Venkat Venkatakrishnan

Venkat Venkatakrishnan — Photo: Jenny Fontaine

In our millions of daily online transactions, ordinary consumers are at the mercy of systematic attacks by computer hackers looking for ways to divert money into their own pockets.

Venkat Venkatakrishnan, director of UIC’s Center for Research and Instruction in Technologies for Electronic Security, looks for unexpected vulnerabilities in the programs we use every day, traces hackers as they infiltrate computer systems, then works with businesses and websites to plug the holes.

“It has the flavor of a puzzle; it takes adversarial thinking,” he said.

Venkatakrishnan has uncovered web scams for transferring money from one bank account to another, problems with mobile check-depositing apps and ways that hackers get shopping sites to send goods for free. He has developed several techniques to secure desktop systems from cyber-attacks.

Subject areas:

• Cyber crime
• Cyber security
• Computer security
• Online consumer protection