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William Robertson

Security By Design Program Analysis Anomaly Detection Electronic Voting System Security Firmware Vulnerability Exploitation
Northeastern University Khoury College of Computer Sciences

About

William Robertson is a professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the College of Engineering at Northeastern University, based in Boston. He co-directs the Northeastern Systems Security Lab and is principal investigator for the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute's Diverge Lab. Robertson’s research revolves around improving the security of operating systems, mobile devices, and the web, as well as making use of techniques such as security by design, program analysis, and anomaly detection. Prior to joining Northeastern in 2011, he was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley. Robertson was involved in the California Top-to-Bottom-Review and the Ohio EVEREST project as a red team member. In this capacity, he demonstrated that electronic voting systems were susceptible to large-scale attacks that could exploit vulnerabilities in both the firmware and the physical security of the components. His work led to significant changes in electronic voting policy in both states.

Research Performance Summary

107
Total Papers
10739
Total Citations
50
H-Index
2003-2026
Active Research Span

First Recorded Paper

Bayesian event classification for intrusion detection

Year: 2003

Citations: 591

Venue: 19th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, 2003. Proceedings.

Latest Recorded Paper

MUZZLE: Adaptive Agentic Red-Teaming of Web Agents Against Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks

Year: 2026

Citations: 0

Venue: arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09222

Last 10 Years Publication Activity

This timeline shows the professor's yearly publication activity.

2026
1
2025
2
2024
2
2023
3
2022
3
2021
5
2020
3
2019
6
2018
9
2017
5
2016
17

Publication Venues and Collaboration

Journal, Conference, and Book Publication Breakdown

Conference 78
Journal 3
Book 3

Top Coauthors

Robertson Kirda Kruegel

Research Impact by Period

2025-2026

Period Stats
Papers 3
Citations 16
Avg. Citations / Paper 5.3
H-Index 1

2020-2024

Period Stats
Papers 16
Citations 505
Avg. Citations / Paper 31.6
H-Index 9

2015-2019

Period Stats
Papers 42
Citations 3866
Avg. Citations / Paper 92
H-Index 25

2010-2014

Period Stats
Papers 19
Citations 1714
Avg. Citations / Paper 90.2
H-Index 16

2005-2009

Period Stats
Papers 17
Citations 2065
Avg. Citations / Paper 121.5
H-Index 12

2000-2004

Period Stats
Papers 10
Citations 2573
Avg. Citations / Paper 257.3
H-Index 9

Contact and Professional Links

Contact Information

w.robertson@northeastern.edu

Detected Research Keywords

Detection Web Attacks Structural Information Executables Anomaly Detection Web Testing Security Real Security Real World Real World Electronic World Electronic Voting Electronic Voting Systems Speculative Execution Attacks Denial Service Vulnerabilities