Patrick G. Traynor

Professor and Dasburg Preeminent Chair in Engineering. Security, Systems, Impact.

prof_pic.jpg

University of Florida

5400D Malachowsky Hall

1889 Museum Rd,

Gainesville, FL 32611

I am a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the University of Florida, where I currently serve as the Interim Department Chair. I am committed to the real-world impact of my research, and have co-founded three start-up companies (Skim Reaper, CryptoDrop and Pindrop Security). My team and I have also uncovered critical vulnerabilities in cellular and mobile networks, developed some of the strongest detectors of deepfakes and protections for voice-driven systems, and protected a wide range of other networked systems. Learn more about our work on my publications page.

I received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2010, and was named a Sloan Fellow in 2014, a Fellow for the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion in 2016, and a Kavli Fellow in 2017.

news

Sep 10, 2025 We had two papers accepted to the 2026 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. These papers make advances in fuzzing stateful systems and evaluating AI detectors in academic writing.
Jul 01, 2025 I have been asked to serve as the Interim Department Chair of CISE at UF.

selected publications

  1. ACM CCS
    “Get in Researchers; We’re Measuring Reproducibility”: A Reproducibility Study of Machine Learning Papers in Tier 1 Security Conferences
    Daniel Olszewski, Allison Lu, Carson Stillman, and 6 more authors
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Nov 2023
    (Acceptance rate: 19.8%)
  2. USENIX SEC
    Who Are You (I Really Wanna Know)? Detecting Audio DeepFakes Through Vocal Tract Reconstruction
    Logan Blue, Kevin Warren, Hadi Abdullah, and 5 more authors
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (SECURITY), Aug 2022
    (Acceptance rate: 17.2%)
  3. IEEE S&P
    The Faults in our ASRs: An Overview of Attacks against Automatic Speech Recognition and Speaker Identification Systems
    Hadi Abdullah, Kevin Warren, Vincent Bindschaedler, and 2 more authors
    In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), May 2021
    (Acceptance rate: 12.1%)
  4. USENIX SEC
    Fear the Reaper: Characterization and Fast Detection of Card Skimmers
    Nolen Scaife, Christian Peeters, and Patrick Traynor
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (SECURITY), Aug 2018
    Acceptance Rate: 19.0%
    Distinguished Paper Award
  5. IEEE ICDCS
    CryptoLock (and Drop It): Stopping Ransomware Attacks on User Data
    Nolen Scaife, Henry Carter, Patrick Traynor, and 1 more author
    In IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Jul 2016
    (Acceptance Rate: 17.6%)
    PDF
  6. USENIX SEC
    Mo(bile) Money, Mo(bile) Problems: Analysis of Branchless Banking Applications in the Developing World
    Bradley Reaves, Nolen Scaife, Adam Bates, and 2 more authors
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (SECURITY), Aug 2015
    (Acceptance Rate: 15.7%)
    PDF
  7. ACM CCS
    PinDr0p: Using Single-Ended Audio Features to Determine Call Provenance
    Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Aamir Poonawalla, Mustaque Ahamad, and 2 more authors
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Oct 2010
    (Acceptance Rate: 17.2%)
    Test of Time Award PDF