Kamil Sarac

Professor and Associate Head
Department of Computer Science
The University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, TX 75080
Office: ECS South 4.207
Phone: (972) 883 2337
E-mail: ksarac .(at). utdallas.edu

Bio:
I received my B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey in 1994, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1997 and 2002, respectively. I joined the Computer Science Department at UT Dallas in September 2002 as an assistant professor and currently serves as a professor in the same department. I also serve as an associate department head for academic affairs and as the director of cybersecurity education programs in our department. Please see my CV for more details here.

Research Interests:
My research interests include computer networks and protocols. More specifically, I have worked on network monitoring and Internet measurements; security of software-defined networks; and future Internet architecture design. In the past, I also worked on sampling of large scale complex networks; energy efficient broadcast in ad hoc networks; overlay networks and their use in network security; and group communication and IP multicast.

My current research efforts include use of ML based models in understanding and inferring topological structure of the Internet and BGP protocol; developing ML based intrusion detection systems for software-defined networks. I am also highly interested in the area of next generation Internet architecture design.

My recent work has been on Internet topology measurements area. Together with my PhD students, I worked on several practical problems in building representative Internet topology maps that are used to model and study the topological characteristics of the Internet.

My earlier work included using overlay networks to provide Denial-of-Service (DoS) resistant end-to-end communication service in the Internet; developing polynomial time algorithms for several energy efficient communication problems in ad-hoc wireless networks; and developing multicast debugging tools to facilitate multicast management and support multicast deployment efforts in the Internet. Some of our work was adapted and standardized by the IETF for implementation and deployment in the Internet (e.g., IETF RFC 6450).

So far, I graduated 6 PhD students four of whom now serve as tenured or tenure-track faculty member in academia.

Teaching Interests:
I teach both undergraduate and graduate level courses on computer networks and network security. During the last several years, I taught Computer Networks Lab (undergrad), Advanced Computer Networks, and Network Security courses several times.

In early 2010s, I have written a computer networks laboratory book that I use for my Computer Network Lab course. This book includes eight lab exercises on GNS3 based virtual environment. The labs use Linux based virtual end systems and Cisco, Juniper, VyOS, or Quagga based virtual routers to build various network topologies to experiment with traditional networking protocols such as RIP, OSPF, BGP, and others. Students can deploy the virtual environment on their PCs/Laptops without incurring any additional equipment cost for the institution or for themselves.

Currently, I serve as the director of cyber security education programs at the CS department. I am also managing NSF sponsored Cybercorps: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program for the department (awarded in 2010, 2014, and 2019). In this role, I am advising over a dozen scholarship students and mentoring them toward their successful degree completion and job search activities with Federal Government agencies.

Teaching:

Current PhD Students:

Former Students:

Journal Publications:

  1. Vulnerability Challenges of Software Defined Networking, ZJ Haas, TL Culver, K. Sarac, IEEE Communications Magazine 59 (7), 88-93, 2021.
  2. Estimation of Structural Properties of Online Social Networks at the Extreme, E. Cem and K. Sarac, Computer Networks, Vol.108, pp. 323-344, 2016.
  3. Graph Based Induction of Unresponsive Routers in Internet Topologies, H. Kardes, M.H. Gunes, and K. Sarac, Computer Networks, 81:178-200, 2015.
  4. SKAIT: A Parameterized Key Assignment Scheme for Confidential Communication in Resource Constrained Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, R.L. Novales, N. Mittal, K. Sarac, Ad Hoc Networks 20:163-181, 2014.
  5. Adaptive Information Coding for Secure and Reliable Wireless Telesurgery Communications, M.E. Tozal, Y. Wang, E. Al-Shaer, K. Sarac, B. Thuraisingham, B-T. Chu, Journal of Mobile Networks and Applications, Vol.18, Issue 5, pp 697-711, October 2013.
  6. Polynomial Time Solution to Minimum Forwarding Set Problem in Wireless Networks under Disk Coverage Model, M. Baysan, K. Sarac, and R. Chandrasekaran, Ad Hoc Networks, Vol.10, No. 7, pp. 1253-1266, September 2012.
  7. PalmTree: An IP Alias Resolution Algorithm with Linear Probing Complexity, M.E. Tozal and K. Sarac, Computer Communications, Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 658-669, April 2011.
  8. A Survey on the Design, Applications and Enhancements of Application Layer Overlay Network, J. Kurian and K. Sarac, ACM Computing Surveys, Vol.43, No.1, pp.5.1-5.34, November 2010.
  9. Resolving IP Aliases in Building Traceroute-Based Internet Maps, M. Gunes and K. Sarac, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp.1738-1751, December 2009.
  10. A Polynomial Time Solution to Minimum Forwarding Set Problem in Wireless Networks under Unit Disk Coverage Model, M. Baysan, K. Sarac, R. Chandrasekaran, and S. Bereg, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 20, No. 7, pp. 913-924, July 2009.
  11. Defending Network-Based Services Against Denial of Service Attacks, J. Kurian and K. Sarac, International Journal on Network Security, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 186-200, September 2009.
  12. Toward a Practical Packet Marking Approach for IP Traceback, C. Gong and K. Sarac, International Journal of Network Security, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 271-281, March 2009.
  13. A More Practical Approach for Single-Packet IP Traceback using Packet Logging and Marking, C. Gong and K. Sarac, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol.19, No.10, pp.1310-1324, October 2008.
  14. Variable Power Broadcast using Local Information in Ad Hoc Networks, with Avinash Chiganmi, Mehmet Baysan, and Ravi Prakash, Ad Hoc Networks, Vol.6, No.5, pp. 675-695, July 2008.
  15. A Measurement Study on Overhead Distribution of Value-Added Internet Services, with Mehmet H. Gunes, Sevcan Bilir and Turgay Korkmaz, Computer Networks, Vol.51, No.14, pp.4153-4173, October 2007.
  16. Single Packet IP Traceback in AS-Level Partial Deployment Scenario, with Turgay Korkmaz, Chao Gong, and Sandra G. Dykes, International Journal on Security and Networks, Vol.2, No.1/2, pp. 95-108, 2007.
  17. Load-Balanced Agent Activation for Value-Added Network Services, with Chao Gong, Ovidiu Daescu, Balaji Raghavachari, and Raja Jothi, Computer Communications, Vol.29, No.11, pp.1905-1916, July 2006.
  18. Practical Utilities for Monitoring Multicast Service Availability, with Pavan Namburi and Kevin C. Almeroth, Computer Communications, Vol.29, No.10,pp.1675-1686, June 2006.
  19. Monitoring IP Multicast in the Internet: Recent Advances and Existing Challenges, with Kevin Almeroth, IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol.43, Issue.10, pp.85-91, October 2005.
  20. Application Layer Reachability Monitoring for IP Multicast, with Kevin C. Almeroth, Computer Networks, Vol.48, No.2, pp.195-213, June 2005.
  21. A Distributed Approach for Monitoring Multicast Service Availability, with K. Almeroth, Journal of Network and Systems Management, Vol.12, No.3, pp.327-348, September 2004.
  22. Tracetree: A Scalable Mechanism to Discover Multicast Tree Topologies in the Internet, with K. Almeroth, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol.12, No.5, pp.795-808, October 2004.
  23. Supporting Multicast Deployment Efforts: A Survey of Tools for Multicast Monitoring, with K. Almeroth, Journal of High Speed Networks, Vol.9, No.3-4, pp.191-211, 2000.
  24. DFT Techniques for Size Estimation of Database Join Operations, with O. Egecioglu and A. El-Abbadi, International Journal of Foundation of Computer Science, Vol.10, No.1, pp.81-102, 1999.

