Mario Raciti

PhD Student in Cybersecurity

tsumarios' blog

CySec and Research - A cool description might be something like:
"a place where I post about my research and share resources".

Featured Posts

You can find more articles in my Personal Blog.

A Primer on Cryptocurrency Investigation and Forensics

Sep 02, 2023dfir

An introductory exploration of Cryptocurrency Investigation and Forensics, with a demo on a real-world RaaS case.

Visual Cryptography Explained

Oct 21, 2022cryptography, dfir

An overview about Visual Cryptography and implementations of the main state-of-the-art techniques in the VCrytpure open source project.

WebSocket (in)Security and Auth

Sep 23, 2022web, hardening

WebSocket security aspects and a simple PoC about adding a ticket-based authentication layer in a WebSocket server.

~$ whoami

profile_pic
PhD Student in Cybersecurity at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca - University of Catania.
Security Researcher at NaS.Inf.
Admin/Writer at Rev3rse Security.
Interests: CySec and Privacy Threat Modelling, (Anti-)Digital Forensic, Cyber Threat Intelligence.

Short Bio

I am a PhD Student of the first National PhD in Cybersecurity at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, assigned at the University of Catania, where I joined the Networks and Security Informatics (NaS.Inf) research lab.
I hold a Master's degree in Computer Science (Network and Security Systems) from the University of Catania. My Master's thesis focused on cybersecurity risks in modern vehicles.
Before starting my doctorate programme, I worked as a Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) for 2 years.
My research interests cover the CySec and Privacy Threat Modelling, (Anti-)Digital Forensics, and Cyber Threat Intelligence fields.

Experience

  • Oct 2020–Nov 2022

    Fellowship - INAF-OACT

    Scrum (AGILE) software developer. In-kind collaboration within ASTRON for the LOFARTMSS projects.
    System Administrator. System management of the PLEIADI cluster.

  • Mar 2020–May 2020

    Internship - INAF-OACT

    Trainee. REST-ful APIs and Web service implementation for the EOSC cloud as part of H2020 NEANIAS.

  • Feb 2019–ongoing

    Community Collaboration - Rev3rse Security

    Blog Writer - Admin. Technical ICT Security blogging on research, proof-of-concepts and tutorials.

Research Projects

International Events

  • Dec 2023-Jul 2024

    Technical Program Commettee - ACSW

    PC Member. IEEE EuroS&P Workshop on Automotive Cybersecurity 2024.

  • Jul 2023-Jul 2023

    Summer School - IFOSS

    PhD Student. International FOrensics Summer School (IFOSS) 2023 Edition - Digitalisation and forensic data science: from evidence acquisition to interpretation.

Education

  • 2022–ongoing

    PhD Degree - IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, assigned at DMI.UNICT, Italy.

    PhD-CySec - National PhD in Cybersecurity - Software, System, and Infrastructure Security, EQF 8

  • 2018–2020

    Master's Degree - DMI.UNICT, Italy.

    LM-18 - 2nd level degree in Computer Science - Network and Security Systems, EQF 7

  • 2015–2018

    Bachelor's Degree - DMI.UNICT, Italy.

    L-31 - 1st level degree in Computer Science, EQF 6

Selected Publications

The full list is available on my ResearchGate profile.

    Talks and Presentations

    (Click on the cover image to download slides)


    Works

    You can find full code and related docs on my Github profile.

    アマヤラ Lab

    アマヤラ Lab

    アマヤラ (Android Malware Analysis YARA) Lab is a project that provides a ready-to-use Jupyter Lab environment to help out with Android malware analysis using YARA rules. It automatically analyses files with your YARA rules and stores the results in a JSON file. YARA rules are checked against both the APK file itself and its content (recursively). アマヤラ Lab also gathers some information about the file(s) that you want to analyse from the Virus Total and Malware Bazaar APIs, using your own API keys. Eventually, The results include a link to Pithus which is valid only if the file was already uploaded.

    AURA

    AURA

    AURA (AUtomotive Risk Assessment) is the name of my Master's thesis. In this work we propose a Risk Assessment exercise applied to an automotive scenario, according to the MAGERIT methodology and with the support of the PILAR commercial tool, in order to seek whether both of them may prove to be useful in the automotive field, with specific attention paid to potential threats against personal data en route from/to connected vehicles. Moreover, we also provide a regression analysis study of the algorithm implemented in Pilar for the purposes of reverse engineering, to better understand the values calculated by the tool in the demo.

    VCrypture

    VCrypture

    VCrypture is an online service that allows you to encrypt your secret images safely using visual cryptographic algorithms. VCrypture is composed of two mainly parts: VCrypture-API and VCrypture-Web. The latter is a web server which provides the front-end as well as forwarding users' requests to the API core, whilst the former aims to perform visual cryptographic operations on images. The user can choose between four visual cryptographic algorithms: Naor-Shamir, Taghaddos-Latif, Dhiman-Kasana EVCT(N, N) and Dhiman-Kasana EVCT(K, N).

    DSR Bad

    DSR Bad

    The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is an example of reactive routing protocol for MANET networks. To work properly, DSR requires nodes to collaborate without maliciously inhibiting routing operations. In this scientific paper we present DSR Bad, a modification of the DSR module present in the ns-3 simulator, through which we aim to study and analyze two examples of non-cooperative scenarios that allow us to observe the impact suffered by the protocol and its reaction to situations not normally foreseen.

    QueKey

    QueKey

    QueKey is the name of my Bachelor's thesis. The project is a cloud system for IoT Smart Lock devices placed in hotels and B&Bs. Its aim is, on the one hand, to make easy the handling of rooms and builds for the hotel managers and, on the other side, to give to their guests an easy way to lock and unlock rooms. QueKey consts of a main cloud service and of two physical devices: a RaspberryPi 3 (also other little boards are compatible with the system) and a NodeMCU with ESP8266 WiFi module.

    FIAR

    FIAR

    FIAR (Four-In-A-Row) is an online multiplayer game, with a vaporwave futuristic design inspired. Developed using NodeJS (Express & Socket.IO with rooms handling) and p5.js library (Processing based). FIAR can be played on Desktops, Tablets and Smartphones, thanks to its responsive design. Indeed the canvas containing the game is created in order to fit most of the display sizes.

    Get in touch!

    Please feel free to contact me for any questions.
    Don't forget to follow me on socials! I actively post cybersecurity news and resources.