Ibéria Medeiros

Ibéria Medeiros

Assistant Professor

University of Lisboa, PT

ivmedeiros(at)fc.ul.pt

+351 217500087 (ext: 26380)

Google Scholar

ORCID

Research Gate

dblp



Research

  • Software security
  • Vulnerability detection
  • Code correction
  • Cybersecurity
  • Intrusion detection
  • Cyber threat intelligence
  • Machine learning
  • Natural language processing
  • Data mining



Software

WAP    Septic    Dekant


PHP parser    Deeep






Short Bio

Ibéria Medeiros is an Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics, at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisboa. She is an integrated researcher of the LASIGE - Large-Scale Informatics Systems Laboratory, and a member of the Navigators research group. She is also a IEEE member. She holds a PhD degree in Computer Science and a MSc degree in Informatics both at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisboa.

Her main research focuses on software security, cybersecurity, and machine learning. She investigates techniques and models, resorting machine learning, to improve the code security of web applications and programs deployed in industrial products, once web applications are the most used forms of accessing to services and industrial products must be realiable systems and work properly. She is author of tools for software security to detect and remove vulnerabilities in web applications, correcting their code, and of mechanisms and systems for cybersecurity to improve the quality of threat intelligence (from OSINT) and the detection of incidents and intrusions. Her research interests are: software security, vulnerability detection, code correction, cybersecurity, cyber threat intelligence, intrusion detection, runtime protection, machine learning, natural language processing, and data mining.

She is the principal investigator of the SEAL national project and the XIVT European project, and has been involved in international and national projects, including the ADMORPH, DiSIEM, SEGRID, and MASSIF European projects, and the REDBOOK national project.

Future Students

I am looking for future students that woulkd like to do research on security of web applications and/or cyber threat intelligence (CTI), including Data Science students that would like to have the experience on how to build machine learning models for these areas. Hence, if you are a student that would like to do research, for example, on finding vulnerabilities, detecting attacks, and analyzing CTI, and you have good skills in programming, are resilient :) and want new challenges, please contact me.


Publications

Journal Papers

  • Cláudio Martins, Ibéria Medeiros. Generating Quality Threat Intelligence Leveraging OSINT and a Cyber Threat Unified Taxonomy. ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, Vol. 25-3, No. 19, pages 1-39, May 2022. (journal)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Statically Detecting Vulnerabilities by Processing Programming Languages as Natural Language. IEEE Transactions on Reliability. Jan 2022. (journal)
  • Gustavo Gonzalez-Granadillo, Mario Faiella, Ibéria Medeiros, Rui Azevedo, Susana Gonzalez-Zarzosa. ETIP: An Enriched Threat Intelligence Platform for Improving OSINT Correlation, Analysis, Visualisation and Sharing Capabilities. Journal of Information Security and Applications, Elsevier. Vol. 58., pages 102715, May 2021. (journal)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Miguel Beatriz, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. SEPTIC: Detecting Injection Attacks and Vulnerabilities Inside the DBMS. IEEE Transactions on Reliability. Vol. 68, No. 3, pages 1168 - 1188, Sept 2019. (journal)
  • Paulo Nunes, Ibéria Medeiros, José Fonseca, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia, Marco Vieira. An Empirical Study on Combining Diverse Static Analysis Tools for Web Security Vulnerabilities based on Development Scenarios. Computing, Springer, Vol. 101, No. 2, pages 161–185, Fev 2019. (journal)
  • Paulo Nunes, Ibéria Medeiros, José Fonseca, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia, Marco Vieira. Benchmarking Static Analysis Tools for Web Security. IEEE Transactions on Reliability. Vol. 67, No. 3, pages 1159 - 1175, Sept 2018. (journal)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Detecting and Removing Web Application Vulnerabilities with Static Analysis and Data Mining. IEEE Transactions on Reliability. Vol. 65, No. 1, pages 54-69, March 2016. (journal)


Book Chapters

  • Luís Sacramento, Ibéria Medeiros, Jão Bota, Miguel Correia. Detecting Botnets and Unknown Network Attacks in Big Traffic Data. In Botnets: Architectures, Countermeasures, and Challenges, CRC Press, pp 237-268, 2020.