Conference Publications:

  1. A Scheme to Introduce New Reachability Domain on the Internet, S Das, K Sarac, IEEE IPCCC, Nov 2023.
  2. Attack Detection and Mitigation using Intelligent Data Planes in SDNs, A Ganesan, K Sarac, IEEE Globecom, Dec 2022.
  3. Practical Labs for Teaching SDN Security, S Das, K Sarac, 26th Colloquium on Information System Security Education (CISSE), Nov 2022.
  4. Poster: Private Internet: A Global End-to-End Service Model, S Das, K Sarac, IEEE ICNP, 2021.
  5. Mitigating Evasion Attacks on Machine Learning based NIDS Systems in SDN, A Ganesan, K Sarac, IEEE NetSoft, 2021.
  6. ZIDX: A Generic Framework for Random Access to BGP Records in Compressed MRT Datasets, OF Ozarslan, K Sarac, IEEE ICCCN, 2020.
  7. Estimating Clustering Coefficients via Metropolis-Hastings Random Walk and Wedge Sampling on Large OSN Graphs, Emrah Cem and Kamil Sarac, IEEE IPCCC, Las Vegas, NV, December 2016.
  8. PPEP: A Deployable Privacy Preserving E-Commerce Protocol for Electronic Goods, Moses Ike, Kamil Sarac, the 6th International Conference on Communication and Network Security (ICCNS), Singapore, Nov 2016.
  9. Heuristics for 2-Coverage Multi Point Relay Problem in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks, Partha De, Kamil Sarac, R. Chandrasekaran, Workshop on Green Networks (GreenNet), Tempe, AZ, May 2016.
  10. Average Degree Estimation under Ego-Centric Sampling Design, Emrah Cem and Kamil Sarac, 8th IEEE International Workshop on Network Science for Communication Networks (NetSciCom 2016), San Francisco, CA, April 2016.
  11. An Experimental Study on Inter-domain Routing Dynamics using IP-level Path Traces, Nazim Ahmed and Kamil Sarac, IEEE LCN, October 2015.
  12. Estimating the Size and Average Degree of Online Social Networks at the Extreme, Emrah Cem and Kamil Sarac, IEEE ICC, June 2015.
  13. Measuring Path Divergence in the Internet, Nazim Ahmed, Kamil Sarac, IEEE IPCCC, December 2014.
  14. Location Matters: Eliciting Responses to Direct Probes, Ethan Blanton, Mehmet E Tozal, Kamil Sarac, and Sonia Fahmy, IEEE IPCCC, December 2013.
  15. Impact of Sampling Design in Estimation of Graph Characteristics, E. Cem, M. E Tozal, and K. Sarac, IEEE IPCCC, December 2013.
  16. Estimating Network Layer Subnet Characteristics via Statistical Sampling, M.E. Tozal and K. Sarac, IFIP Networking, Prague, Czech Republic, May 2012.
  17. Subnet Level Network Topology Mapping, M.E. Tozal and K. Sarac, IEEE IPCCC, Orlando, Florida, November 2011.
  18. A Security Framework for Service Overlay Networks: Operating in the Presence of Compromised Nodes, J. Kurian and K. Sarac, Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, Dallas, Texas, December 2011.
  19. Adaptive Information Coding for Secure and Reliable Wireless Telesurgery Communication, M.E. Tozal, Y. Wang, E. Al-Shaer, K. Sarac, B. Thuraisingham, B.-T. Chu, The First International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Networking Systems, Shanghai, China, April 15, 2011.
  20. Relay Assignment in AMT-based Multicast Content Distribution, S. Patel, K. Sarac, R. Chandrasekaran, T. Korkmaz, N. Mittal, 9th Annual Conference on Communication Networks and Services Research Conference, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 2011.
  21. TraceNET: An Internet Topology Data Collector, M.E. Tozal and K. Sarac, ACM IMC 2010, Melbourne, Australia, November 2010.
  22. SKAIT: A Parameterized Key Assignment Scheme for Wireless Networks, R. Novales, N. Mittal, and K. Sarac, International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2010.
  23. Characterizing Link and Path Reliability in Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks, T. Korkmaz and K. Sarac, IEEE International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMOB), Niagara Falls, Canada, October, 2010.
  24. ODON: An On-Demand Security Overlay for Mission-Critical Applications, J. Kurian, A. Kulkarni, H. Vu, and K. Sarac, IEEE ICCCN Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA, August 2009.
  25. Analyzing Router Responsiveness to Measurement Probes, M. Gunes and K. Sarac, Passive and Active Measurement Conference, Seoul, Korea, April 2009.
  26. A SIP Security Testing Framework, H. Srinivasan and K. Sarac, IEEE CCNC, Security for Consumer Electronics Communications Track, Las Vegas, NV, USA, January 2009.
  27. Wormeros: A New Framework for Defending Against Wormhole Attacks on Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, with H. Vu, A. Kulkarni, N. Mittal, International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems and Applications, Dallas, TX, USA, October, 2008.
  28. A Security Framework for Service Overlay Networks: Access Control, with Jinu Kurian, Proceedings of IEEE BroadNETs Conference, pp. , London, UK, September 2008.
  29. Resolving Anonymous Routers in Internet Topology Measurement Studies, with Mehmet Gunes, IEEE INFOCOM, Phoenix, AZ, USA, April 15-17, 2008.
  30. Provider Provisioned Overlay Networks and Their Utility in DoS Defense, with Jinu Kurian, IEEE Globecom, Washington DC, USA, November 26-30, 2007.
  31. Inferring Subnets in Router-Level Topology Collection Studies, with Mehmet Gunes, Internet Measurement Conference, San Diego, CA, USA, October 24-26, 2007.
  32. Importance of IP Alias Resolution in Sampling Internet Topologies, with Mehmet Gunes, Global Internet Symposium 2007, Anchorage, AK, USA, May 11, 2007.
  33. Impact of Alias Resolution in traceroute-based Sample Network Topologies, with Mehmet Gunes and Nicolas Nielsen, Passive and Active Measurement Conference, Louvain-la-neuve, Belgium, April 5-6, 2007.
  34. Defending Network-Based Services Against Denial of Service Attacks, with Jinu Kurian and Kevin Almeroth, IEEE ICCCN Conference, Arlington, VA, USA, October 9-12, 2006.
  35. Toward A More Practical Marking Scheme for IP Traceback, with Chao Gong, Third International Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems (BroadNETS), San Jose, CA, USA, October 2006.
  36. FONet: A Federated Overlay Network for DoS Defense in the Internet (A Position Paper), with Jinu Kurian, Global Internet Symposium, Barcelona, Catalunya, SPAIN, April 28-29, 2006.
  37. Variable Power Broadcasting in Ad Hoc Networks, with Avinash Chiganmi and Ravi Prakash, IEEE International Conference on Communication, Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks Symposium, Istanbul, TURKEY, June 2006.
  38. Analytical IP Alias Resolution, with Mehmet Gunes, IEEE International Conference on Communication, General Symposium, Istanbul, TURKEY, June 2006.
  39. Cluster Based Approaches for End-to-End Complete Feedback Collection in Multicast, with Mehmet Baysan, IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference, Phoenix, AZ, USA, April 10-12, 2006.
  40. Single Packet IP Traceback in AS-level Partial Deployment Scenario, with Chao Gong, Trinh Le, and Turgay Korkmaz, IEEE GLOBECOM 2005, St. Louis, MO, USA, November 28 – December 2, 2005.
  41. Intersection Characteristics of End-to-End Internet Paths and Trees, with Sevcan Bilir and Turgay Korkmaz, IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Boston, MA, USA, November 6-9, 2005.
  42. FONet: A Federated Overlay Network for DoS Defense in the Internet, with Jinu Kurian, IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Boston, MA, USA, November 6-9, 2005, (a poster presentation).
  43. Facilitating Robust Multicast Group Management, with Avijit Mazumder and Kevin Almeroth, International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Skamania, WA, USA, June 2005.
  44. IP Traceback Based on Packet Marking and Logging, with Chao Gong, IEEE International Conference on Communication (ICC), Seoul, Korea, May 16-20, 2005.
  45. Load Balancing for Reliable Multicast, with Chao Gong, Raja Jorhi, Ovidiu Daescu, and Balaji Raghavachari, 3rd IASTED International Conference on Communications, Internet, and Information Technology (CIIT), pp.86-91, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, USA, November 22-24, 2004.
  46. SSM-Ping: A Ping Utility for Source Specific Multicast, with Pavan Namburi and Kevin C. Almeroth, 3rd IASTED International Conference on Communications, Internet, and Information Technology (CIIT), pp.63-68, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, USA, November 22-24, 2004.
  47. Improving Energy Savings in Power Adaptive Broadcasting in MANETs, with Mehmet Baysan and Saipriya Gowdamachandran, BroadNets Wireless Networking Symposium, pp.745-747, San Jose, CA, USA, October 25-29, 2004.
  48. End User Level Classification of Multicast Reachability Problems, with Pavan Namburi, Workshop on End-to-End Monitoring Techniques and Services (E2EMON), pp.10-15, San Diego, CA, USA, October 3, 2004.
  49. Multicast Session Announcements on top of SSM, with P. Namburi, IEEE International Conference on Communication (ICC), Vol.3, pp.1446-1450, Paris, France, June 2004.
  50. Optimal Placement of NAK Suppressing Agents for Reliable Multicast: A Partial Deployment Case, with O. Daescu, R. Jothi, and B. Raghavachari, Proc. 19th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), pp.334-338, Nicosia, Cyprus, March 2004.
  51. SSM Extensions: Network Layer Support for Multiple Senders in SSM, with P. Namburi and K. Almeroth, Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Communication Networks (ICCCN), pp.74-80, October 2003, Dallas, TX.
  52. SSM-Based Receiver-Controlled Communication in the Internet, South Central Information Security Symposium, pp.1, Denton, TX, April 2003.
  53. Providing Scalable Many-to-One Feedback in Multicast Reachability Monitoring Systems, with K. Almeroth, IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS), pp.256-270, Chicago, IL, October 2001.
  54. Scalable Techniques for Discovering Multicast Tree Topology, with K. Almeroth, International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), pp.73-81, Port Jefferson, New York, USA, June 2001.
  55. Monitoring Reachability in the Global Multicast Infrastructure, with K. Almeroth, IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), pp.141-150, Osaka, JAPAN, November 2000. (see SDR Monitor Home Page)
  56. Supporting the Need for Inter-Domain Multicast Reachability, with K. Almeroth, International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), pp.230-239, Chapel Hill, NC, June 2000.
  57. Iterated DFT Based Techniques for Join-Size Estimation, with O. Egecioglu and A. El Abbadi, Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), pp.348-355, Bethesda, MD, November 1998.

