I’m a researcher and engineer. My work and interests span security, privacy, machine learning, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and biologically-inspired computing.

Some of my open source projects include:

• kloak, a privacy tool that obfuscates keystroke and mouse input event timings, making keystroke biometrics and device fingerprinting less effective.
• frailtySurv, an R package for simulating and fitting semiparametric shared frailty models.
• pohmm, a Python package that implements the partially observed hidden Markov model (POHMM).

I currently work on data privacy at OpenAI. Previously, I was a Lead Data Scientist at Visa, Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, and Computer Scientist at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

News

• I joined OpenAI (July 2022)

Old news

• I joined Visa Inc. as a lead data scientist (November 2021)
• Paper on device fingerprinting accepted to S&P’22
• Program Co-Chair of the 2021 SADFE Workshop
• Best Paper @ CHI’20 for work in covert impairments in HCI
• Member of the SecureComm’20 Program Committee
• Paper on scaling up keystroke biometrics accepted to IJCB’20
• Member of the WTMC’20 Program Committee
• Invited talk for the Rotary Club of Corral de Tierra (July 2020)
• Paper on covert impairments in human computer interaction accepted to CHI’20
• Invited talk at the Sunset Center (Carmel, CA), hosted by the Carmel Public Library Foundation (February 2020) [slides]
• Autocomplete side channel paper accepted to USENIX’19
• Member of the WTMC’19 Program Committee
• Invited talk at the 20th Monterey Workshop on Cyber (November 2018)
• Joined NPS as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science (August 2018)
• SoK paper on keylogging side channels accepted to S&P’18
• Best Paper @ ISCAS’17 for work on factoring integers with a neuromorphic processor

See also old press.

Students

See Calhoun for a list of theses I advised.

Awards

• Best paper, CHI’20
• Best Paper, ISCAS’17
• Best Paper, UEMCON’17
• Runner-up Neuromorph of the Year, Telluride NCEW’16
• 1st Place, Keystroke Biometrics Ongoing Competition
• 3rd Place, Look & Click Competition
• 1st Place, The Second Eye Movements Verification and Identification Competition
• One of Westchester’s Top Professionals Under 30

Select publications

See the full list and Google Scholar.

• Device Fingerprinting with Peripheral Timestamps
  John V. Monaco
  43rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P 2022) [pdf]

• Bug or Feature? Covert Impairments to Human Computer Interaction
  John V. Monaco
  2020 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020) Best Paper Award (top 1%) [pdf]

• What Are You Searching For? A Remote Keylogging Attack on Search Engine Autocomplete
  John V. Monaco
  28th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX 2019) [pdf] [code]

• SoK: Keylogging Side Channels
  John V. Monaco
  39th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P 2018) [pdf]

• Factoring Integers with a Brain-Inspired Computer
  John V. Monaco, Manuel M. Vindiola
  IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, 2017 [pdf]

• The Partially Observable Hidden Markov Model and its Application to Keystroke Dynamics
  John V. Monaco, Charles C Tappert
  Pattern Recognition, 2017 [pdf]