John S. Heidemann

About

The ANT Lab’s research develops new methods, tools, and protocols to improve our understanding of the Internet and its security, privacy, and efficiency.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• World Wide Web
• Computer Security
• Computer network
• Algorithm
• Political Science
• Telecommunications
• Business
• Microeconomics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Detecting IoT Devices in the Internet

  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking · 2020 · 51 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks launched from compromised Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices have shown how vulnerable the Internet is to large-scale DDoS attacks. To understand the risks of these attacks requires learning about these IoT devices: where are they? how many are there? how are they changing? This paper describes three new methods to find IoT devices on the Internet: server IP addresses in traffic, server names in DNS queries, and manufacturer information in TLS certifica…

  DOI

• Anycast In context

  2021 · 36 citations

  Anycast is used to serve content including web pages and DNS, and anycast deployments are growing. However, prior work examining root DNS suggests anycast deployments incur significant inflation, with users often routed to suboptimal sites. We reassess anycast performance, first extending prior analysis on inflation in the root DNS. We show that inflation is very common in root DNS, affecting more than 95\% of users. However, we then show root DNS latency \emph{hardly matters} to users because c…

  DOI

• Having your Privacy Cake and Eating it Too: Platform-supported Auditing of Social Media Algorithms for Public Interest

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2023-04-14 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Social media platforms curate access to information and opportunities, and so play a critical role in shaping public discourse today. The opaque nature of the algorithms these platforms use to curate content raises societal questions. Prior studies have used black-box methods led by experts or collaborative audits driven by everyday users to show that these algorithms can lead to biased or discriminatory outcomes. However, existing auditing methods face fundamental limitations because they funct…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vulnerability Disclosure Considered Stressful

  ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review · 2023-04-30 · 10 citations

  articleSenior author

  Vulnerability disclosure is a widely recognized practice in the software industry, but there is a lack of literature detailing the firsthand experiences of researchers who have gone through the process. This work aims to bridge that gap by sharing our personal experience of accidentally discovering a DNS vulnerability and navigating the vulnerability disclosure process for the first time. We document our mistakes and highlight the important lessons we learned, such as the fact that public disclo…

  PublisherDOI

• Auditing for Racial Discrimination in the Delivery of Education Ads

  2024-06-03 · 9 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Digital ads on social-media platforms play an important role in shaping access to economic opportunities. Our work proposes and implements a new third-party auditing method that can evaluate racial bias in the delivery of ads for education opportunities. Third-party auditing is important because it allows external parties to demonstrate presence or absence of bias in social-media algorithms. Education is a domain with legal protections against discrimination and concerns of racial-targeting, but…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CCRI: Medium: DNS, Identity, and Internet Naming for Experimentation and Research (DIINER)

  NSF · $1.5M · 2019–2024

• NeTS-FIND: Sensor-Internet Sharing and Search

  NSF · $580k · 2006–2010

• CRI: CRD: Collaborative Research: Open Research Testbed for Underwater Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

  NSF · $150k · 2007–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Deborah Estrin

  Cornell University

  66 shared

• Ramesh Govindan

  University of Southern California

  33 shared

• Christos Papadopoulos

  University of Western Macedonia

  21 shared

• Kun-Chan Lan

  National Cheng Kung University

  18 shared

• Yuri Pradkin

  18 shared

• Affan A. Syed

  National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences

  15 shared

• Fábio Silva

  Polytechnic Institute of Porto

  15 shared

• Giovane C. M. Moura

  Delft University of Technology

  15 shared

Labs

• ANT peoplePI

  Information about the ANT project's research.

Awards & honors

• 2014 IEEE Fellow
• 2008 Association for Computing Machinery Senior Member

Similar researchers at University of Southern California

• Jonathan Gratchh-82
• Muhao Chenh-74