Welcome!

Short Bio. I am a postdoctoral researcher at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (March 2023 - present). I work with Prof. Thorsten Holz at SysSec Lab . I completed my Ph.D. at University of New Orleans under the supervision of Prof. Phani Vadrevu. My Ph.D. (Jan 2018- Dec 2022) work primarily focused on areas of Phishing, Web Security Crawlers, Browser Fingerprinting, and building tools for large-scale measurement using honeypots. I have been blessed to have two great advisors Prof. Thorsten Holz and Prof. Phani Vadrevu who have (had) guided me to become the person I wanted to aspire for. Before academia, I worked for 7+ years (2011-2018) in several industries (Amazon, Raima, Microsoft (contract)) performing software development and assurances. I often collaborate with researchers from diverse institutes, and fortunate to mentor several master’s and bachelor’s thesis students at SysSec Lab.

Current Focus. Currently, my focus as a postdoctoral researcher revolves around gaining insights into ongoing web scams and attacks. The overarching goal is to devise effective defense mechanisms against such threats. My ongoing research encompasses the following areas -

i) Investigating the comprehensive modus operandi of scammers in real-world scenarios
ii) Developing a honeypot model capable of automatically profiling abusing malicious actors
iii) Exposing fraudulent payment profiles established by scammers to facilitate illicit transactions
iv) Designing proactive mitigation strategies to combat abuse and attacks in-the-wild

Applied Research/Industry Partners. I often engage in collaborations with leading payment service providers like PayPal Inc. and cryptocurrency firms such as TRM Labs. These partnerships facilitate the reporting of identified scamming payment profiles and abuse, aiming to prevent any subsequent misuse or attacks that these detected scamming accounts might perpetrate in the broader digital landscape.

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