Mario Raciti

PhD Student in Cybersecurity

tsumarios' blog

Cybersec 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.

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.

Android Malware Analysis Lab

Sep 24, 2022android, malware-analysis

Some notes on how to set up an Android Malware Analysis Lab using state-of-the-art tools along with useful tips and tricks.

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

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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 Risk Assessment, Threat Modelling, DFIR, 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 Network 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 Cybersecurity Risk Assessment, Privacy Threat Analysis, Digital Forensics and Incident Response 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.

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

Publications

A full list is also available on my ORCID profile.

Talks and Presentations

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.