I am a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NC State University, co-director of the Secure Computing Institute, director of the Wolfpack Security and Privacy Research (WSPR) laboratory, and a member of the Secure Software Supply Chain Center (S3C2). I earned my Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2011 and 2006, respectively, and my B.S. in Computer Engineering from Penn State in 2004.
My research studies the security of a wide range of systems, including the software supply chain, 5G and cloud infrastructure, mobile platforms, Internet of Things (IoT), and networks. I commonly apply a range of systems design, program analysis, and empirical studies to demonstrate how novel techniques and tools can improve the security of our computing systems. (Short Bio)
Contact Information
Office: 2240M Engineering Building II
Phone: (919) 513-7905
Email: whenck at ncsu.edu
Postal Mail
Department of Computer Science |
Deliveries
3320 Engineering Building II |
Current PhD Students
- Trevor Dunlap (expected 2025) [co-advised with Dr. Brad Reaves]
- Seaver Thorn (expected 2026)
- K. Virgil English (expected 2027)
- Elizabeth Lin (expected 2027)
- Greg Tystahl (expected 2027) [co-advised with Dr. Alexandros Kapravelos]
- Jonah Ghebremichael (expected 2028) [co-advised with Dr. Alexandros Kapravelos]
(all current and past students)
Recent Professional Activities
- Secretary, 2022-present USENIX Association Board of Directors
- Steering Committee, 2019-present USENIX Security Symposium
- Associate Editor, 2020-present ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
- Program Co-Chair, 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)
- Program Committee, 2023 USENIX Security Symposium
- Program Committee, 2023 ACM CCS Workshop on Software Supply Chain Offensive Research and Ecosystem Defenses (SCORED)
News
March 12, 2024: Our paper, VFCFinder: Seamlessly Pairing Security Advisories and Patches has been accepted for publication at the 2024 ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS).
February 29, 2024: We received a distinguished paper award at NDSS for our paper, UntrustIDE: Exploiting Weaknesses in VS Code Extensions.
February 26, 2024: Our paper, Examining Cryptography and Randomness Failures in Open-Source Cellular Cores has been accepted for publication at the 2024 ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY).
January 23, 2024: Our paper, GRASP: Hardening Serverless Applications through Graph Reachability Analysis of Security Policies Ex has been accepted for publication at The Web Conference 2024.
December 5, 2023: My PhD student, Samin Mahmud, successfully defended his dissertation. Congratulations, Samin!