About me

I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente and a member of the International Secure Systems Lab (iSecLab).

Before joining the University of Twente, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computer Science Department at UC Santa Barbara, working at the SecLab, and I obtained a Ph.D. cum laude in Computer Science and Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in Italy. During my Ph.D., I also took part in two research exchanges, working as a visiting researcher at UCSB and at the School of Computer Science of the University of Sydney.

My research focuses on aspects of computer security traditionally known as systems security. In particular, my main research interests lie in the security of the software that people use in their daily tasks, and revolve around analyzing such software for multiple security purposes, such as malware detection, identification of privacy disclosures, and vulnerability discovery. For example, I have worked on analysis and defense mechanisms against advanced threats such as the infamous ransomware families, on the detection of obfuscated privacy leaks in Android apps, and on the design of novel program analysis techniques to identify and patch vulnerabilities in embedded firmware.

I strongly believe in open, collaborative science, where researchers can easily and quickly access to previous research outcomes to reproduce and analyze results obtained by others.

I also love Capture The Flag (CTF) competitions, which I currently play with Shellphish (usually ending up in Vegas to play DEFCON Finals), and I co-organized several editions of the PoliCTF and iCTF.

More details can be found in my CV.