Mutahar Ali

About Me

I am a third-year PhD student in the Computer Science department at University of California, Irvine (UCI), advised by Prof. Habiba Farrukh. I am broadly interested in security and privacy research. My current research centers on security of immersive systems, supply-chain security in machine learning, and user perceptions and human factors in security and privacy.

Before joining UCI, I was a Research Associate in the Computer Science department at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), where I also earned my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, graduating in 2023.

News

• Aug 2026Presented our work on security of multi-user mixed reality at USENIX Security 2026
• July 2026Received USENIX Student Travel Grant for USENIX Security 2026
• Apr 2026Serving on the Artifact Evaluation Committee for IEEE S&P 2026 and ACM CCS 2026.
• Jun 2025Our poster on eye-gaze privacy in extended reality received the Best Poster Runner-Up award at ACM MobiSys 2025.
• May 2025Presented our work on privacy attitudes toward conversational AI at IEEE S&P 2025.
• Apr 2025Our work on instant mobility for stateful applications in 5G was accepted to ACM/IEEE SEC 2025.
• Sep 2024Started my PhD at UC Irvine with the SPECT Lab.

Publications

• Relay and Betray: Exploiting Client-Side Authority in Multi-User Mixed Reality</span> \ Mutahar Ali, Habiba Farrukh \ USENIX Security Symposium, 2026
• Understanding Users’ S&P Attitudes Towards Conversational AI Platforms
  Mutahar Ali, Arjun Arunasalam, Habiba Farrukh
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2025
• Warping the Edge: Where Instant Mobility in 5G Meets Stateful Applications
  Mukhtiar Ahmad, Faaiq Bilal, Mutahar Ali, Muhammad Ali Nawazish, Amir Salman, Shazer Ali, Fawad Ahmad, Zafar Ayyub Qazi
  ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing (SEC), 2025

Pre-prints

• Follow My Eyes: Backdoor Attacks on Goal-Directed Scanpath Prediction
  Diana Romero^*, Mutahar Ali^*, Momin Khan^*, Habiba Farrukh, Fatima Anwar, Salma Elmalaki [^*Equal Contribution]

Posters

• PeekXR: Understanding Privacy Leakages from Eye Gaze in Extended Reality
  Chuyang Peng, Mutahar Ali, Habiba Farrukh
  ACM MobiSys, 2025 Best Poster Runner-Up

Teaching Experience

• Graduate Teaching Assistant
  • CS-130: Introduction to Security & Privacy (Spring 2025, Spring 2026)
  • CS-141: Concepts in Programming Languages (Fall 2025)
• Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, LUMS
  • CS 382: Network-Centric Computing (Spring 2023, Spring 2022)

Service

• Artifact Evaluation Committee (AEC)
  • IEEE Security and Privacy (S&P), 2026
  • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2026
• Student Volunteer
  • ACM MobiSys, 2025

Awards

• USENIX Security Student Travel Grant (2026)
• Graduated LUMS with an Award of Distinction (2023)
• Students as Co-Researchers Grant (2022)
• Dean’s Honor List (2019-2022)