Dr Leonardo Aniello

Chair of Post graduate Research and Internship (sub-group of EREC Committee)
ECS PGR Senior Admissions Tutor
AI & Security champion of the GCHQ/EPSRC Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE) Southampton
member of the management group of the ECS Centre for Internet of Things and Pervasive Systems (C-IoT)

Dr Leonardo Aniello is an Associate Professor in Cyber Security in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. He is also

member of the GCHQ/EPSRC Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) Southampton
AI & Security champion of the GCHQ/EPSRC Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE) Southampton
member of the management group of the ECS Centre for Internet of Things and Pervasive Systems (C-IoT)

Dr Aniello obtained a Ph.D. in Engineering in Computer Science in 2014 from "La Sapienza" University of Rome, with a thesis about techniques for efficient processing Big Data in large-scale collaborative environments. His research is currently focused on distributed systems and cyber security, including adaptive resource allocation strategies, automatic scaling of distributed systems, blockchain-based systems and IoT security. He is author of more than 30 papers (h-index 16, 1759 citations, source Google Scholar), published on international conferences, journals, and books.

He started working on portscan detection and collaborative distributed computations aimed at early detection of cyber threats (106 citations in total), then focused on the distributed system aspect of computations by investigating novel techniques to enhance performance in stream and batch processing (310 citations) and to integrate elastic proactive scalability in distributed systems (47 citations). He later moved to researching on machine learning for malware analysis (158 citations) and on blockchain-based systems (351 citations).

Dr Aniello investigated the integration of blockchain technology to improve IoT security within the context of peer-to-peer energy trading. This research was carried out as part of the EPSRC project Blockchain-empowered Infrastructure for IoT (BlockIT, £195K), where he worked as Co-I. He also investigated the opportunities and challenges of using blockchain to establish and manage federations of Cloud services and resources, as part of the H2020 EU project SecUre iNFormatIon SHaring in federated heterogeneous private clouds (SUNFISH, €4.5M).

Dr Aniello was also involved as Co-I in the Cyber Predictive Intelligence for Asset-based Analytics (CyPrIAAn, £96K) project funded by the UK Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) as part of Phase 1 of the Predictive Cyber Analytics competition. Furthermore, he is currently acting as PI for UoS in the Operational CyberspaCe Attack Modelling – Real-Time (OCCAM-RT, £180K) project, in partnership with Bristol-based company Riskaware. OCCAM-RT is funded as part of Phase 2 of the same competition. Within the OCCAM-RT project, Dr Aniello is overseeing two PDRAs. He is also supervising 9 PGR students (3 as primary supervisor and 6 as secondary). Furthermore, Dr Aniello oversaw two undergraduate students for their summer internship: one in 2018, funded by ECS and focused on generating a dataset for cyber-attacks against IoT networks; the other in 2020, funded by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), around the topic of IoT fingerprinting using machine learning techniques.

Publications

2021

Yilmaz, Yildiran, Aniello, Leonardo and Halak, Basel (2021) ASSURE: A hardware-baSed SecUrity pRotocol for resourcE-constrained IoT systems. Journal of Hardware and Systems Security, 5, 1-18. (doi:10.1007/s41635-020-00102-0).
Yilmaz, Yildiran, Aniello, Leonardo and Halak, Basel (2021) ASSURE: A hardware-based security protocol for internet of things devices. In, Halak, Bael (ed.) Authentication of Embedded Devices: Technologies, Protocols and Emerging Applications. 1 ed. Springer International Publishing, pp. 55-87. (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60769-2).
Aniello, Leonardo, Halak, Basel, Chai, Peter, Dhall, Riddhi, Mihalea, Mircea and Wilczynski, Adrian (2021) Securing Hardware Supply Chain Using PUF. In, Halak, Basel (ed.) Authentication of Embedded Devices: Technologies, Protocols and Emerging Applications. Springer.
Dghaym, Dana, Hoang, Thai Son, Butler, Michael, Hu, Runshan, Aniello, Leonardo and Sassone, Vladimiro (2021) Verifying System-level Security of a Smart Ballot Box. In ABZ 2021 – 8th International Conference on Rigorous State Based Methods: ABZ 2021. Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 16 pp . (In Press)

2020

O'Sullivan, Michael, Aniello, Leonardo and Sassone, Vladimiro (2020) A methodology to select topology generators for ad hoc mesh network simulations. Journal of Communications, 15 (10). (doi:10.12720/jcm.15.10.741-746).
Massarelli, Luca, Aniello, Leonardo, Ciccotelli, Claudio, Querzoni, Leonardo, Ucci, Daniele and Baldoni, Roberto (2020) AndroDFA: android malware classification based on resource consumption. Information (Switzerland), 11 (6), [326]. (doi:10.3390/INFO11060326).
Aniello, Leonardo, Halak, Basel, Chai, Peter, Dhall, Riddhi, Mihalea, Mircea and Wilczynski, Adrian (2020) Anti-BlUFf: towards counterfeit mitigation in IC supply chains using Blockchain and PUF. International Journal of Information Security, 445–460. (doi:10.1007/s10207-020-00513-8).
Grigorescu, Sorin, Cocias, Tiberiu, Trasnea, Bogdan, Margheri, Andrea, Lombardi, Federico and Aniello, Leonardo (2020) Cloud2Edge elastic AI framework for prototyping and deployment of AI inference engines in autonomous vehicles. Sensors (Switzerland), 20 (19), 1-21, [5450]. (doi:10.3390/s20195450).
Pitolli, Gregorio, Laurenza, Giuseppe, Aniello, Leonardo, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2020) MalFamAware: automatic family identification and malware classification through online clustering. International Journal of Information Security, 371–386. (doi:10.1007/s10207-020-00509-4).

