Nikolay "Nick" Ivanov, PhD, CCT

Publications

Conference Papers:

• J. Fogg, M. Jones, W. Zakroff, N. Ivanov. "FlexMode: Beyond the Centralization / Decentralization Dichotomy for Disaster-Adaptive Cyber-Physical Systems"
  [EAI SmartSP '26] (to appear)  
  
• L. Beard, N. Ivanov. "Indexed and Inevictable: An Empirical Threat Analysis of Searchable On-Chain Content Hosting on Ethereum"
  [IEEE CNS '26] (to appear)
  (acceptance rate: 27.3%)
• S. Waterpeace, R. Vasa, B. Dobkin, N. Ivanov. "BYOW: A Throughput-Scalable Transactional Protocol for Self-Sovereign Participants"
  [IEEE SMC '26] (to appear)
  
• S. Ambati, D. Jablonski, C. Papachristou, B. Pugliese, J. Myers, N. Ivanov. "Not All Is Lost: Partial Recovery & Memorability in Self-Sovereign Digital Identity"
  [USENIX SOUPS '26]    
  (CORE Rank A, acceptance rate: 15.5%)
• S. Waterpeace, N. Ivanov. "SoK: Evolution, Security, and Fundamental Properties of Transactional Systems"
  [ACM SACMAT '26]  
  (acceptance rate: 31.3%)
• L. Beard, N. Ivanov. "DarkChain: Weaponizing the Ethereum State Trie as a Censorship-Resistant Distribution Network for Illicit Content"
  [IEEE PST '26] (to appear)
  (acceptance rate: 23.3%)
• S. Ambati, K. Adeel, J. Myers, N. Ivanov. "SoK: Self-Sovereign Digital Identities"
  [ACM SACMAT '26]  
  (acceptance rate: 31.3%)
• M. M. Ahmed, M. Lim, X. Liu, S. S. Ho, N. Ivanov. "Quantifying the Risk of Out-of-Gas Conditions in Ethereum Smart Contracts"
  [IEEE ICAIC '25]  
  
• B. Chen, N. Ivanov, G. Wang, Q. Yan. "Multi-Turn Hidden Backdoor in Large Language Model-powered Chatbot Models"
  [ACM ASIACCS '24]  
  (acceptance rate: 22%)
• B. Chen, N. Ivanov, G. Wang, Q. Yan. "DynamicFL: Balancing Communication Dynamics and Client Manipulation for Federated Learning"
  [IEEE SECON '23]  
  
• J. Watkins, N. Ivanov, K. Hinko, K. Mohan. "Investigating Perceptions of Relevance Towards Computation in an Introductory Physics for Life Science Course"
  [PERC '23]
  
• G. Wang, N. Ivanov, B. Chen, Q. Wang, T. Nguyen, Q. Yan. "Graph Learning for Interactive Threat Detection in Heterogeneous Smart Home Rule Data"
  [ACM SIGMOD '23]  
  (average acceptance rate: 17.4%)
• H. Guo, Y. Wang, N. Ivanov, L. Xiao, Q. Yan. "SpecPatch: Human-In-The-Loop Adversarial Audio Spectrogram Patch Attack on Speech Recognition"
  [ACM CCS '22]  
  Best Paper Honorable Mention (acceptance rate: 22.4%)
• H. Guo, Q. Yan, N. Ivanov, Y. Zhu, L. Xiao, E. Hunter. "SUPERVOICE: Text-Independent Speaker Verification Using Ultrasound Energy in Human Speech"
  [ACM ASIACCS '22]  
  (acceptance rate: 18.4%)
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. "EthClipper: A Clipboard Meddling Attack on Hardware Wallets with Address Verification Evasion"
  [IEEE CNS '21]  
  (acceptance rate: 28.3%)
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. "System-Wide Security for Offline Payment Terminals"
  [EAI SecureComm '21]  
  
• N. Ivanov, H. Guo, Q. Yan. "Rectifying Administrated ERC20 Tokens"
  [ICICS '21]  
  (acceptance rate: 24.3%)
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan, Q. Wang. "Blockumulus: A Scalable Framework for Smart Contracts on the Cloud"
  [IEEE ICDCS '21]  
  (acceptance rate: 19.8%)
• N. Ivanov, J. Lou, T. Chen, J. Li, Q. Yan. "Targeting the Weakest Link: Social Engineering Attacks in Ethereum Smart Contracts"
  [ACM ASIACCS '21]  
  (acceptance rate: 18.9%)
• N. Ivanov, J. Lou, Q. Yan. "SmartWiFi: Universal and Secure Smart Contract-Enabled WiFi Hotspot"
  [EAI SecureComm '20]  
  

Journal Papers:

• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. "AutoThing: A Secure Transaction Framework for Self-Service Things"
  [IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (IEEE TSC)], 2023  
  
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan, A. Kompalli. "TxT: Real-time Transaction Encapsulation for Ethereum Smart Contracts"
  [IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (IEEE TIFS)], 2023  
  
• N. Ivanov, C. Li, Q. Yan, Z. Sun, Z. Cao, X. Luo. "Security Threat Mitigation For Smart Contracts: A Comprehensive Survey"
  [ACM Computing Surveys (ACM CSUR)], 2023  
  

Patents:

• Inventors: Q. Yan, N. Ivanov.
  "Scalable Frameworks for Deployment of Decentralized Transactions"
  [U.S. Patent 12,423,660], issued September 23, 2025  

Posters and Preprints

• S. Waterpeace, N. Ivanov. Poster: "Targeted Proof of Asset Ownership"
  [USENIX Security '25]  
• S. Ambati, D. Jablonski, C. Papachristou, B. Pugliese, J. Myers, N. Ivanov. Poster: "Feasibility of Digital Identity Brain Wallet with Non-Alphanumeric Private Key Seeds"
  [USENIX Security '25]  
• Y. Wang, Q. Yan, N. Ivanov, X. Chen. "A Practical Survey on Emerging Threats from AI-driven Voice Attacks: How Vulnerable are Commercial Voice Control Systems?"
  [arXiv], 2024   
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. Poster: "Et tu, Blockchain? Outsmarting Smart Contracts via Social Engineering"
  [MSU GAC '22] (MSU 14th annual Graduate Academic Conference)   
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. Poster: "Decentralization Paradox: A Study of Hegemonic and Risky ERC-20 Tokens"
  [MSU EGRS '22] (MSU Engineering Graduate Research Symposium)   
• N. Ivanov. "Is Rust C++-fast? Benchmarking System Languages on Everyday Routines"
  [arXiv], 2022   
• N. Ivanov, Q. Yan. "Constraint-Based Inference of Heuristics for Foreign Exchange Trade Model Optimization"
  [arXiv], 2021   

Books:

• N. Ivanov. Book: "Programming in Linux: Self-instruction Guide. 2^nd Edition" [in Russian]
  [ISBN: 978-5-9775-0744-8]
  BHV-Peterburg, 2012  
• N. Ivanov. Book: "Programming in Linux: Self-instruction Guide. 1^st Edition" [in Russian]
  [ISBN: 978-5-9775-0071-5]
  BHV-Peterburg, 2007