment Channel Networks,” has been accepted for publication at the Annual IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS).
- [July 2023] Dr. Rahman has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
- [July 2023] Our paper, “Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System-Based Lightweight Intrusion Detection System for UAVs,” has been accepted to be published in the IEEE 48th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN).
- [July 2023] Our paper, “SHATTER: Control and Defense-Aware Attack Analytics for Activity-Driven Smart Home Systems,” has received the Best Paper Award in the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2023).
- [June 2023] Our paper titled “Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System-Based Lightweight Intrusion Detection System for UAVs” got accepted to be published in the IEEE 48th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2023).
- [April 2023] Our paper titled “Deep Learning-based Energy Harvesting with Intelligent Deployment of RIS-assisted UAV-CFmMIMOs” has been published in the Computer Networks, Elsevier.
- [March 2023] Dr. Rahman gave a talk titled “Artificial Intelligence-Driven Control-Aware Attack-Resiliency Analytics for Power Systems” in the Workshop on A Secure & Reliable Power Grid 2050 at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He also led a breakout session in the workshop on agility-based defense for power grids.
- [March 2023] Our paper titled “SHATTER: Control and Defense-Aware Attack Analytics for Activity-Driven Smart Home Systems” got accepted to be published in the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2023).
- [February 2023] Professor Mohammad Abdullah Al-Faruque from the University of California, Irvine, visited our Analytics for Cyber Defense (ACyD) Lab.
- [February 2023] Dr. Rahman has received Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) fellowship for my project titled “Adversarial Attack Detection in Horizontal Collaboration-based Distributed Machine Learning Inference for Edge Intelligence.”
2022
- [October 2022] Dr. Rahman has given a talk titled “Control-Aware Attack-Resiliency Analytics for Machine Learning-Driven Cyber-Physical Systems” in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
- [September 2022] Dr. Rahman has received a $750K award from National Security Agency (NSA) for researching the hardware security of unmanned aerial vehicles. Along with multiple key personnel at FIU, he partnered with collaborators at the University of Florida and Auburn University in this project.
- [September 2022] Our paper titled “Trajectory Synthesis for a UAV Swarm Based on Resilient Data Collection Objectives” has been accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM).
- [September 2022] Dr. Rahman has received an Extension Grant for his research work in the Visiting Faculty Research Program (VFRP) Fellowship at Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).
- [August 2022] Our paper titled “FeD-UP: Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning-based UAV Path Planning against Hostile Defense System” has been accepted to be published in the 18th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM) Miniconference.
- [August 2022] Our paper titled “Optimal False Data Injection Attacks Against Power System Frequency Stability” has been accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG).
- [June 2022] Dr. Rahman is visiting Griffiss Institute/Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Rome, NY on a Visiting Faculty Research Program (VFRP) fellowship.
- [May 2022] Our paper titled “Optimal Improvement of Post-Disturbance Dynamic Response in Power Grids” has been accepted for presentation at the IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IASAM) 2022.
- [May 2022] Two of our papers titled “DeepCAD: A Stand-alone Deep Neural Network-based Framework for Classification and Anomaly Detection in Smart Healthcare Systems” and “PHASE: Security Analyzer for Next Generation Smart Personalized Smart Healthcare System” have been accepted to be published in the IEEE International Conference on Digital Health (ICDH 2022). The acceptance rate is around 25%.
- [April 2022] FIU has received a $2M Department of Energy (DOE) award to enhance the cybersecurity of America’s energy systems. Dr. Rahman is leading this effort. FIU partnered with NCSU, UNC Charlotte, Raytheon Technologies, and Duke Energy in this project.
- [April 2022] We hosted a delegation from Bangladesh Energy and Power Research Council (BEPRC) on April 25th, 2022. The team was led by Mr. Satyajit Karmaker, Chairman, BEPRC.
- [March 2022] Dr. Rahman is serving as the TPC Co-Chair of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS) 2023, to be held in Miami.