Conference and Workshop Papers

2024

  • Rodrigo Branco, Vinicius Cogo, Ibéria Medeiros. Towards a Web Application Attack Detection System based on Network Traffic and Log Classification. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Angers, France, April 2024.
  • Luís Ferreirinha, Ibéria Medeiros. On the Path to Buffer Overflow Detection by Model Checking the Stack of Binary Programs. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Angers, France, April 2024.
  • António Silvestre, Ibéria Medeiros, Andreia Mordido. Towards a SQL Injection Vulnerability Detector based on Session Types. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Angers, France, April 2024.

2023

  • João Inácio, Ibéria Medeiros. CorCA: An Automatic Program Repair Tool for Checking and Removing Effectively C Flaws. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), Dublin, Ireland, April 2023. (paper)

2021

  • João Caseirito, Ibéria Medeiros. Improving Web Application Vulnerability Detection Leveraging Ensemble Fuzzing. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Online Streaming, April 2021. (paper)
  • Vasco Leitão, Ibéria Medeiros. SRXCRM: Discovering Association Rules Between System Requirements and Product Specifications. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Requirements Engineering (NLP4RE), Essen, Germany, April 2021. (paper)

2020

  • Ana Fidalgo, Ibéria Medeiros, Paulo Antunes, Nuno Neves. Towards a Deep Learning Model for Vulnerability Detection on Web Application Variants. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Testing of Configurable and Multi-variant Systems (ToCaMS), Porto, Portugal, October 2020. (paper)
  • Francisco Araújo, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Generating Tests for the Discovery of Security Flaws in Product Variants. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Testing Extra-Functional Properties and Quality Characteristics of Software Systems (ITEQS), Porto, Portugal, October 2020. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Effect of Coding Styles in Detection of Web Application Vulnerabilities. In Proceedings of the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Munich, Germany, Sept. 2020. (paper)
  • Ricardo Morgado, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Towards Web Application Security by Automated Code Correction. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Prague, Czech Republic, May 2020. (paper)

2019

  • Adriano Serckumecka, Ibéria Medeiros, Bernardo Ferreira, Alysson Bessani. SLiCER: Safe Long-term Cloud Event Archival. In Proceedings of the IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC), Kyoto, Japan, Dec 2019. (paper)
  • Adriano Serckumecka, Ibéria Medeiros, Bernardo Ferreira, Alysson Bessani. A Cost-Effective Cloud Event Archival for SIEMs. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Distributed and Reliable Storage Systems (DRSS, with SRDS 2019), Lyon, France, Oct 2019. (paper)
  • Rui Azevedo, Ibéria Medeiros, Alysson Bessani. PURE: Generating Quality Threat Intelligence by Clustering and Correlating OSINT. In Proceedings of IEEE TrustCom, Rotorua, New Zealand, Agt 2019. (paper)
  • Mario Faiella, Gustavo Gonzalez-Granadillo, Ibéria Medeiros, Rui Azevedo, Susana Gonzalez-Zarzosa. Enriching Threat Intelligence Platforms Capabilities. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography, Prague, Czech Republic (SECRYPT), Jul. 2019. (paper)
  • Gustavo Gonzalez-Granadillo, Rodrigo Diaz, Ibéria Medeiros, Susana Gonzalez-Zarzosa, Dawid Machnicki. LADS: A Live Anomaly Detection System based on Machine Learning Methods. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography (with SECRYPT 2019), Prague, Czech Republic, Jul. 2019. (paper)
  • Gustavo Gonzalez-Granadillo, Mario Faiella, Ibéria Medeiros, Rui Azevedo, Susana Gonzalez-Zarzosa. Enhancing Information Sharing and Visualization Capabilities in Security Data Analytic Platforms. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Data-Centric on Security and Dependability (DCDS, with DSN 2019), Portland, EUA, June 2019. (paper)

2018

  • Ivo Vacas, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Detecting Network Threats using OSINT Knowledge-based IDS. In Proceedings of the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Sept. 2018. (paper)
  • Luís Sacramento, Ibéria Medeiros, João Bota, and Miguel Correia. FlowHacker: Detecting Unknown Network Attacks in Big Traffic Data using Network Flows. In Proceedings of IEEE TrustCom, New York, EUA, Jul. 2018. (paper)
  • Henrique Mendes, Ibéria Medeiros and Nuno Neves. Validating and Securing DLMS/COSEM Implementations with the ValiDLMS Framework. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Security and Dependability of Critical Embedded Real-Time Systems (CERTS, with DSN 2018), Luxembourg, June 2018. (paper)

