Islam Obaidat, Ph.D.
Assistant ProfessorComputer Systems TechnologyNorth Carolina A&T State University
I study how embedded and IoT systems fail under attack and how to make them fail less. That work runs from the memory errors in device firmware, through the botnets built from those errors and the traffic they leave on the network, to learning-based defenses that stay trustworthy once they are deployed. It rests on experiments at realistic scale: testbeds and emulators that reproduce an attack end to end before a detection method is judged against it. Recent work extends the same approach to drones and other cyber-physical platforms at the firmware, software, system, and network levels.
Research areas
Firmware and software security
Memory corruption in IoT firmware, control hijacking, software diversity as a defense, and malware detection.
IoT networks and attack experimentation
Botnet and DDoS experiments through simulation and emulation, and lightweight detection built on them.
Trustworthy AI for cyber defense
Intrusion detection that holds up in deployment: side channels, federated learning, and compact language models.
Embedded systems and drone cybersecurity
Security across the firmware, software, system, and network layers of cyber-physical platforms, including drones.
Selected publications
- DSN-W 2026Seeing in Shades of Gray: Real-Time Federated Image-Based Malicious Traffic DetectionSapthak Mohajon Turjya, Moaz Usama, Mulham Fawakherji, Mahmoud Abouyoussef, and Islam Obaidat
- GLOBECOM 2025One Model to Catch Them All: Autoencoder-Based Anomaly Detection in Next-Generation NetworksIslam Obaidat, Furqan Rustam, and Anca Delia Jurcut
- DSN-W 2024DDoShield-IoT: A Testbed for Simulating and Lightweight Detection of IoT Botnet DDoS AttacksSimona De Vivo, Islam Obaidat, Dong Dai, and Pietro Liguori
- arXiv 2024DAEDALUS: Defense Against Firmware ROP Exploits Using Stochastic Software DiversityIslam Obaidat, Meera Sridhar, and Fatemeh Tavakoli
- DSN 2023Creating a Large-Scale Memory Error IoT Botnet Using NS3DockerEmulatorIslam Obaidat, Bennett Kahn, Fatemeh Tavakoli, and Meera Sridhar
- Comput. Secur. 2022Jadeite: A Novel Image-Behavior-Based Approach for Java Malware Detection Using Deep LearningIslam Obaidat, Meera Sridhar, Khue M. Pham, and Phu H. Phung
- DSN 2019Exploiting Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities in Connman for IoT DevicesK. Virgil English, Islam Obaidat, and Meera Sridhar
Ph.D. openings
open Ph.D. · Fall 2027
Funded Ph.D. Opportunity in Embedded Systems and Drone Cybersecurity. Ph.D. in Applied Science and Technology, Information Technology concentration.
Preliminary interest forms are due November 15, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time. Preliminary interest form
The interest form opens soon and closes November 15, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time.
Applications closed on November 15, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted after the deadline.
Next call: TBA. Watch the news feed.
At a glance
- 29publications, 2015–2026, plus 3 under review
- 7journal articles
- 17conference and workshop papers
- 13students mentored
- 8courses, 19 offerings
- 4systems and testbeds
Appointment
- 2024–PresentAssistant Professor, Department of Computer Systems Technology, College of Science and Technology, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC
Contact
- Office
- Price Hall 201-E, Office 1, Greensboro, NC 27411
- iaobaidat@ncat.edu
- Phone
- +1 (336) 285-3123
- Profiles
- ORCID · Google Scholar · ResearchGate · NC A&T faculty profile