Computer Laboratory

Kieron Ivy Turk

About me

I am a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge studying interactions between technology and domestic abuse. This follows 2 main paths: making it safer for victim-survivors to access support, and creating/improving technical interventions for specific abuses of technology. I am supervised by Alice Hutchings, and part of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre.

I completed my MEng and BA at the University of Cambridge. My MEng dissertation is Locked Into Stupidity: A Smart Lock Security Analysis - a vulnerability analysis of a pair of smart locks, resulting in 4 attacks on a Wifi-based lock and 8 attacks on a BLE lock. My BA project was Pinpoint: A Web Application Vulnerability Scanner which can detect XSS, command and code injection, path traversal, and Shellshock vulnerabilities in websites.

I'm non-binary (genderfluid) and use either name and they/she pronouns. Voice, appearance, and other gender-y things subject to change.

Publications and Conferences

K.I. Turk, A. Hutchings, A. Beresford, "Stop Following Me! Evaluating the Effectiveness of Anti-Stalking Features of Personal Item Tracking Devices" ArXiv Preprint, 2023. [Paper available here].

T. Shulruff, L.M. Tanczer, K.I. Turk, "Technology-Facilitated Domestic Abuse: Advancements in Its Definition, Scholarship and Response." European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV), September 11-13, 2023, Reykjavik, Iceland.

K.I. Turk, A. Hutchings, "Click Here to Exit: An Evaluation of Quick Exit Buttons." In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. [Available here]

K.I. Turk, A. Hutchings, A. Beresford, "Can’t Keep Them Away: The failures of anti-stalking protocols in personal item tracking devices" In: F. Stajano, V. Matyas, B. Christianson, J. Anderson (ed) Security Protocols XXVIII. Security Protocols 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14186. Springer, Cham. [Paper available here] ; [Transcript of discussion available here].

K. Turk, S. Pastrana, and B. Collier, "A tight scrape: methodological approaches to collecting research data on cybercrime communities in adversarial environments," in 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), pp. 428–437, 2020. [Available here]

Academic

PhD Student 2021-2024/5 at University of Cambridge

Intern with Damon McCoy from May 1st 2023 - July 21st 2023 at New York University.

MEng (Hons with Distinction, 2020-2021) + BA (1st with Hons, 2017-2020) Computer Science from University of Cambridge.

Supervisions

Number of students in
Course (yeargroup) 2022 2023
Digital Electronics (IA) 16 13
Economics, Law & Ethics (IB) 10 14
Cybersecurity (IB) 11 ---
Cryptography (II) 15 17
Part II Dissertations 2 2
MPhil Dissertations 1 ---

I'm open to supervising Part II/III/MPhil projects in 2023-2024*, and have some ideas here. I'm happy supervising anything I have expertise in: this includes tech-abuse, system security and hacking, or creating tools for detecting vulnerabilities. Feel free to email me any ideas you have or things from my list you want to work on!

* I'm unlikely to be able to take on more students due to current commitments, but I am always happy to discuss ideas with students!

Societies etc.

I'm on the committee of the CU Cyber Security Society (Cybersoc) for 2021-present and have made presentations for their Intro to Web Hacking, Intro to CTF, and physical security workshops.

I am president of the Wolfson Pole and Aerial Sports Society for 2022-2024 after being vice-president for 2021-2022.

I managed the Security Seminar Series for seminars from January 2022 – April 23.

I manage the LGBTQ+@CL webpages from February 2022.

Hobbies etc.

I know too much about locks and lockpicking, and can pick about 12 different types of lock. I'm currently working on cracking the ATM safes in the security corridor for fun.

I play acoustic and electric guitar, bass, ukulele, mandolin, banjo and tenor banjo, and used to play piano/keyboard.

I speak Spanish (DELE B2) and some Russian (CEFR A2 ish).

I solve Rubik's cubes and similar puzzles pretty fast, and used to compete in speedcubing competitions.

I have two black belts (2nd dan Taekwondo, 1st dan Krav Maga), and sometimes train in these two styles as well as training with weapons like sais, tonfa, bo staff, and butterfly swords.


Email
kieron.turk [at] cl.cam.ac.uk
kieron.ivy [at] protonmail.com

Pronouns
They/She

Socials
Twitter/X: @KieronIvy
Instagram: @_m0rad0

Website / blog
morado.me

Office
GE23