2017

  • Paulo Nunes, Ibéria Medeiros, José Fonseca, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Miguel Correia, Marco Vieira. On Combining Diverse Static Analysis Tools for Web Security: An Empirical Study. In Proceedings of the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Sept. 2017. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Miguel Beatriz, Miguel Correia. Demonstrating a Tool for Injection Attack Prevention in MySQL. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Jun. 2017. (paper)

2016

  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. DEKANT: A Static Analysis Tool that Learns to Detect Web Application Vulnerabilities. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), Saarbrücken, German, 12 pages, July 2016. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Equipping WAP with Weapons to Detect Vulnerabilities. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Toulouse, France, 8 pages, June 2016 (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Miguel Beatriz, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Hacking the DBMS to Prevent Injection Attacks. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy (CODASPY), New Orleans, EUA, 11 pages, March 2016 (paper)

2014

  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Automatic Detection and Correction of Web Application Vulnerabilities using Data Mining to Predict False Positives. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW), Seoul, Korea, 11 pages, April 2014. (paper)(slides)

2013

  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Securing Energy Metering Software with Automatic Source Code Correction. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN), Bochum, Germany, 6 pages, July 2013. (paper)(slides)


Short Papers

  • Jorge Martins, Ibéria Medeiros, Bernardo Ferreira. Code Privacy in Detection of Web Vulnerabilities. Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE'23), Oulu, Finland, June 2023.
  • Paulo Antunes, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Towards PHP Vulnerability Detection at an Intermediate Language Level. Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'23), Porto, Portugal, June 2023.
  • João Inácio, Ibéria Medeiros. Effectiveness on C Flaws Checking and Removal (fast abstract). Proceedings of the 52nd IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'22), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, June 2022. (paper)
  • João Caseirito, Ibéria Medeiros. Finding Web Application Vulnerabilities with an Ensemble Fuzzing (fast abstract). Proceedings of the 51st IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'21), Taipei, Taiwan, June 2021. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Impact of Coding Styles on Behaviours of Static Analysis Tools for Web Applications (fast abstract). Proceedings of the 50th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'20), Valencia, Spain, June 2020. (paper)
  • Cláudio Martins, Ibéria Medeiros. Generating Threat Intelligence by Classification and Association of Security Events (research statement). DSN Workshop on Data-Centric on Security and Dependability (DCDS), Portland, EUA, June 2019. (paper)
  • Roberto Ponte, Ibéria Medeiros, and Miguel Correia.Fuzzing Ethereum Smart Contracts (research statement). DSN Workshop on Byzantine Consensus and Resilient Blockchains (BCRB), Luxembourg, June 2018. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Web Application Protection with the WAP tool (fast abstract). Proceedings of the 44th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'14), Atlanta, Georgia USA, June 2014. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Miguel Correia. Finding Vulnerabilities in Software Ported from 32 to 64-bit CPUs (fast abstract). Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'09), Estoril, Lisboa Portugal, June-July 2009. (paper)


National Conference Papers

  • Francisco Araújo, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Geração de Testes de Software para Verificação de Faltas e Funcionalidades. Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2019, Guimarães, Portugal, Sept. 2019. (paper)
  • Paulo Antunes, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Remoção Automática de Vulnerabilidades usando Análise Estática de Código Direcionada. Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2018, Coimbra, Portugal, Sept. 2018. (paper)
  • Rui Azevedo, Ibéria Medeiros, Alysson Bessani. Automated Solution for Enrichment and Quality IoC Creation from OSINT. Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2018, Coimbra, Portugal, Sept. 2018. (paper)
  • João Lopes, Ibéria Medeiros, Sérgio Sá. Infraestrutura de Chaves Públicas suportando Assinaturas na Cloud baseadas no eIDAS. Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2018, Coimbra, Portugal, Sept. 2018. (paper)
  • Ivo Vacas, Ibéria Medeiros. Geração Automática de Conhecimento para SDI extraído de OSINTs. Actas do 9º Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2017, Aveiro, Portugal, Oct. 2017. (paper)
  • Miguel Falé, Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves. Resolução de Dependências Circulares em Inclusão de Código em Análise Estática de Código. Actas do 9º Simpósio de Informática, INForum 2017, Aveiro, Portugal, Oct. 2017. (paper)
  • Ibéria Medeiros, Miguel Correia. Detecção de Vulnerabilidades de Inteiros na Adaptação de Software de 32 para 64 bits. Actas da 3ª Conferência Nacional sobre Segurança nas Organizações (SINO). Lisboa, November 2007. (paper) (software)


Deliverables from Projects

  • DiSIEM project deliverable D6.1. Preliminary Architecture and Service Model of Infrastructure Enhancements. August 2017.


