Computer security has often focused on threats from governments, intelligence agencies and cybercriminals. But what happens when the person you’re trying to protect yourself from lives with you or is part of your social circle?

Thomas Ristenpart, a new professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science, has spent a decade researching interpersonal technology abuse. His work examines how technology is weaponized in situations of interpersonal violence — and how it can be redesigned to better protect people.

“What struck us when we began this work was the range of technology being weaponized to harm people,” says Ristenpart, who joined DCS’s research stream in January from Cornell Tech. “We did a lot of work trying to understand interventions and how to design technology that is more resistant to abuse. Working with survivors informed all of it.”

The work led Ristenpart and his colleagues to found the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, a first-of-its-kind initiative to help survivors of intimate partner violence who experienced technology-facilitated abuse. Now, he hopes to launch a similar clinic in Ontario.

“There are two directions I’m excited about: how do we adapt and improve technology abuse support services, and how do we adapt them for the Canadian context?” Ristenpart says. “One challenge to address is forensics. People want deeper forensics to understand what happened in their situation. Another is the AI ecosystem.”

AI, Ristenpart says, is creating new challenges in interpersonal technology abuse — from systems that can discover and autonomously exploit vulnerabilities to how both abusers and survivors are using AI tools.

“Abusers are early adopters of AI, from deepfakes of a sexual nature to generating and submitting fake evidence in court, such as images that look like screenshots of text conversations in which the victim appears to be harassing the abuser,” he says. “Survivors are also turning to chatbot tools for support and safety planning. We see a lot of problems looming.”

“I’m excited to be in Toronto, where the Security & Privacy Research Group has been rapidly expanding the university’s research portfolio in computer security. I’m excited about all the collaboration opportunities available here.”

Ristenpart’s broader computer security research includes applied and theoretical cryptography, authentication, and security of AI systems.