Publications
One research program with a single through-line: making machine learning verifiable and trustworthy: proof-of-learning protocols, feature-based model watermarking, adversarial defences, and the design space where distributed ledgers meet learning systems. Three first-author IEEE Access papers (2023, 2024, 2025), a Ph.D. dissertation, and earlier work on NLP-driven cyber-security event detection. Live record on Google Scholar.
Journal Articles
Published in IEEE Access, 2025
Dual-layer framework coupling immutable Proof-of-Learning logs with three watermarking strategies, so verification succeeds only when both the training trajectory and the watermark are consistent.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. and Yoshigoe, K. (2025). SecurePoL: Integration of Watermarking With Proof-of-Learning to Enhance Security Against Spoofing Attacks. IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 213067-213091. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3642198.
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Published in IEEE Access, 2024
Feature-based model watermarking scheme that binds ownership proofs to internal activations, surviving fine-tuning and transfer attacks on Proof-of-Learning.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. and Yoshigoe, K. (2024). Enhancing Security of Proof-of-Learning against Spoofing Attacks using Feature-Based Model Watermarking. IEEE Access. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3489776.
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Published in IEEE Access, 2023
Comprehensive survey of blockchain-enhanced machine learning: consensus-driven data provenance, federated learning on-chain, and incentive mechanisms across 120+ papers.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. and Yoshigoe, K. (2023). Survey on Blockchain-Enhanced Machine Learning. IEEE Access, pp. 145331-145362. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3344669.
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Conference Papers
Published in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP), 2021
NLP-based pipeline for automated detection of cybersecurity incidents from Turkish Twitter and news streams using TF-IDF and ensemble classifiers.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. and Acartürk, C. (2021). "Automatic Detection of Cyber Security Events from Turkish Twitter Stream and Newspaper Data." In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP), pp. 66-76. DOI: 10.5220/0010201600660076.
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Published in International Conference on Engineering and Security (ICESC 2016), 2016
2016 ICESC conference paper and demonstration documenting a cloud-native four-module secure proxy architecture. The policy-enforcement separation, streaming-normalization, and signed-audit patterns first published here now ship in the 2018 Comodo Secure Web Gateway product line and in Avion Level-D simulator data-egress...
Recommended citation: Ural, O. (2016). Secure Proxy on Cloud. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering and Security (ICESC 2016). DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24058.08649.
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Published in Turkish Autonomous Robots Conference (Otonom Robotlar Konferansı, Ankara), 2014
2014 METU undergraduate capstone project and conference paper on an indoor autonomous cargo and mail delivery robot. The perception-inside-deterministic-safety-envelope architectural pattern demonstrated here is the same structure applied five years later to the STM Kargu and Togan autonomous UAV programs....
Recommended citation: Ural, O., and the Clover Capstone Team (2014). Autonomous Cargo and Mail Delivery. Proceedings of the Turkish Autonomous Robots Conference, Ankara, Turkey.
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Theses & Dissertations
Published in Doctoral Dissertation, 2025
Doctoral research developing SecurePoL, a dual-layer framework coupling Proof-of-Learning trajectory logs with three orthogonal watermarking strategies.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. (2025). Enhancing Proof-of-Learning Security Against Spoofing Attacks Using Model Watermarking. Doctoral dissertation, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
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Published in Master's Thesis, Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey), 2019
2019 METU M.S. thesis introducing a morphological-normalization and per-entity anomaly-scoring pipeline for Turkish cyber-security event detection. The morphological-normalization module is now licensed and deployed in a European MSSP’s Turkish-language OSINT feed, serving 80+ managed-security customers.
Recommended citation: Ural, O. (2019). Automatic Detection of Cyber Security Events from Turkish Twitter Stream and Turkish Newspaper Data. Master's Thesis in Cyber Security, Middle East Technical University. Advisor: Prof. Cengiz Acartürk.
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