Technical Reports

  • Ibéria Medeiros, Nuno Neves, Miguel Correia. Statically Detecting Vulnerabilities by Processing Programming Languages as Natural Languages. ArXiv 1910.06826, Oct. 2019. (paper)


Thesis

  • Ibéria Medeiros. Detection of Vulnerabilities and Automatic Protection for Web Applications. PhD thesis. Faculty of Sciences of University of Lisboa, September 2016. (thesis)

  • Ibéria Medeiros. Detecção de Vulnerabilidades de Inteiros na Adaptação de Software de 32 para 64 bits. Master thesis of Master in Informatics. Faculty of Sciences of University of Lisboa, March 2008.


Projects

ADMORPH - Towards Adaptively Morphing Embedded Systems (Researcher)
2020 - 2023

Due to the increasing performance demands of mission- and safety-critical Cyber Physical Systems (of Systems) – after this referred to as CPS(oS) – these systems exhibit a rapidly growing complexity, manifested by an increasing number of (distributed) computational cores and application components connected via complex networks. However, with the growing complexity and interconnectivity of these systems, the chances of hardware failures as well as disruptions due to cyber-attacks will also quickly increase. System adaptivity, foremost in terms of dynamically remapping of application components to processing cores, represents a promising technique to fuse fault- and intrusion tolerance with the increasing performance requirements of these mission- and safety-critical CPS(oS). In the ADMORPH project, we evaluate this hypothesis using a novel, holistic approach to the specification, design, analysis and runtime deployment of adaptive, i.e., dynamically morphing, mission- and safety-critical CPS(oS) that are robust against both component failures and cyber-attacks. To this end, we will address four aspects that are instrumental for the realization of these adaptively morphing systems: (i) the formal specification of adaptive systems; (ii) adaptivity methods like strategies for maintaining safe and secure control of CPS(oS); (iii) analysis techniques for adaptive systems to, e.g., perform timing verification of adaptive systems to avoid timing violations after system reconfigurations; and (iv) run-time systems for adaptive systems that realize the actual run-time system reconfigurations to achieve fault and intrusion tolerance. The developed methodologies, methods and tools will be evaluated using three industrial use cases taken from the radar surveillance systems, autonomous operations for aircrafts, and transport management systems domains.


XIVT - eXcellence In Variant Testing (Principal Investigator)
2020 - 2023

Within the XIVT project, a method and toolchain will be defined for testing highly configurable, variant-rich embedded systems in the automotive, rail, telecommunication and industrial production domains. This will enable a highly effective, cost-efficient quality assurance, allowing the shift to autonomous, flexible and adaptive applications. The method is founded on a knowledge-based analysis of requirements formulated in natural language, and a model-based test generation at product-line level. It is expected that XIVT methods will result in higher test coverage, more flexible processes of higher quality and better products.


SEAL - SEcurity progrAmming of web appLications (Coordinator)
2018 - 2022

The SEAL project aims to make significant advances in security of web applications, developing the SEAL platform containing tools that implement secure programming in applications written in server-side programming languages (e.g., PHP and .NET). The platform will be constituted by three layers, namely, code representation, vulnerability detection, and code correction, where: an intermediate language able to represent server-side languages and secure code features will be defined; on this language, tools to perform code analysis to detect and identify vulnerabilities will be developed, employing code analysis and machine learning techniques; and a secure code layer to remove the vulnerabilities found automatically will be created. The SEAL platform, during its development and evaluation, will resort to use cases defined with the Maxdata enterprise, the market leader in software solutions to health services.


