Simone Aonzo, PhD

~ Malware Hunter
~ Assistant Professor
~ Coffee fueled paper writer

Hello and welcome!

My name is Simone Aonzo, although online I am also known as packm(a|4)d.

I am an Assistant Professor at EURECOM, a graduate school and research center located in the Sophia Antipolis technology park, on the French Riviera.

I am part of the Software and System Security (S3) group, where I work on systems that are supposed to be secure, attackers who disagree, and users who have better things to do than read security warnings.

My research interests include:

  • Mobile, especially Android, system security
  • Malware analysis, mostly Android and Windows
  • Human factors in security processes
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence
  • Phishing and Social Engineering

My publications are listed here.

I serve the academic community as a program committee member for conferences such as USENIX Security, NDSS, and RAID, and as a reviewer for ACM TOPS.

I also teach two courses: the introductory Introduction to Cybersecurity and the advanced Reverse Engineering Malware. In the spirit of open source, all my course material is publicly available here.

Beyond academia, I co-founded ThreatNemesis, a cybersecurity startup specializing in Android sandboxing technology, built on years of research and a healthy amount of stubbornness.

Personal life

I am Italian, born in 1988 in Savona.

I studied, lived, and worked for many years in Genova. I have mixed feelings about the city, but it is undoubtedly one of the most charming places I have ever seen [video]. I now live in Antibes, France. Apparently, I have spent my whole life waking up with the smell of the sea. At this point, I think it is part of my operating system.

I am the father of twins, Francesco and Alessandro, born in 2010. Seeing the world through their eyes has been one of the most beautiful surprises of my life. They have taught me patience, negotiation, logistics, crisis management, conflict resolution, multitasking, and debugging under extreme sleep deprivation. Somehow, they still refuse to give me a certificate.

Until 2015, I was a professional K-1 kickboxing fighter. I won two belts: amateur European Champion and professional Italian Champion [video]. I still train, and I have no intention of stopping. Especially because I want to keep eating lots of Italian food without getting fat 🙂

I have many hobbies, depending on the season, my energy level, and whether I managed to sleep: