Researchers at Georgia Tech's School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) are being recognized for research that has helped shape how scientists understand and measure internet security.

Two papers co-authored by Georgia Tech researchers have received the 2026 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) Test of Time Award, recognizing research with a lasting impact on the field. Among them is The Matter of Heartbleed, a 2014 study co-authored by SCP Professor Michael Bailey and Associate Professor Frank Li.

The paper examined how the internet responded to the Heartbleed vulnerability, one of the most serious security flaws of its time. But its impact extended beyond documenting the incident. A collaboration between researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan produced a broad analysis of the security crisis and helped shape a line of research that would influence Li's academic career.

In April 2014, Heartbleed took the internet by surprise. The flaw in OpenSSL, a widely used software library for securing internet communications, allowed attackers to trick vulnerable servers into revealing portions of their memory, potentially exposing passwords, session tokens, and private cryptographic keys.

With just one month before the IMC paper deadline, researchers at Berkeley and Michigan began investigating the vulnerability. They initially pursued separate efforts before learning about each other's work and deciding to combine forces.

Li, then a first-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley working with his advisor Vern Paxson, led the Berkeley team. Zakir Durumeric, now at Stanford University, led the Michigan team.

Joining forces enabled the researchers to examine the vulnerability from several angles. They tracked vulnerable servers across the internet, studied the replacement of digital certificates that might have been compromised, and investigated attempts to exploit the flaw.

“We heard about each other’s efforts, talked, and decided to join forces,” Li said. “As a result, our final work was far more comprehensive than what any of us could have done individually.”

One part of the study produced a particularly surprising result. The researchers wanted to know whether directly notifying system operators about vulnerable servers would encourage them to fix the problem. Because Heartbleed had received widespread media attention, the team initially expected the notifications to have little effect.

Instead, operators who received notifications patched vulnerable systems at a rate 47% higher than those who had not yet been notified. Many operators already knew about Heartbleed but had overlooked some servers or had not completed remediation correctly. The researchers found that specific, actionable information could make a difference.

The experiment also led Li down an unexpected research path. He continued studying how security notifications could help organizations address vulnerabilities, including web misconfigurations and compromised websites. He also investigated whether security patches introduced new bugs and examined the human and organizational factors that affect how system administrators handle security updates.

Together, that work formed the foundation of his doctoral thesis and faculty job talk, both focused on internet-scale vulnerability remediation.

“Research paths are highly dynamic, especially for early researchers,” Li said. “Jump on opportunities when they present themselves.”

That lesson has stayed with Li throughout his career. At Georgia Tech, he continues to study how internet operators handle security and privacy, while expanding into areas such as online authentication and AI agent abuse.

For Li, the award is a reminder that an unexpected opportunity early in his career helped shape his research and his career path.

“It’s an honor to get this recognition for the work, which goes all the way back to the start of my academic career,” he said. “I feel fortunate to have been involved in such a fun, interesting, and ultimately impactful project, especially early in my career.”

The Heartbleed paper was not the only Georgia Tech-connected research recognized this year. The conference also honored Analysis of Country-wide Internet Outages Caused by Censorship, a 2011 paper co-authored by Alberto Dainotti, a Georgia Tech professor in the School of Computer Science and adjunct professor at SCP.

The paper examined internet disruptions in Egypt and Libya in 2011, using large-scale internet measurements to understand how governments can disrupt communications across entire countries.

Photos of Frank Li, Michael Bailey, and Alberto Dainotti by Terence Rushin and Kevin Beasley/College of Computing