REDBOOK - Robust hardwarE-based Defences against Buffer Overflows and Other cybersecurity attacKs (Researcher)
2018 - 2021

For decades, numerous vulnerabilities have put computer systems and applications at risk. Several cybersecurity issues have been recurrent, being Buffer Overflows (BOs) vulnerabilities a primary attack method, which nowadays still accounts for more than 25% of the reported attacks. Such a high number clearly shows that classical software-based and compiler-assisted techniques for preventing exploitation of buffer overflow vulnerabilities did not succeed. Existing hardware-based methods (e.g., StackGhost) are too restricted and therefore they are not widely used. This project aims the design of an innovative hardware-based system monitoring architecture, introducing novel non-intrusive observation and runtime verification mechanisms for robust defence against cybersecurity hazards emerging either from accidental faults or from malicious attacks. Technical feasibility will be demonstrated for SPARC (aerospace applications) and ARM (telecommunications, including mobile) platforms.


DiSIEM - Diversity Enhancements for SIEMs (Researcher)
2016 - 2019

The project aims to provide improvements to Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems based on diversity related technology. More specifically, the project wants to (1) enhance the quality of events collected using a diverse set of sensors and novel anomaly detectors, (2) add support for collecting infrastructure-related information from open source intelligence data available on diverse sources from the internet, (3) create new ways for visualising the information collected in the SIEM and provide high-level security metrics and models for improving security-related decision project, and (4) allow the use of multiple storage clouds for secure long-term archival of the raw events feed to the SIEM. Given the high costs of deployment of SIEM infrastructures, all these enhancements will be developed in a SIEM-independent way, as extensions to currently available systems, and will be validated through the deployed in three large-scale production environments.


SEGRID - Security for smart Electricity GRIDs (Researcher)
2014 - 2017

The project main objective is to enhance the protection of smart electrical grids against cyber-attacks. SEGRID does this by applying a risk management analysis approach to a number of smart grid use cases (the SEGRID use cases), which will define security requirements and determine gaps in current security technologies, standards and regulations. The identified gaps and the analysis itself will give input to the enhancement of risk assessment methodologies and the development of novel security measures for smart grids.


RC-Clouds - Resilient Computing in the Clouds (Researcher)
2011 - 2013

The objective of RC-Clouds is to improve the security and dependability of cloud computing services using Byzantine fault tolerance or intrusion tolerance.


MASSIF - MAnagement of Security information and events in Service InFrastructures (Researcher)
2010 - 2013

The main objective of MASSIF is to achieve a signicant advance in the area of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). On the base of proper multi-level event correlation, MASSIF will provide innovation techniques in order to enable the detection of upcoming security threats and trigger remediation actions even before the occurrence of possible security incidences. Thus, MASSIF will develop a new generation SIEM framework for service infrastructures supporting intelligent, scalable, and multi-level/multi-domain security event processing and predictive security monitoring.
Such service-level SIEM involves the modelling and formal validation of security, including trusted computing concepts, architecture for dependable and resilient collection of service events, supported by an extremely scalable and performant event collection and processing framework, in the context of service-level attack models.



Software

WAP
Web Application Protection

WAP is a source code static analysis and data mining tool to detect and correct input validation vulnerabilities in web applications written in PHP (version 4.0 or higher) with a low rate of false positives.

WAP detects and corrects the following vulnerabilities:
  • SQL Injection (SQLI)
  • Cross-site scripting (XSS)
  • Remote File Inclusion (RFI)
  • Local File Inclusion (LFI)
  • Directory Traversal or Path Traversal (DT/PT)
  • Source Code Disclosure (SCD)
  • OS Command Injection (OSCI)
  • PHP Code Injection

WAP is an OWASP project
OWASP


Septic
SEPTIC - SElf-Protection daTabases preventIng attaCks

SEPTIC is a mechanism put inside of the DBMS to protect in runtime any application that use the databases, detecting and blocking injection attacks, such as SQL injection and stored injection (e.g., stored XSS) attacks. It also solves the semantic mismatch between server-side language and DBMS, which is the difference of interpretation between how the queries are believed to be executed by the DBMS and how they are actually executed. This means that SEPTIC protects applications against the semantic mismatch exploitation attacks, i.e., attacks that circumventing with success some forms of protection, such as web application firewalls solutions and sanitization functions present in source code of applications.



Dekant
DEKANT - hidDEn marKov model diAgNosing vulnerabiliTies

DEKANT is a source code static analysis tool inspired in natural language processing that learns to recognize vulnerabilities in web applications using a hidden Markov model (HMM). It uses a sequence model for learning to characterize vulnerabilities, and then uses a HMM to classify code elements of source code, taking into account the order of code elements inside the source code.



