Amjad is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech, advised by Dr. Muhammad Ali Gulzar from Virginia Tech. He is also member of ProperData research group and Co-host at NothingToHide? podcast.

His research focuses on using program analysis techniques to solve internet security and privacy problems.

For more: CV [Last updated May'24]

For more: Thesis [Last updated Feb'24]

News

• [Sep'24] Received John Lee Pratt Graduate Fellowship
• [Aug'24] Our poster on enhancing the accessibility of digital advertisements accepted at CCS 2024
• [May'24] Our paper accepted at CCS 2024
• [May'24] Talk (Mitigating JavaScript Tracking Functions Using Chromium V8's Generated ASTs) accepted at IEEE S&P 2024
• [Apr'24] Co-author and Data Analyst for the JavaScript chapter of the 2024 Web Almanac
• [Jan'24] Passed my Ph.D. preliminary exam at Virginia Tech
• [Nov'23] Talk at Google
• [Oct'23] Talk at Ad-Filtering Dev Summit 2023
• [Sep'23] Attended ProperData Symposium
• [Aug'23] Member of the Artifacts Review Committee at PETS 2024
• [Aug'23] Invited speaker at Ad-Filtering Dev Summit 2023

Open Source Bug Hunting with WebCheck

Selected Publications

• Accessibility Issues in Ad-Driven Web Applications

  Abdul Haddi Amjad, Muhammad Danish, Bless Jah, Muhammad Ali Gulzar

  IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2025

  Currently under submission




• Blocking Tracking JavaScript at the Function Granularity

  Abdul Haddi Amjad, Shaoor Munir, Zubair Shafiq, Muhammad Ali Gulzar

  ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024




• Blocking JavaScript without Breaking the Web: An Empirical Investigation

  Abdul Haddi Amjad, Zubair Shafiq, Muhammad Ali Gulzar

  Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2023




• TrackerSift: untangling mixed tracking and functional web resources

  Abdul Haddi Amjad, Danial Saleem, Zubair Shafiq , Muhammad Ali Gulzar

  Internet Measeurment Conference (IMC) 2021

Talks

Mitigating JavaScript Tracking Functions Using Chromium V8's Generated ASTs

IEEE SNP

San Francisco, 2024

Not publically available




Revolutionizing Privacy: Blocking Tracking JavaScript at the Function Granularity

Goole (Privacy sandbox team)

Remote, 2023

Not publically available




• Demystifying the Mystery of Privacy-Invasive JS Functions

  Ad-Filtering Developer Summit

  Amsterdam, 2023




• What's the next era of content blockers?

  Ad-Filtering Developer Summit

  Amsterdam, 2022




• How to disentangle tracking code from functional?

  Ad-Filtering Developer Summit

  Remote, 2021

Experience

• Brave

  Data Privacy Research Intern

  Summer 2023

  Worked on Solana NFT token-gating for Web3 brave-talk calls




• SEED Lab Virginia Tech

  Graduate Research Assistant

  August 2021 to Current




• Brave

  Ads and Privacy Research Engineer Intern

  Summer 2022

  Worked on testing E2E encryption for brave-talk calls




• Educative

  Educative Answers Technical Lead

  May 2018 to May 2021

Education

• Virginia Tech

  Ph.D Candidate

  August 2021 to Current




• FAST-NUCES

  Bachelor in Computer Science

  August 2017 to August 2021

Community Service

• Co-author and Data Analyst for the JavaScript chapter of the 2024 Web Almanac

  Member of the Artifacts Review Committee at PETS 2024

Grants

• Got travel grant for PoPETS 2023

  Got travel grant for IEEE S&P 2023