About

My research interest lies in studying and improving software security through a principled and informed approach. Specifically, I design research methods informed by system and network data measurements to assess the security of open-source software and binary programs. I use these empirical methods to study vulnerabilities and attacks on large-scale systems by combining network and program analyses. I aim to develop practical tools and principles to secure large-scale deployed systems that serve critical societal functions, such as medical and telecommunication systems.

Education

Honors & Awards

Selected Publications

  1. Tillson Galloway, Allen Chang, Omar Alrawi, Thanos Avgetidis, Manos Antonakakis, Fabian Monrose; Actively Understanding the Dynamics and Risks of the Threat Intelligence Ecosystem, In proceedings of 2026 Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium NDSS, San Diego, CA, 2026.

  2. Athanasios Avgetidis, Aaron Faulkenberry, Vinny Adjibi, Tillson Galloway, Panagiotis Kintis, Omar Alrawi, Zane Ma, Fabian Monrose, Angelos D Keromytis, Roberto Perdisci, Manos Antonakakis; From Concealment to Exposure: Understanding the Lifecycle and Infrastructure of APT Domains, In proceedings of 2025 Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID), October 2025.

  3. Eman Maali, Omar Alrawi, Julie McCann; Evaluating Machine Learning-Based IoT Device Identification Models for Security Applications, In proceedings of 2025 Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium NDSS, San Diego, CA, 2025. (Acceptance rate: 16.1%).

  4. Runze Zhang, Mingxuan Yao, Haichuan Xu, Omar Alrawi, Jeman Park, Brendan Saltaformaggio; Hitchhiking Vaccine: Enhancing Botnet Remediation With Remote Code Deployment Reuse, In proceedings of 2025 Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium NDSS, San Diego, CA, 2025. (Acceptance rate: 16.1%).

  5. Yufei Du, Omar Alrawi, Kevin Snow, Manos Antonakakis, Fabian Monrose; Improving Security Tasks Using Compiler Provenance Information Recovered At the Binary-Level, in The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), November 2023. (Acceptance rate: 20%).

  6. 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, in USENIX Security, August 2023. (Acceptance rate: 29%).

  7. 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%).

  8. 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 (CCS), November 2022. (Acceptance rate: 18%).

  9. 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%).
  10. 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%).

  11. 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%).

  12. 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%).

  13. 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%).

  14. 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%).
  15. 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%).

  16. 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%).

  17. Aziz Mohaisen, Omar Alrawi; AMAL: High-Fidelity, Behavior-based Automated Malware Analysis and Classification., Elsevier Computers & Security, 2015.

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

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

Patents

SKILLS