Ben Weintraub

Ben Weintraub

PhD Student, Computer Science

Northeastern University

I am a third year PhD student at Northeastern University in the Networks and Distributed Systems Security lab where I work with Professor Cristina Nita-Rotaru. My research focuses on exploring security implications of the underlying network in distributed protocols.

Before grad school, I was a Software Engineer in Silicon Valley.

When I’m not doing computer science, I enjoy reading (mostly non-fiction), playing ultimate, and backpacking as far from civilization as I can get.

Interests

  • Distributed Ledgers
  • Anonymous Communication
  • Peer-to-Peer Networks
  • Network Protocols

Education

  • BS in Electrical Engineering, 2013

    University of Iowa

Publications

A Flash(bot) in the Pan: Measuring Maximal Extractable Value in Private Pools

Ben Weintraub, Christof Ferreira Torres, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Radu State
January 2022 Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC ’22)
PDF Code

Automated Attack Synthesis by Extracting Finite State Machines from Protocol Specification Documents

Maria Leonor Pacheco, Max von Hippel, Ben Weintraub, Dan Goldwasser, Cristina Nita-Rotaru
January 2022 IEEE Security & Privacy 2022
PDF Code

ShorTor: Improving Tor Network Latency via Multi-hop Overlay Routing

Kyle Hogan, Sacha Servan-Schreiber, Zachary Newman, Ben Weintraub, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Srinivas Devadas
January 2022 IEEE Security & Privacy 2022
PDF Code

Policy enforcement for search engines

Ben Weintraub, Pratik Verma, Prasad Mujumdar
October 2021 US Patent
PDF URL

Structural Attacks on Local Routing in Payment Channel Networks

Ben Weintraub, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Stefanie Roos
September 2021 Workshop on Security & Privacy on the Blockchain
PDF Code Slides DOI

Consensus-based policy management

Ben Weintraub
May 2021 US Patent
PDF URL

Policy management, enforcement, and audit for data security

Benjamin L. Weintraub, Pratik Verma
October 2018 US Patent
PDF URL

Integration of a Reliability Model Within a Virtual Analysis System for Printed Circuit Boards

Benjamin B. Goerdt, Amer Dababneh, Timothy Marler, Ibrahim Ozbolat, Benjamin Weintraub, Ross Johnson
November 2013 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition
PDF DOI

Invited Talks

Structural Attacks on Local Routing in Payment Channel Networks

Jul 30, 2021 6:00 PM — 7:00 PM Boston Computation Club
Video

Exploiting Centrality: Attacks in Payment Channel Networks with Local Routing

Feb 4, 2021 2:00 PM — 3:00 PM MIT Security Seminar

How To Avoid Blockchains, and Is That Even Safe?

Nov 9, 2020 5:10 PM — 6:30 PM Carnegie Mellon University

Contact