PHP parser
PHP Parser

PHParser 1.2 generates a pure Java parser for PHP programs. Invoking this parser yields an explicit parse tree (AST) and a tree walker suitable for further analysis.



Deeep
Detector of integEr vulnerabilitiEs in softwarE Portability

DEEEP is a open source static analysis tool to detect, in C programs, integer vulnerabilities caused by the bad adaption of applications from ILP32 to LP64.



Software Co-Author

KAVe - Knowledge-based Agent-system Vulnerability detector
WAEFuzz - Web Application Ensemble Fuzzing
PHPCorrector - PHP Corrector
CorCA - Correction C Automatically
PatchBin - Automatic Binary Patching for C Flaws Repairing
ARRINA - Association and Recommendation for Requirements in Natural Language


Events


Students

Announcement. I am looking for future students that woulkd like to do research on security of web applications and/or cyber threat intelligence (CTI), including Data Science students that would like to have the experience on how to build machine learning models for these areas. Hence, if you are a student that would like to do research, for example, on finding vulnerabilities, detecting attacks, and analyzing CTI, and you have good skills in programming, are resilient :) and want new challenges, please contact me.

PhD

  • Rafael Ramires, Detecting Vulnerabilities (Co-advised with Ana Respício)
  • Paulo Antunes, Web Application Security (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Adriano Serckumecka, Low-cost Serverless SIEM in the Cloud (Co-advised with Alysson Bessani)

Master

  • António Silvestre, Detecting SQL Injection in Web Applications with FreeST (Co-advised with Andreia Mordido)
  • David Gonçalves, Vulnerability Dataset Creation System (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • David Prates, Detecting and Removing Vulnerabilities (Co-advised with Vinicius Cogo)
  • Luís Ferreirinha, Detecting and Removing Vulnerabilities in Binary Code
  • Rodrigo Branco, Detecting Attacks and Code Vulnerabilities (Co-advised with Vinicius Cogo)
  • Sérgio Ferreira, Detecting Vulnerabilities
  • Tomás Ferreira, Detecting and Removing Vulnerabilities in Stand Alone Applications
  • Rafael Abrantes, Detecting Vulnerabilities
  • Bruno Matos, Detecting and Removing Vulnerabilities
  • Pedro Martins, Detecting and Removing Vulnerabilities (Co-advised with Vinicius Cogo)


Past

Post Docs
Masters
  • João Queimado. Large-Scale Distributed Similarity Search with Locality-Sensitive Hashing, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, February 2024. (Co-advised with Vinicius Cogo)
  • Miguel Ferreira. Development of a Website for Creation of Vulnerability Datasets, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, January 2024. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Miguel Oliveira. A Hybrid Machine Learning System for Vulnerability Detection in Web Applications, Mestrado em Ciências de Dados, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, January 2024.
  • Rafael Ramires. Detect Web Vulnerabilities using Knowledge Graphs, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, May 2023. (Co-advised with Ana Respício)
  • Jorge Martins. Code Privacy in Detection of Web Vulnerabilities, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, April 2023. (Co-advised with Bernardo Ferreira)
  • Diogo Ferreira. Automatic Binary Patching for Flaws Repairing using Static Re-writing and Reverse Dataflow Analysis, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, March 2023.
  • João Inácio. Automatic Removal of Flaws in Embedded System Software, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, May 2022.
  • Nuno Durão. Discovery of Web Attacks by Inspecting HTTPS Network Traffic with Machine Learning and Similarity Search, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, May 2022. (Co-advised with Vinicius Cogo)
  • João Caseirito. Attacking Web Applications for Dynamic Discovering of Vulnerabilities, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, February 2022.
  • Jorge Vigário. ZERODays: Sistema de Gestão de Ameaças de Ciber-segurança de Dia-Zero, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, December 2021. (Co-advised with José Alegria, Altice)
  • Vasco Leitão. Prioritization of Software and System Requirements through Natural Language Processing for Testing Software, Mestrado em Ciências de Dados, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Novembro 2021.
  • Miguel Moreira. Imposição de Segurança em Aplicações Web a partir de Linguagem Intermédia, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Julho 2021. (Co-advised with Francisco Martins, Uac)
  • Rui Pereira. Automatização de Requisitos de Segurança em Aplicações Android, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, December 2020. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Ana Fidalgo. Detecting Web Vulnerabilities in an Intermediate Language Resorting of Machine Learning Techniques, Mestrado em Ciência de Dados, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, November 2020. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Cláudio Martins. Generating Threat Intelligence based on OSINT and a Cyber Threat Unified Taxonomy, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, September 2020.
  • Bruno Lourenço. Vulnerabilities Detection at Runtime and Continuous Auditing, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, April 2020. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Ricardo Morgado. Invalidating web applications attacks by employing the right secure code, Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, September 2019. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Francisco Araújo. Generating software tests to check for flaws and functionalities, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, September 2019. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Rui Azevedo. Leveraging OSINT to Improve Threat Intelligence Quality, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, January 2019. (Co-advised with Alysson Bessani)
  • Paulo Antunes, Monitoring Web Applications for Vulnerability Discovery and Removal Under Attack, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, October 2018. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves)
  • Rui Calado, Auditoria Contínua e os Incidentes de Segurança, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, October 2018. (Co-advised with Artur Martins, Layer8)
  • Anabela Borges, Whitebox Fuzzing for Web Application Security, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa, June 2018. (Co-advised with Miguel Correia)
  • Henrique Mendes, Security Auditing of a DLMS/COSEM Smart Grid Communication Protocol Implementation, Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, April 2018. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves) (thesis)
  • Miguel Falé, Improving Vulnerability Detection of WAP, Mestrado em Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, December 2017. (Co-advised with Nuno Neves) (thesis)
  • Ivo Vacas, Geração Automática de Conhecimento para SDI extraído de OSINTs, Mestrado em Segurança Informática, Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Sept. 2017. (Co-advised with Carlos Ribeiro, Reitoria ULisboa) (thesis)



Talks

2023

  • Testing Software Out-of-House: How to Make it Reliable while Ensuring Code Privacy. IFIP Working Group 10.4 - Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance, Arcos de Valdevez, Portugal, June 2023.
  • CorCA: An Automatic Program Repair Tool for Checking and Removing Effectively C Flaws. Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), Dublin, Ireland, April 2023.

2022

  • Effectiveness on C Flaws Checking and Removal. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, June 2022.
  • Effectiveness on C Flaws Checking and Removal. IFIP Working Group 10.4 - Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance, Alexandria, VA, USA, June 2022.

2021

  • Finding Web Application Vulnerabilities with an Ensemble Fuzzing. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Tapei, Taiwan, June 2021.
  • Clustering and Correlating OSINT Towards Threat Intelligence Enrichment. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Workshop. European Comission - JRC, Text and Data Mining, February 2021.

2020

  • Cybersecurity: Leveraging Threat Intelligence to Improve Defense Systems. I-Data Meeting Live Virtual Event, Lisboa, Portugal, September 2020.
  • Effect of Coding Styles in Detection of Web Application Vulnerabilities. Conference on European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Munich, Germany, September 2020.
  • Impact of Coding Styles on Behaviours of Static Analysis Tools for Web Applications. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Valencia, Spain, July 2020.
  • Towards Web Application Security by Automated Code Correction. Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), Prague, Czech Republic, May 2020.
  • Generating Tests for the Discovery of Security Flaws in Product Variants. DINavtalk, FCUL. February 2020.

2019

  • PURE: Generating Quality Threat Intelligence by Clustering and Correlating OSINT. Conference on IEEE TrustCom, Rotorua, New Zealand, Agt 2019.
  • Enhancing Information Sharing and Visualization Capabilities in Security Data Analytic Platforms. Workshop on Data-Centric on Security and Dependability (DCDS, with DSN 2019), Portland, EUA, June 2019.
  • Generating Threat Intelligence by Classification and Association of Security Events. Workshop on Data-Centric on Security and Dependability (DCDS, with DSN 2019), Portland, EUA, June 2019.
  • SeEcurity progrAmming of web appLications (SEAL). DINavtalk, FCUL. January 2019.

2018

  • Software (in)Security – The Root of Threats. PhD Seminar, IST. December 2018.
  • Detecting Network Threats using OSINT Knowledge-based IDS. Conference on European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Iasi, Romania, September 2018.
  • FlowHacker: Detecting Unknown Network Attacks in Big Traffic Data using Network Flows. Conference on IEEE TrustCom, New York, EUA, Jul. 2018.
  • Validating and Securing DLMS/COSEM Implementations with the ValiDLMS Framework. Workshop on Security and Dependability of Critical Embedded Real-Time Systems (CERTS), Luxembourg, June 2018.
  • Detecting Web Application Vulnerabilities using Fuzzing and Symbolic Execution. DINavtalk, FCUL. March 2018.
  • Building a SIEM in the Cloud. IFIP WG 10.4 Meeting, Goa, India, January 2018.

