Steve Sprecher

CS PhD from Northeastern University

I defended my PhD under Engin Kirda at Northeastern University in the Systems Security Lab, in 2025. I got my MS and BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan where I researched censorship, ransomware, and network measurement with J. Alex Halderman and Roya Ensafi. Also at Michigan, I got the opportunity to teach the introductory computer security course for a total of three years, two of which as the head graduate student instructor.

My research interests include, but are not limited to: network and web security, systems security, practical security application of machine learning, censorship measurement and circumvention, network measurement, usable security, and privacy.

Select Publications

Frameshifter: Security Implications of HTTP/2-to-HTTP/1 Conversion Anomalies
Bahruz Jabiyev, Steven Sprecher, Anthony Gavazzi, Tommaso Innocenti, Kaan Onarlioglu, Engin Kirda
In Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium
(USENIX'22), August 2022

SoK: All or Nothing - A Postmortem of Solutions to the Third-Party Script Inclusion Permission Model and a Path Forward
Steven Sprecher, Christoph Kerschbaumer, Engin Kirda
In Proceedings of the 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy
(EuroS&P'22), June 2022

T-Reqs: HTTP Request Smuggling with Differential Fuzzing
Bahruz Jabiyev, Steven Sprecher, Kaan Onarlioglu, Engin Kirda
In Proceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
(CCS'21), November 2021

Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia
Reethika Ramesh, Ram Sundara Raman, Matthew Bernhard, Victor Ongkowijaya, Leonid Evdokimov, Anne Edmundson, Steven Sprecher, Muhammad Ikram, Roya Ensafi
In Proceedings of the 27th Network and Distributed Systems Symposium
(NDSS'20), February 2020

Beyond Acceptable Advertisement: Better Understanding Blocking Extensions
Benjamin VanderSloot, Steven Sprecher, J. Alex Halderman
In Technical Report
(Technical Report), December 2019

Teaching

CY 3740: Systems Security
Northeastern University
Teaching Assistant
Spring 2025

CS 4973: Foundations of Computer Security & Privacy: Breakthroughs and Research
Northeastern University
Instructor of Record
Winter 2023

CY(S)-5770: Software Vulnerabilities and Security
Northeastern University
Guest Lecturer - Buffer Overflows
Fall 2021

EECS 388: Introduction to Computer Security
University of Michigan
Head Graduate Student Instructor
Winter 2019; Fall 2018; Winter 2018; Fall 2017

EECS 388: Introduction to Computer Security
University of Michigan
Undergraduate Instructional Aide
Winter 2017; Fall 2016