I am currently a PhD student in the Information Security group at UCL, funded by VASCO and UCL through EPSRC. I am supervised by Steven Murdoch and George Danezis. My research interests are in security and privacy and my work is broadly related to producing evidence that enables accountable security and privacy guarantees, which involves a mix of Cryptography, Systems Security and Game Theory.
Before joining UCL, I completed a BSc in Theoretical Physics at QMUL and a MASt in Mathematics in Cambridge. I also spent a summer working on formalised mathematics and interactive theorem proving at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge with Lawrence Paulson.
I occasionally blog about new papers and other work and research related topics, usually on Bentham’s Gaze.
Improving the auditability of access to data requests
Incentives in Security Protocols
Smart Contracts and Bribes (with Patrick McCorry)
EPFL blockchain summer school (with Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Azouvi and Patrick McCorry)
MSc project co-supervision with Steven Murdoch:
Sebastian Toscano - Privacy preserving continuous authentication (2017-2018)
Teaching assistant:
COMP0064 Dissertation (2018-2019 Term 2)
COMP0057 Research in Information Security (2018-2019 Term 2)
COMP0141 Security (2018-2019 Term 2)
COMP0003 Theory of Computation (2018-2019 Term 1)
COMP210P Introduction to Programming (2016-2017 Term 2)
Academic:
Program Committee: IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (2019)
Sub-reviewer: IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (2019), IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (2019), Financial Cryptography and Data Security (2018)
Other:
I usually attend London CryptoParty events. Here are some slides and handouts from a past workshop on safe browsing and Tor for beginners, done with Sarah Azouvi.
Papers:
VAMS: Verifiable Auditing of Access to Confidential Data Alexander Hicks, Vasilis Mavroudis, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Meiklejohn and Steven J. Murdoch Under submission
Incentives in Security Protocols Sarah Azouvi, Alexander Hicks and Steven J. Murdoch Twenty-sixth International Workshop on Security Protocols
Smart Contracts for Bribing Miners Patrick McCorry, Alexander Hicks and Sarah Meiklejohn The 5th Workshop on Bitcoin and Blockchain Research (slides)
Other:
(Talk) Evidence for A Posteriori Security Alexander Hicks and Steven Murdoch 11th Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (slides)
(Poster) Incentivising Privacy in Cryptocurrencies Sarah Azouvi, Alexander Hicks and Haaroon Yousaf OPERANDI 2018: Open Day for Privacy, Transparency and Decentralization