- [March 2022] Our collaborative work titled “A Security Enforcement Framework for SDN Controller using Game Theoretic Approach” has been accepted in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC).
- [January 2022] Our collaborative work titled “On Algorand Transaction Fee: Challenges and Mechanism Design” has been accepted in the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2022).
2021
- [December 2021] Dr. Rahman and his SHChecker team have successfully completed the NSF I-Corps program. Congratulations to the team, especially Imtiaz and Alvi!
- [December 2021] Mohamadsaleh Jafari (Saleh) has successfully defended his dissertation. Congratulations to Dr. Jafari!
- [October 2021] Our paper titled “Ride-Hailing for Autonomous Vehicles: Hyperledger Fabric-Based Secure and Decentralized Blockchain Platform” is accepted in IEEE BigData 2021.
- [September 2021] As a Co-PI, Dr. Rahman has received a DOE grant titled “Consortium for Research and Education in Power and Energy Systems (CREPES) for Sustainable STEM Workforce.”
- [September 2021] As a Co-PI, Dr. Rahman has received an NSA grant titled “Automated Risk Detection and Mitigation of Devices and Apps in Smart Settings.”
- [August 2021] Dr. Rahman has received an NSF I-Corps award for exploring the implementation and commercialization of security analytics for smart healthcare systems.
- [August 2021] Our paper titled “iAttackGen: Generative Synthesis of False Data Injection Attacks in Cyber-physical Systems” got accepted to be published in IEEE CNS 2021. The acceptance rate is around 28%.
- [August 2021] Dr. Rahman is serving on the TPC of IEEE Blockchain 2021.
- [July 2021] Our paper titled “BIOCAD: Bio-Inspired Optimization for Classification and Anomaly Detection in Digital Healthcare Systems” is accepted to be published in IEEE ICDH 2021. The acceptance rate is around 20%.
- [June 2021] Our paper titled “CURE: Enabling RF Energy Harvesting using Cell-Free Massive MIMO UAVs Assisted by RIS” is accepted to be published in IEEE LCN 2021.
- [May 2021] Our paper titled “iDDAF: An Intelligent Deceptive Data Acquisition Framework for Secure Cyber-physical Systems” is accepted to be published in SecureComm 2021.
- [May 2021] Our paper titled “REPlanner: Efficient UAV Trajectory-Planning using Economic Reinforcement Learning” is accepted to be published in IEEE SMARTCOMP 2021.
- [April 2021] Our paper titled “BIoTA: Control-Aware Attack Analytics for Building Internet of Things” is accepted to be published in IEEE SECON 2021. The acceptance rate is around 26%.
- [April 2021] Our two papers have been accepted to be published in IEEE COMPSAC 2021. The acceptance rate is just 27%. The titles of these papers are “DDAF: Deceptive Data Acquisition Framework against Stealthy Attacks in Cyber-Physical Systems” and “Ensemble-based Efficient Anomaly Detection for Smart Building Control Systems.”
- [March 2021] Our collaborative paper titled “PrivacyGuard: Enhancing Smart Home User Privacy” is accepted for publication at ACM/IEEE IPSN 2021. The acceptance rate is 25%.
- [February 2021] Our two papers have been accepted to be published in IEEE PES General Meeting 2021. Congratulations to Saleh. One of the papers is about false data injection attacks against power system small-signal stability, while another presents false relay operation attacks in power systems with high renewables.
- [February 2021] Our collaborative survey paper titled “A Survey on Security and Privacy Issues in Modern Healthcare Systems: Attacks and Defenses” is accepted to be published in ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare.
- [January 2021] I am serving on the TPC of IEEE COMPSAC 2021.
- [January 2021] Our paper titled “Resiliency-Aware Deployment of SDN in Smart Grid SCADA: A Formal Synthesis Model” has been accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM).
- [January 2021] Our paper titled “Strategic Defense against Stealthy Link Flooding Attacks: A Signaling Game Approach” has been accepted to be published in Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE).