Deepak Kumar

Assistant Professor
University of California San Diego
kumarde@ucsd.edu

I study the security and digital safety threats that emerge when people interact with sociotechnical systems at scale. These days, I've been calling this subfield sociotechnical cybersecurity. I blend large-scale, data-driven measurements with human-centered studies to understand how such threats, which range from misinformation to online abuse, are operationalized in practice and how people experience them. Ultimately, my work contributes insights, data, defenses, and systems that seek to make the Internet a safer place for all people.

If you've come looking for my creative work, go here.

Students

I am recruiting UCSD students to join a team focused on healthcare cybersecurity as part of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity. If you are an enrolled UCSD student (undergrad, masters, PhD), feel free to reach out to me about this opportunity!

I will not be recruiting PhD students for Fall 2027. Please do not contact me regarding PhD opportunities.

I am always interested in working with motivated students on research. You can find a page that details my interests and what you can expect from me as an advisor here.

  • Arshia Arya, PhD Student
  • Haodi Zou, PhD Student
  • Seoyoung Kweon, PhD Student (with Stefan Savage, Geoff Voelker)
  • Paul Chung, PhD Student (with Stefan Savage, Geoff Voelker)
  • Devon Tao, PhD Student
  • Shreya Kochar, PhD Student
Select Publications

Designing an Automated Fact-Checking Pipeline for Recent Claims
Arshia Arya, Gauthami Yenne, Deepak Kumar. ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS), November 2026. [pdf]

Characterizing the MrDeepFakes Sexual Deepfake Marketplace
Best paper honorable mention!
Catherine Han, Anne Li, Deepak Kumar, Zakir Durumeric. USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX), August 2025. [pdf]

PressProtect: Helping Journalists Navigate Social Media in the Face of Online Harassment
Best paper honorable mention!
Catherine Han, Anne Li, Deepak Kumar, Zakir Durumeric. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), November 2024. [pdf]

Watch Your Language: Investigating Content Moderation with Large Language Models
Deepak Kumar, Yousef AbuHashem, Zakir Durumeric. AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), June 2024. [pdf]

Specious Sites: Tracking the Spread and Sway of Spurious News Stories at Scale
Hans Hanley, Deepak Kumar, Zakir Durumeric. IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium. May 2024. [pdf]

Hate Raids on Twitch: Echoes of the Past, New Modalities, and Implications for Platform Governance
Best paper award!
Catherine Han, Joseph Seering, Deepak Kumar, Jeff Hancock, Zakir Durumeric. Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW). Oct 2023. [pdf]