Biography
My research interests centre on networked systems, particularly in the context of security and measurement. Currently, I am working on the design, scalability and applications of blockchains with George Danezis and Sarah Meiklejohn as part of the EU DECODE and EPSRC Glass Houses projects. I am a member of IC3 (Initiative for cryptocurrency and Contract) and The UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies (CBT). I also have a long-standing research interest in characterizing various forms of information control (e.g., censorship, discrimination and misinformation) to enable transparency and accountability; for this work I was named to MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35.
I received my Ph.D. degree (Characterization of Internet Censorship from Multiple Perspectives) from the University of Cambridge in 2017 under the supervision of Jon Crowcroft (and co-supervised by Steven Murdoch, Vern Paxson, and Ross Anderson) where I was an Honorary Cambridge Trust Scholar, and was awarded the Mary Bradburn Scholarship by the British Federation of Women Graduates for my research work. Previously, I collaborated with ICSI (UC Berkeley), and made research contributions to NSF projects on developing empirical basis for censorship and socio-economic perspectives on Internet security. I also worked on Intrusion Detection Systems (Bro), and wrote an open-source software for botnet detection (BotFlex). I received my Master's degree in Computer and Communication Security from National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan in 2013 for which I was awarded the President's Gold Medal.
News
- [Nov'18] Our paper Coconut: Threshold Issuance Selective Disclosure Credentials with Applications to Distributed Ledgers has been accepted to NDSS'19.
- [Nov'18] I'll serve in the PC of the Workshop on Decentralized Internet Infrastructure (DIN) co-located with NDSS'19.
- [Oct'18] I'll serve in the PC of the Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking (EdgeSys) co-located with EuroSys'19.
- [Oct'18] My written evidence to the UK Parliament Communications Committee’s ongoing inquiry on internet regulation has been published
- [Oct'18] Delighted and honoured to be named a Rising Star in Computer Networking and Communications by N2Women
- [Sep'18] I am excited to be part of The Dots & Squarespace's list of 100 creative leaders changing the world for the better!
- [Jul'18] I am excited and honoured to be named as a 'Visionary' to MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 for my work on censorship and transparency.
Selected Publications
- Mustafa Al-Bassam, Alberto Sonnino, Shehar Bano, Dave Hrycyszyn and George Danezis. Chainspace: A Sharded Smart Contracts Platform. To appear in the proceedings of the 25th Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2018.
- Sheharbano Khattak, Tariq Elahi, Laurent Simon, Colleen Swanson, Steven J. Murdoch and Ian Goldberg. SoK: Making Sense of Censorship Resistance Systems. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Vol. 2016, No. 4 (PETS), 2016.
- Sheharbano Khattak, David Fifield, Sadia Afroz,Mobin Javed, Srikanth Sundaresan, Vern Paxson, Steven J. Murdoch, and Damon McCoy. Do You See What I See? Differential Treatment of Anonymous Users. Proceedings of the 23rd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2016.
- Sheharbano Khattak, Mobin Javed, Syed Ali Khayam, Zartash Afzal Uzmi and Vern Paxson. A Look at the Consequences of Internet Censorship Through an ISP Lens. Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement (IMC), 2014. Best Paper Nomination.
Talks
The complete list is here.Blockchain Scalability
Internet Censorship
Personal
- My name is pronounced as Shahrbānū (شهربانو) (Meaning: "Lady of the Land", or "The Princess"). This name has appeared in various historic and folklorish contexts, and there are many songs (e.g., this, this, and this) named after me! :)
- I can speak English, Pashto (three dialects), Urdu (Native or Bilingual Proficiency), Hindi (Native or Bilingual Proficiency), Punjabi (Limited Working Proficiency), Arabic (Elementary Proficiency) and Farsi/Persian (Elementary Proficiency).
- In my free time, I like to read about psychology, philosophy and literature; and watching movies and long walks with my son. I enjoy running and good music.