Other Publications:

  1. Defending Multicast Against State Overload Attacks, with Jinu Kurian, South Central Information Security Symposium (SCISS), pp., Houston, TX, USA, April, 2006.
  2. Receiver-Controlled Communication: A Silver Bullet to DoS Attacks?, with Chao Gong, IEEE Emerging Technologies Conference (ETC), Richardson, TX, USA, September 9-10, 2005.
  3. Log-based IP Traceback in AS-Level Partial Deployment Scenario, with Chao Gong, Trinh Le, and Turgay Korkmaz, South Central Information Security Symposium (SCISS), pp., Austin, TX, USA, April, 2005.
  4. IP Traceback with Packet Marking and Logging, with Chao Gong, South Central Information Security Symposium (SCISS), pp.1, Houston, TX, USA, April 24, 2004.
  5. MPing: A Ping Utility for IP Multicast, with K. Almeroth, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Draft, January 2004.
  6. RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR), with T. Friedman, R. Caceres, A. Clark, K. Almeroth, R. Cole, N. Duffield, K. Hedayat, M. Westerlund, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC 3611, November 2003.
  7. Monitoring Multicast Service in the Internet, IEEE Emerging Telecommunication Technologies Conference (ETTC), pp. Dallas, TX, September 2002.
  8. Multicast Monitoring: Supporting a Robust Multicast Service in the Internet, Ph.D. Dissertation Thesis, UC Santa Barbara, June 2002.
  9. Tracetree: A Utility to Discover Multicast Tree Topology in the Network, with K. Almeroth, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Draft, December 2001.
  10. Supporting Multicast Management Using the Multicast Reachability Monitor (MRM) Protocol, with Kevin Almeroth and Liming Wei, Technical Report in Computer Science, TR2000-26, 2000. (MRM End Host Implementation)