Alastair Beresford

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Alastair Beresford
CitizenshipBritish
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
ThesisLocation privacy in ubiquitous computing (2004)
Andy Hopper
Websitehttps://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/people/arb33

Alastair Richard Beresford is the current head of department[1] and Professor of Computer Security at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge and the Robin Walker Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge. He co-founded the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre with Sue Sentance in 2024.[2]

Education

Beresford obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science with First Class Honours from the University of Cambridge in 1999. He then obtained his PhD in Engineering from Cambridge in 2004. His thesis was titled "Location privacy in ubiquitous computing", supervised by Andy Hopper.[3]

Career

During his PhD, Beresford interned at AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park in New Jersey in the summer of 2001, working on dynamic routing algorithm design. He was subsequently a researcher at Fraser Research with Sandy Fraser in Princeton in 2004, evaluating digital rights management systems.[4]

Beresford returned to Cambridge as a research associate in 2004, designing a prototype platform for road and rail network data.[5] He then became an RCUK Academic Fellow in 2007[6], eventually becoming a full professor of computer security in 2019.[7] He became the head of department at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory from October 2023, succeeding Ann Copestake[1].

Research

Beresford researched location privacy and mix zones during his PhD, a construction inspired by anonymity techniques that assigns users new pseudonyms as they pass through spatial regions, preventing continuous tracking in location-aware services.[8][9] He also developed the Pudding protocol for private user discovery in anonymity networks[10] and Rollercoaster, an efficient group-multicast scheme for mix networks.[11]

Beresford lead the Device Analyzer[12] project from 2011, an Android app that collected usage data from over 30,000 devices worldwide, producing the largest publicly available dataset of Android phone usage at the time[13] Beresford also co-developed CoverDrop, a secure whistleblower communication system.[14] The Guardian deployed this as "Secure Messaging" in the Guardian mobile app in June 2025, using cover traffic from millions of readers to hide genuine whistleblower messages.[15][16]

In 2019, Beresford co-discovered that per-device factory calibration data in accelerometers and gyroscopes can be inferred from sensor output to create globally unique device fingerprints, which led to fixes in both iOS and Android.[17][18] He subsequently identified a logic error in OpenSSH where both fake and real keystroke packets were sent unconditionally, allowing passive observers to obtain timing information about passwords.[19]

With Martin Kleppmann, he developed a conflict-free replicated data type for JSON, enabling collaborative applications without trusting service providers.[20].

Beresford has also founded several research centres. He is the co-director (with Cecilia Mascolo) of the Centre for Mobile, Wearable Systems and Augmented Intelligence at Cambridge[21]. Previously in 2015 he also co-founded the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, a multi-disciplinary initiative combining computer science, criminology, and law.[22]

Teaching and computing education

Since 2013, Beresford has been the technical director of the Isaac Learning Platform founded by Lisa_Jardine-Wright (IsaacPhysics, IsaacScience and Ada Computer Science). This has supported over 500,000 users and served 200 million question attempts as of 2025.[23]

He also co-founded the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, investigating how to engage all young people in computing.[2][24]

Beresford was the Director of Studies in Computer Science at Robinson College, Cambridge from 2004-2017[25] and subsequently became the Robin Walker Fellow in Computer Science at Queens' College, Cambridge from 2017.[26]

Awards

Beresford was awarded the Cambridge Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching in 2014.[27]

References

  1. "Meet our new Head of Department". Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. 2025.
  2. "Introducing the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre". Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. 22 July 2021.
  3. Beresford, Alastair R. (2004). Location privacy in ubiquitous computing (PDF) (PhD). University of Cambridge.
  4. "Fraser Research - Faculty and Alumni".
  5. Bacon, Jean; Beresford, Alastair R.; Evans, David; Ingram, David; Trigoni, Niki; Guitton, Alexandre; Skordylis, Antonios (January 2008). "TIME: An Open Platform for Capturing, Processing and Delivering Transport-Related Data". 2008 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference. pp. 687–691. Bibcode:2008ccnc.conf..158B. doi:10.1109/ccnc08.2007.158. ISBN 978-1-4244-1457-4.
  6. "RCUK Academic Fellowships 2006". RCUK. Archived from the original on 18 October 2006. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  7. "Reports - Cambridge University Reporter 6551". www.admin.cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  8. Beresford, Alastair R.; Stajano, Frank (2004). Mix Zones: User privacy in location-aware services. IEEE Workshop on Pervasive Computing and Communication Security (PerSec).
  9. Beresford, Alastair R.; Stajano, Frank (2003). "Location Privacy in Pervasive Computing". IEEE Pervasive Computing. 2 (1): 46–55. Bibcode:2003IPCom...2a..46B. doi:10.1109/MPRV.2003.1186725.
  10. Kocaoğullar, Ceren; Hugenroth, Daniel; Kleppmann, Martin; Beresford, Alastair R. (23 May 2024). "Pudding: Private User Discovery in Anonymity Networks". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
  11. Hugenroth, Daniel; Kleppmann, Martin; Beresford, Alastair R. (2021). "Rollercoaster: an efficient group-multicast scheme for mix networks". University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory. doi:10.48456/tr-957.
  12. Wagner, Daniel T.; Rice, Andrew; Beresford, Alastair R. (2014). "Device Analyzer: Understanding Smartphone Usage". Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. Vol. 131. pp. 195–208. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-11569-6_16. ISBN 978-3-319-11568-9.
  13. "Paranoid Android? Get connected to a new study". University of Cambridge. 17 June 2011.
  14. Ahmed-Rengers, Mansoor; Vasile, Diana A.; Hugenroth, Daniel; Beresford, Alastair R.; Anderson, Ross (1 April 2022). "CoverDrop: Blowing the Whistle Through A News App". Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2022 (2): 47–67. doi:10.2478/popets-2022-0035. hdl:20.500.11820/33f1c073-1930-4d8e-8998-3e4a76f7a8e5.
  15. "The Guardian's new whistleblower tool buries leaks to journalists within its own readers' everyday traffic". Nieman Journalism Lab. June 2025.
  16. "Whistleblowing tech based on Cambridge research launched by the Guardian". University of Cambridge. 9 June 2025.
  17. "Sensor Calibration Fingerprinting Attack for Smartphones". Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. 20 May 2019.
  18. "Attackers Could Use Mobile Device Sensors to Generate Unique Device Fingerprint". SecurityWeek. 22 May 2019.
  19. "CVE-2024-39894". CVE Details.
  20. Kleppmann, Martin; Beresford, Alastair R. (2017). "A Conflict-Free Replicated JSON Datatype". IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. 28 (10): 2733–2746. arXiv:1608.03960. Bibcode:2017ITPDS..28.2733K. doi:10.1109/TPDS.2017.2697382.
  21. "Centre for Mobile, Wearable Systems and Augmented Intelligence". University of Cambridge.
  22. "Cambridge Cybercrime Centre". University of Cambridge. 2015.
  23. "200 millionth question attempted on University of Cambridge's Isaac Science learning platform". www.cam.ac.uk. 4 December 2025.
  24. "Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre".
  25. "Computer Science". Robinson College. 1 December 2015. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  26. "Professor Alastair Beresford". Queens' College, Cambridge. 3 February 2025.
  27. "Computer Laboratory lecturers awarded Pilkington Prizes". Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. 13 February 2014.