2017

  • Detection of Vulnerabilities broken by Circular Dependencies in Static Analysis. IFIP WG 10.4 Meeting, Denver, EUA, June 2017.
  • Demonstrating a Tool for Injection Attack Prevention in MySQL. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Denver, EUA, June 2017.
  • Avoiding Vulnerabilities by Application of Software Security. Lecture of Software Security on ParIS (Intensive Study Program). Luxembourg, April 2017.
  • Detecting Vulnerabilities and Protecting Web Applications. DI-Talk. Março 2017.

2016

  • Attacks, you shall not pass! SEPTIC will not avail you. DI-Navtalk, FCUL. December 2016.
  • DEKANT: A Static Analysis Tool that Learns to Detect Web Application Vulnerabilities. Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). Saarbrücken, Germany, July 2016.
  • Equipping WAP with Weapons to Detect Vulnerabilities. Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN). Toulouse, France, June 2016.
  • Hacking the DBMS to Prevent Injection Attacks. Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy (CODASPY). New Orleans, EUA, March 2016.

2015

  • Web Application Protection. ParIS – Intensive Study Program. University of Luxembourg, March 2015.
  • Web Application Protection. SECURITY_!3V3NTZ#, ACM Student Chapter, ISCTE-IUL, March 2015.
  • Hacking a DBMS to Avoid SQL Injection. Doctoral Seminar, FCUL, March 2015.
  • Challenges to Security and Privacy of the Things in the Internet. 1º Seminário sobre Internet of Things - Açores. Janeiro 2015. (pt presentation)

2014

  • Detection of Web Application Vulnerabilities using Sequence Models. DI-Smalltalk, FCUL. December 2014.
  • Data Protection in the Age of Information Technologies. 13º Encontro Regional da BAD. November 2014. (pt presentation)
  • Hybrid Methods to Detect and Correct Web Application Vulnerabilities Automatically. Doctoral Seminar, FCUL, May 2014.
  • Automatic Detection and Correction of Web Application Vulnerabilities using Data Mining to Predict False Positives. World Wide Web (WWW) Conference. Seoul, Korea, April 2014.
  • Information Security: How and Why? Segurança da Informação e Direitos de Autor em Contexto Digital. Açores. April 2014. (pt presentation)
  • Automatic Detection and Correction of Web Application Vulnerabilities using Data Mining to Predict False Positives. Navigators Navtalk, FCUL, March 2014.
  • Automatic Detection and Correction of Web Application Vulnerabilities using Data Mining to Predict False Positives. INESC-ID Seminar, INESC-ID, March 2014.

2013

  • Securing Energy Metering Software with Automatic Source Code Correction. 11th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN), Bochum, Germany, July 2013.
  • Software in the Cloud: Challenges to Security. 1º Workshop on Cloud Computing - Açores. April 2013.

2012

  • Is the Code You Develop Secure? Software Engineering Seminar - UAc, Nov. 2012.

2009

  • As Tecnologias no Ensino versus o Ensino da Informática. Colóquio de Didácticas – No Caminho das Didćticas: Saberes, Experiências e Inovação. Universidade dos Açores. Março 2009.

2008

  • Detecção de Vulnerabilidades de Inteiros na Adaptação de Software de 32 para 64 bits. Master Thesis. March 2008.



Teaching

FCUL, courses of the master in Security, Computer Engineering, and Informatic

  • Software Security / Secure Software Systems
  • Offensive and Defensive Methodologies for Cybersecurity
  • Applied Security / Security Technologies

FCUL, courses of the bachelor in Informatic Technologies, and Computer Engineering

  • Operating Systems - T, TP
  • Security and Dependability - TP
  • Distributed Systems - TP
  • Distributed Applications - TP, PL
  • Introduction to Computer Architectures - TP

UAç, courses of the bachelor in Informatic: Network and Multimedia and Pos-graduation in Informatics

  • Security and Network Management - T, PL
  • Distributed Systems - T, PL
  • Operating Systems - T, PL
  • Network and System Adminstration - T, PL