Towards Visual Analytics for Web Security Data
19th Passive and Active Measurement Conference
CV
Work experience
- DistriNet, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- PhD researcher, September 2017-May 2023
- Postdoctoral researcher, June 2023-September 2024
- European Commission, DG CNECT, Brussels, Belgium
- Case handler, September 2024-
Publications
Idea: Visual Analytics for Web Security
10th International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems
Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation
26th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium ACSAC 2022 Cybersecurity Artifacts Competition Impactful Dataset Award
Funny Accents: Exploring Genuine Interest in Internationalized Domain Names
20th Passive and Active Measurement Conference
A Smörgåsbord of Typos: Exploring International Keyboard Layout Typosquatting
4th International Workshop on Traffic Measurements for Cybersecurity Distinguished Paper Award
Mobile Friendly or Attacker Friendly?: A Large-scale Security Evaluation of Mobile-first Websites
2019 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Evaluating the Long-term Effects of Parameters on the Characteristics of the Tranco Top Sites Ranking
12th USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test
A Practical Approach for Taking Down Avalanche Botnets Under Real-World Constraints
27th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium
Mis-shapes, Mistakes, Misfits: An Analysis of Domain Classification Services
2020 Internet Measurement Conference
Helping hands: Measuring the impact of a large threat intelligence sharing community
31st USENIX Security Symposium
An Audit of Facebook’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement
31st USENIX Security Symposium Distinguished Paper Award
Tracking the Evolution of Cookie-based Tracking on Facebook
21st Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society
A Run a Day Won’t Keep the Hacker Away: Inference Attacks on Endpoint Privacy Zones in Fitness Tracking Social Networks
2022 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security 2022 CNIL-Inria Privacy Protection Award Runner-up
Analyzing Cyber Security Research Practices through a Meta-Research Framework
16th Cyber Security Experimentation and Test Workshop
Reflecting on Research Practices
Communications of the ACM
Evaluating the impact of design decisions on passive DNS-based domain rankings
8th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference TMA 2024 Community Contribution Award
Swipe Left for Identity Theft: An Analysis of User Data Privacy Risks on Location-based Dating Apps
33rd USENIX Security Symposium
Talks
- “Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation”: NDSS 2019; Ad Blocker Dev Summit 2019; guest lecture in “Web Security Seminar” course of prof. Phani Vadrevu at University of New Orleans, December 2020; “Identifying Benign Websites Is About to Get Harder: The Demise of the Alexa Top Million” webinar for Ultimate IT Security, April 2022.
- “A Practical Approach for Taking Down Avalanche Botnets Under Real-World Constraints”: NDSS 2020; OWASP Chapters All Day 2020.
- “Mis-shapes, Mistakes, Misfits: An Analysis of Domain Classification Services”: IMC 2020.
- “Exploring (domain abuse for) deceptive advertising”: talk at CISPA WebSec reading group, October 2021.
- “An Audit of Facebook’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement”: CIF Seminar (Q&A), 16 December 2021; panel “Regulating Big Tech was never so urgent” organized by MEP Tom Vandenkendelaere, 14 December 2021; seminar for the SLIDE team of prof. Oana Goga at Grenoble Alps University, April 2022; OWASP Belgium Chapter Meeting, September 2022; Ad Filtering Dev Summit 2022, October 2022; TU Delft TPM seminar, October 2022; CIF review, November 2022.
- “Sound data sets and methods for web security research”: Stanford Security Lunch, February 2023; CISPA WebSec Reading Group, February 2023; PhD defense, May 2023.
- “A Run a Day Won’t Keep the Hacker Away: Inference Attacks on Endpoint Privacy Zones in Fitness Tracking Social Networks”: Black Hat Asia (with Karel Dhondt), May 2023.
- “Empirical Web Security and Privacy”: CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, April 2024; “Seminar in CyberSecurity” course at KU Leuven, April 2024; Max Planck Institute for Informatics, July 2024.
- “Swipe Left for Identity Theft: An Analysis of User Data Privacy Risks on Location-based Dating Apps”: CNIL Privacy Research Day, June 2024; Black Hat USA, August 2024 (99/1300 submissions accepted - 7.6% acceptance rate); USENIX Security, August 2024.
