About Me
Welcome to my website! You might be interested in my background and experiences, so I below present my CV. You can also find a PDF version here (Last Update: Sep/2023)
Announcements
I have started a new position at CSE@TAMU. I’m looking for new Ph.D., Masters, and undergraduate students! Check the research ideas and prospective students page
New grant on hardware-assisted malware detection. Check it here TAMU News
Looking for a brief overview of my research? Check these slides
I will teach my cybersecurity course under the data science umbrella this Fall. Please, enroll into CSCE 704-602. My approach will be similar to what I did in previous semesters.
Education
- PhD in Computer Science, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR-Brazil), 2021
- Thesis: “On the Malware Detection Problem: Challenges and novel Approaches” (Download Full Text) (Download Summary) (Defense Video)
- MSc in Computer Science, University of Campinas (UNICAMP-Brazil), 2017
- Dissertation: “Hardware-Assisted Malware Analysis” (Download Full Text)
- BS in Computer Engineering, University of Campinas (UNICAMP-Brazil), 2015
- Final Project: “Malware detection via syscall patterns identification”
Employment
- Texas A&M University (TAMU), USA
- 2024-TBD: Assistant Professor
- 2022-2024: Visiting Assistant Professor
- Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Brazil
- 2021/2: Lecturer
- Programming 101 (Undergrad, Engineering)
- 2021/2: External Professor
- Computational Infrastructure (Graduate, Big Data Specialization)
- 2021/2: Lecturer
Other Professional Activities
- CYMDALL, Israel
- 2023 - Scientific Advisory Board Member
- Development of a hardware-assisted malware detection endpoint.
- 2023 - Scientific Advisory Board Member
- AppThreat - UK
- 2023 - Scientific Advisory Board Member
- Development of open-source security solutions.
- 2023 - Scientific Advisory Board Member
Currently Advised Students (At TAMU): 16
- Seyyed Ali Ayati
- PhD - (2023/10-In Progress)
- Soumyajyoti Dutta
- PhD - (2024-In Progress)
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/5-2023/12)
- Eden Garza
- PhD - (2024/Fall-In Progress)
- Mabon Ninan
- PhD - (2024/Fall-In Progress)
- Nhat Nguyen
- MSc Thesis - (2024/Summer - In Progress)
- Bhavan Dondapati
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/8-In Progress)
- Manoj Reddy Gurram
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/8-In Progress)
- Akshat Punjabi
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/10-In Progress)
- Sahil Salunkhe
- MSc - Volunteer Project-Based (2023/8-In Progress)
- Mohina Ahmadi
- MSc - Volunteer Summer Internship (2024/Summer)
- John Ammon
- Undergrad - Project-based (2023/5-In Progress)
- NSF REU
- George Demetriou
- Summer Internship - Halliburton Program - (2024/Summer)
- Shrey Joshi
- Summer Internship - Halliburton Program - (2024/Summer)
- Jayesh Tripathi
- Alumni Project (2024/4-In Progress)
- Rohan Dalvi
- Alumni Project (2024/4-In Progress)
- Snehith Bikumandla
- Alumni Project (2024/7-In Progress)
- MSc - Project-Based (2023-8/2023)
Previously Advised Students (At TAMU): 5
- Anushka Garg
- Directed Studies (2024/Spring)
- Parul Damahe
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/Summer)
- Pranav Taukari
- Directed Studies (2024/Spring)
- MSc - Project-Based (4/2023-6/2023)
- Sidharth Anil
- MSc - Project-Based (2023/5-2024/6)
- Uros Stanic
- Undergrad -Faculty of Technical Sciences of Novi Sad (Serbia) - Computer Science Student Advancement Program (CSSAP) Summer Internship - (2023/Summer)
Previously (co)Advised (Undergrad) Students (In Brazil): 5
- Lucas Baganha Galante (UNICAMP, 2017-2019)
- Linux Malware and ML-based malware detection.
- Giovanni Bertão (UNICAMP, 2017-2019)
- Large-scale malware repositories and application crawling.
- Vitor Falcão da Rocha (UNICAMP, 2016-2017)
- Anti-forensics and malware anti-analysis.
- Raphael Machinicki (UFPR, 2019-2020)
- Analysis of Android apps’ operations.
- Felipe Duarte Domingues (UFPR/UNICAMP, 2019-2021)
- Antivirus’ operations.
International Experience
- Visiting Researcher: University of Florida (UF-USA), May/2019
- Hosted by: Prof. Ph.D. Daniela Oliveira
- Visiting Researcher: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU-GER), November/2018
- Hosted by: Prof. Ph.D. Tilo Muller
- Visiting Researcher: University of Florida (UF-USA), August/2018
- Hosted by: Prof. Ph.D. Daniela Oliveira
Research Interests
- Malware Analysis, Evasion, and Detection
- Sandbox Development
- Antivirus Operation
- Hardware-Assisted Security Solutions
- Reverse Engineering
Research Grants
- NSF SaTC: CORE: Small: An evaluation framework and methodology to streamline Hardware Performance Counters as the next-generation malware detection system - PI - 2024-2026 - $523.415,00 - Link TAMU News
Academic Awards
- Top-3 Best PhD Thesis in Security - Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) - 2022
- Prize for: “On the Malware Detection Problem”, Botacin
- Best PhD Thesis - Informatics Department/UFPR - 2022
- Prize for: “On the Malware Detection Problem”, Botacin
- Nominated for the CAPES Award of the Brazilian Education Ministry.
- Best Master Dissertation in Security - 1st place - Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) - 2018
- Prize for: “Hardware-Assisted Malware Analysis”, Botacin
- Best Master Dissertation - Institute of Computing/UNICAMP - 2017
- Prize for: “Hardware-Assisted Malware Analysis”, Botacin
- Check Awards Report (in Portuguese) in my former university page.
- Best Undergraduate Research Paper (co-author)- 1st place - Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) - 2018
- Prize for: “Malicious Linux Binaries: A Landscape”, Galante et al.
- Honorable Mention - Main Track - Brazilian Security Symposium - SBC, 2019
- Prize for: “Malware Variants Identification in Practice”, Botacin et al.
- Check Here
- Travel Grant - Student Diversity Grant - USENIX ENIGMA - 2019
- Distinguished reviewer for NDSS 2024
- Noteworthy reviewer for RAID 2023
- Top Reviewer for ACSAC 2023
Contest Prizes
- Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors Evasion Challenge 2021 - 1st place - Attackers Challenge (See us at UFPR’s website)
- Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors Evasion Challenge 2021 - 1st place - Defenders Challenge
- Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors Evasion Challenge 2020 - 1st place - Attackers Challenge
- Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors Evasion Challenge 2020 - 2nd place - Defenders Challenge
- Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors Evasion Challenge 2019 - 2nd place - Attackers Challenge
Development Projects
Featured Talks
- “Near-memory & In-Memory Detection of Fileless Malware” - Keynote at the Brazilian Security Symposium (SBSEG) 2023 - Website
- “Why Is Our Security Research Failing? Five Practices to Change!” Page Slides - USENIX ENIGMA 2023
- “Does Your Threat Model Consider Country and Culture? A Case Study of Brazilian Financial Malware to show that it Should!” Page Video - USENIX ENIGMA 2021
Academic Community Services
- Panel Member:
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Panelist (+ad-hoc reviewer)
- Guest Editor:
- ACM DTRAP Special Issue on Non-conventional Malware. DTRAP CFP Page Read our Introduction Here or Here
- Program Committee (PC) Membership (16):
- International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS 2025) (TBD)
- International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2024)
- International Workshop on Re-design Industrial Control Systems with Security (RICSS), ACM CCS2024 (TBA)
- Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2025 (TBA)
- IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO) 2024
- Workshop on Rethinking Malware Analysis (WoRMA) - (EuroS&P24)
- ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2024 (Software Track).
- Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2024 (TBA)
- ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS) 2024
- ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2023 (Software Track).
- ACM Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) 2023
- International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2023)
- International Workshop on Re-design Industrial Control Systems with Security (RICSS), EuroS&P23
- USENIX Security 2024
- USENIX Security 2023
- USENIX Security 2022
- Artifact Evaluation Committee (3):
- USENIX Security 2020
- USENIX WOOT 2020
- Journal of Systems Research (JSys)
- Ad-hoc reviewer for 55 journals:
- ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
- ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP)
- ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)
- ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)
- Cell: Patterns
- Elsevier/ACTA Psychologica (Psy. of security)
- Elsevier Computers and Electrical Engineering (COMPELECENG)
- Elsevier Computers & Security
- Elsevier Computers in Human Behavior
- Elsevier e-Prime - Advances in Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Energy Announcement
- Elsevier Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation (Digital Investigation)
- Elsevier Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems (IOTCPS)
- Elsevier Journal of Information Security and Applications (JISA)
- Elsevier Journal of Systems & Software (JSS)
- Elsevier Machine Learning With Applications (MLWA)
- Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems
- IEEE Communications
- IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine (CEMag)
- IEEE Internet Computing (IC)
- IEEE Internet of Things Journal
- IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification (JRFID)
- IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society (OJCS)
- IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine
- IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (TAI)
- IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics (TCE)
- IEEE Transacations on Computational Social Systems (TCSS)
- IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (CYB)
- IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
- IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC)
- IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
- IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking (TMLCN)
- IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC)
- IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE)
- IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM)
- IEEE Transactions on Reliability (TR)
- IEEE Transactions on Service Computing (TSC)
- IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)
- IOS Press Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems (IFS)
- PLOS One (PONE)
- Springer Artificial Intelligence Review
- Springer Cluster Computing
- Springer Computing
- Springer International Journal of Information Security
- Springer Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques (JCVHT)
- Springer Knowledge and Information Systems
- Springer Scientific Reports
- Springer The Journal of SuperComputing
- Springer World Wide Web
- Taylor and Francis’ Network: Computation in Neural Systems (TNET)
- Taylor and Francis’ Deviant Behavior (UDBH)
- Wiley Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
- Wiley Expert Systems
- Wiley Journal of Software: Evolution and Process
- Wiley Journal of Software: Practice and Experience
- Wiley Security and Privacy (SPY)
Publications Summary
- 18 papers published in international journals.
- Springer Journal in Computer Virology: 4
- Elsevier Computers and Security: 4
- ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS): 3
- ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP): 2
- Elsevier Expert Systems With Applications (ESWA): 2
- ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR): 1
- IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC): 1
- Elsevier Digital Investigation: 1
- 16 papers in International conferences.
- ACM Reversing and Offensive-oriented Trends Symposium (ROOTS): 3
- Springer Information Security Conference (ISC): 3
- ACM International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID): 2
- Springer Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA): 1
- ACM Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES): 1
- ACM Conference on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO): 1
- ACM Memory Systems (MEMSYS): 1
- IEEE Reconfigurable Communication-centric Systems-on-Chip (ReCoSoC): 1
- USENIX Security: 1
- Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT): 1
- The International Conference on Security and Cryptography (SECRYPT): 1
- 18 papers in Brazilian conferences:
- 2 book chapters (in Portuguese):
- Binary Analysis on Modern Platforms (SBSeg short course)
- Introduction to Reverse Engineering (SBSeg short course)
NOTICE 1: Check the publications tab for paper details.
NOTICE 2: Check Google Scholar for updated paper statistics.
NOTICE 3: Check Web Of Science for an updated (but incomplete) tracking of paper reviews. Currently: 200+ acknowledged reviews.