About (Google Scholar)

I am a system and network security researcher. My research investigates vulnerabilities and threats at internet-scale for networked systems (IoT, Mobile, Cloud). My research applies empirical methods that bridge between end-host binary analysis and network vulnerability analysis to discover fundamental security flaws in deployed internet technologies.

Education

• Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD in ECE (2022)
• Purdue University, Master’s of Information Security (CERIAS) 2009
• Purdue University, Bachelor of Science, Computer Science and Mathematics 2007

Honors & Awards

• CSAW’19 Applied Research Competition Finalist (The Betrayal At Cloud City)
• Create-X Launch Participant and Finalist - 2019 video
  • Award: $4,000
• First Place in Cyber Security Demo Day (Research Track) - 2019 press
  • Award: $4,000
• First Place in Institute for Information Security & Privacy Demo Day (Best Idea) - 2018 press, press
  • Award: $5,000
• President Fellowship - 2016-2020
  • Award: $5,000/year

Publication

1. Omar Alrawi*, Athanasios Avgetidis*, Kevin Valakuzhy, Charles Lever, Paul Burbage, Angelos Keromytis, Fabian Monrose, Manos Antonakakis; Beyond The Gates: An Empirical Analysis of HTTP-Managed Password Stealers and Operators, to appear in USENIX Security, August 2023. (Acceptance rate: ??).

2. Aaron Faulkenberry, Athanasios Avgetidis, Zane Ma, Omar Alrawi, Charles Lever, Panagiotis Kintis, Fabian Monrose, Angelos Keromytis, Manos Antonakakis; View from Above: Exploring the Malware Ecosystem from Upper DNS Hierarchy, to appear in The Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2022. (Acceptance rate: 24.1%).

3. Priyanka Dodia, Mashael Al Sabah, Omar Alrawi, Tao Wang; Exposing the Rat in the Tunnel: Using Traffic Analysis for Tor-based Malware Detection, in The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), November 2022. (Acceptance rate: ??).

4. Omar Alrawi, Charles Lever, Kevin Valakuzhy, Ryan Court, Kevin Snow, Fabian Monrose, Manos Antonakakis; The Circle Of Life: A Large-Scale Study of The IoT Malware Lifecycle, USENIX Security, August 2021. (Acceptance rate 18.8%).
   • website
   • APNIC Blog
   • slides
   • video
5. Omar Alrawi*, Moses Ike*, Matthew Pruett, Ranjita Pai Kasturi, Srimanta Barua, Taleb Hirani, Brennan Hill, Brendan Saltaformaggio; Forecasting Malware Capabilities From Cyber Attack Memory Images, USENIX Security, August 2021. (Acceptance rate 18.8%).
   • code
   • news
   • slides
   • video

6. R. Duan, O. Alrawi, R. P Kasturi, R. Elder, B. Saltaformaggio, W. Lee. Towards Measuring Supply Chain Attacks on Package Managers for Interpreted Languages, NDSS 2021. (Acceptance rate 15.2%).

7. R. Perdisci, T. Papastergiu, O. Alrawi, M. Antonakakis. IoTFinder: Efficient Large-Scale Identification of IoT Devices via Passive DNS Traffic Analysis, EuroS&P, Septmber 2020. (Acceptance rate 14.6%).
   • data

8. R. P Kasturi, Y. Sun, R. Duan, O. Alrawi, E. Asdar, V. Zhu, Y. Kwon, B. Saltaformaggio; TARDIS: Rolling Back The Clock On CMS-Targeting Cyber Attacks, IEEE S&P (Oakland), May 2020. (Acceptance rate 12.3%).

9. Omar Alrawi*, Chaoshun Zuo*, Ruian Duan, Ranjita Kasturi, Zhiqiang Lin, Brendan Saltaformaggio; The Betrayal At Cloud City: An Empirical Analysis Of Cloud-Based Mobile Backends, USENIX Security, August 2019. (Acceptance rate 16.2%).
   • slides
   • website
   • VIDEO: Conf. Presentation
   • MEDIA: Diginomica, InfoSec Magazine, Defense One, NextGov, NSF, BGR-IN, Digital Info World, Eng&Tech, Market Research, AppDevMag, Quint, Khaleej
   • video
10. Omar Alrawi, Chaz Lever, Manos Antonakakis, Fabian Monrose; SoK: Security Evaluation of Home-Based IoT Deployments, IEEE S&P (Oakland), May 2019. (Acceptance rate 12.4%).
    • slides-long
    • slides-short
    • website
    • VIDEO: One min Preview
    • VIDEO: Conf. Presentation
    • MEDIA: Newsweek, Tech Republic, Machine Design, The Ambient, GearBrain, Futurity, Fierce Elec., Tech Xplore, Computer Welt
    • video

11. R. Duan, A. Bijlani, Y. Ji, O. Alrawi, Y. Xiong, M. Ike, B. Saltaformaggio, W. Lee; Automating Patching of Vulnerable Open-Source Software Versions in Application Binaries, NDSS, Feb 2019. (Acceptance rate 17.1%).

12. Omar Alrawi, Aziz Mohaisen; Chains of Distrust: Towards Understanding Certificates Used for Signing Malicious Applications, WWW 2016 Companion, April 2016.

13. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi; Behavior-based Automated Malware Analysis and Classification, Elsevier Computers & Security, 2015.

14. A Mohaisen, AG West, A Mankin, O Alrawi; Chatter: Classifying Malware Families Using System Event Ordering. IEEE CNS 2014.

15. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi; AMAL: High-Fidelity, Behavior-based Automated Malware Analysis and Classification. WISA 2014. Best Paper Award.

16. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi,; AV-Meter: An Evaluation of Antivirus Scans and Labels. DIMVA 2014. (Acceptance rate 23.3%).

17. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi, Andrew G. West, and Allison Mankin; Babble: Identifying Malware by Its Dialects. IEEE CNS 2013.

18. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi, Matt Larson, and Danny McPherson; Towards A Methodical Evaluation of Antivirus Scans and Labels. WISA 2013.

19. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi; Unveiling Zeus Automated Classification of Malware Samples. WWW Workshops 2013.

Patents

• Systems and methods for behavior-based automated malware analysis and classification

SKILLS

• Specialization; Malware analysis and reverse engineering
• Programming; Python, C/C++, Java, etc.
• Data science; ML, numpy/scipy, scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, gnuplot
• Design and architcture; software and infrastructure
• System engineering and administration; Linux, Virtualization, Docker, salt
• Project/people managment; mentoring, team lead, SME, consulting, training