International mobility
- March-April 2019: research visit to prof. Maciej Korczyński at Grenoble Alps University (Grenoble, France), a.o. for collaboration on the Avalanche project, two months.
- October 2021-January 2022: research visit to prof. Damon McCoy and prof. Tobias Lauinger at New York University, Tandon School of Engineering (New York City, NY, United States), four months.
- April 2022: research visit to prof. Maciej Korczyński at Grenoble Alps University (Grenoble, France), two weeks.
- October 2022: research visit to prof. Georgios Smaragdakis and prof. Michel van Eeten at TU Delft (Delft, the Netherlands).
- April 2024: research visit to dr. Bhupendra Acharya and prof. Thorsten Holz at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (Saarbrücken, Germany), one week.
- Participation in academic conferences (workshops): PAM 2018, ESSoS 2018, NDSS 2019, PAM 2019, S&P 2019 (WTMC 2019), USENIX Security 2019 (CSET 2019), IMC 2019, NDSS 2020, EuroS&P 2020 (WTMC 2020), IMC 2020, EuroS&P 2021 (SecWeb 2021), S&P 2022, USENIX Security 2022, IMC 2022, CCS 2022 (WPES 2022), ACSAC 2022, USENIX Security 2023 (CSET 2023).
- Participation in industry/government events: Ad Blocker Dev Summit 2019, Ad Filtering Dev Summit 2022, Black Hat Asia 2023, CNIL Privacy Research Day 2023.
- Participation in summer schools: TMA PhD school 2018, 2nd SecHuman Summer School 2018, 3rd SecHuman Summer School 2019.
Service
- Artifact Evaluation Publication Chair for USENIX Security 2024.
- Publicity Chair for CSET 2024.
- PC member for WTMC 2021, SecWeb 2021, S3 2021, MADWeb 2022, SecWeb 2022, WTMC 2022, CCS 2022, MADWeb 2023, SecWeb 2023, WTMC 2023, MADWeb 2024, SecWeb 2024, Web Conference 2024, WTMC 2024, ISC 2024, IMC 2024.
- Representative on the Departmental Council (2020-2024) and Departmental Board (2022-2024) of the Department of Computer Science at KU Leuven.
- Member of the PhD committee of Karel Dhondt (DistriNet, KU Leuven - Gent), 2024.
Grants
- Research Foundation – Flanders, 2024-2027: individual junior postdoc fellowship, three years (180/1041 - 17.3% success rate).
- Research Foundation – Flanders, October 2018-2022: individual PhD fellowship, four years (21% success rate).
- Research Foundation – Flanders, August 2024: travel grant to attend USENIX Security 2024.
- ACM Internet Measurement Conference, October 2022: full travel grant.
- Research Foundation – Flanders, August 2022: travel grant to attend USENIX Security 2022.
- Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Training, April 2022: full grant (€1843) for a visit to Grenoble Alps University.
- Research Foundation – Flanders, October-December 2021: grant (€4290 + travel) for a long stay abroad at New York University.
- Google Cloud, November 2020: research credits ($1000).
- 3rd SecHuman Summer School, June 2019: full grant.
- Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Training, March-April 2019: full grant (€1500 + travel) for a visit to Grenoble Alps University.
- 2nd SecHuman Summer School, September 2018: full grant.
- 8th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis PhD School, June 2018: full grant.
Education
- Doctor of Engineering Science (PhD): Computer Science
- KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2017-2023
- Master of Science, Engineering: Computer Science (Secure Software)
- KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2015-2017
- Summa cum laude
- Bachelor of Science, Engineering: Computer Science/Electrical Engineering
- KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 2012-2015
- Magna cum laude
Miscellaneous
- CVE-2018-4429: I found a phishing vulnerability in iOS (up to 12.1.1) as part of my ‘Funny Accents’ paper.
- I am part of the core team of Stellar Vector, the CTF team powered by DistriNet and KU Leuven. I contributed and presented a self-made OSINT challenge to the 2023 CTF 101 event (80 participants).