2019

Lombardi, Federico, Muti, Andrea, Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Bonomi, Silvia and Querzoni, Leonardo (2019) PASCAL: An architecture for proactive auto-scaling of distributed services. Future Generation Computer Systems, 98, 342-361. (doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.03.003).
Ucci, Daniele, Aniello, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2019) Survey of machine learning techniques for malware analysis. Computers and Security, 81, 123-147. (doi:10.1016/j.cose.2018.11.001).
Fadhel, Nawfal, Lombardi, Federico, Aniello, Leonardo, Margheri, Andrea and Sassone, Vladimiro (2019) Towards a semantic modelling for threat analysis of IoT applications: a case study on transactive energy. In IET Living in the Internet of Things 2019. Institute of Engineering and Technology, IET..

2018

Lombardi, Federico, Aniello, Leonardo, De Angelis, Stefano, Margheri, Andrea and Sassone, Vladimiro (2018) A blockchain-based infrastructure for reliable and cost-effective IoT-aided smart grids. Living in the Internet of Things Conference: Cybersecurity of the IoT - A PETRAS, IoTUK & IET Event, Savoy Place, London, United Kingdom. 27 - 28 Mar 2018. 6 pp .
Lombardi, Federico, Aniello, Leonardo, Bonomi, Silvia and Querzoni, Leonardo (2018) Elastic symbiotic scaling of operators and resources in stream processing systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 29 (3), 572-585. (doi:10.1109/TPDS.2017.2762683).
De Angelis, Stefano, Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Lombardi, Federico, Margheri, Andrea and Sassone, Vladimiro (2018) PBFT vs proof-of-authority: applying the CAP theorem to permissioned blockchain. Italian Conference on Cyber Security, Milan, Italy. 11 pp .
Elingiusti, Michele, Aniello, Leonardo, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2018) PDF malware detection: a survey and taxonomy of current techniques. In, Cyber Threat Intelligence. (HASH(0xd20c060))

2017

Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Gaetani, Edoardo, Lombardi, Federico, Margheri, Andrea and Sassone, Vladimiro (2017) A prototype evaluation of a tamper-resistant high performance blockchain-based transaction log for a distributed database. In 2017 13th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC). IEEE. 4 pp . (doi:10.1109/EDCC.2017.31).
Massarelli, Luca, Aniello, Leonardo, Ciccotelli, Claudio, Querzoni, Leonardo, Ucci, Daniele and Baldoni, Roberto (2017) Android malware family classification based on resource consumption over time. In 2017 12th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE). vol. 1, pp. 31-38 . (doi:10.1109/MALWARE.2017.8323954).
Gaetani, Edoardo, Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Lombardi, Federico, Margheri, Andrea and Sassone, Vladimiro (2017) Blockchain-based database to ensure data integrity in cloud computing environments. Italian Conference on Cybersecurity, , Venice, Italy. 17 - 20 Jan 2017. 10 pp .
Pitolli, Gregorio, Aniello, Leonardo, Laurenza, Giuseppe, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2017) Malware family identification with BIRCH clustering. In, 2017 International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology (ICCST).
Laurenza, Giuseppe, Aniello, Leonardo, Lazzeretti, Riccardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2017) Malware triage based on static features and public APT reports. In International Conference on Cyber Security Cryptography and Machine Learning.
Ucci, Daniele, Aniello, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2017) Share a pie?: Privacy-preserving knowledge base export through count-min sketches. In Seventh ACM on Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY).
Angelini, Marco, Aniello, Leonardo, Lenti, Simone, Santucci, Giuseppe and Ucci, Daniele (2017) The goods, the bads and the uglies: supporting decisions in malware detection through visual analytics. In 2017 IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec).

2016

Lombardi, Federico, Baldoni, Roberto and Aniello, Leonardo (2016) A blockchain-based solution for enabling log-based resolution of disputes in multi-party transactions. Ciancarini, P., Litvinov, S., Messina, A., Sillitti, A. and Succi, G. (eds.) In Proceedings of 5th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications. SEDA 2016. vol. 717, Springer. pp. 53-58 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70578-1_6).
Laurenza, Giuseppe, Ucci, Daniele, Aniello, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2016) An architecture for semi-automatic collaborative malware analysis for CIs. In International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W).
Aniello, Leonardo, Ciccotelli, Claudio, Cinque, Marcello, Frattini, Flavio, Querzoni, Leonardo and Russo, Stefano (2016) Automatic invariant selection for online anomaly detection. In Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
Shehu, Zigrid, Ciccotelli, Claudio, Ucci, Daniele, Aniello, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2016) Towards the usage of invariant-based app behavioral fingerprinting for the detection of obfuscated versions of known malware. In 2016 10th International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Security and Technologies (NGMAST).

2015

Aniello, Leonardo, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2015) High frequency batch-oriented computations over large sliding time windows. Future Generation Computer Systems, 43-44, 1-11. (doi:10.1016/j.future.2014.09.008).
Ciccotelli, Claudio, Aniello, Leonardo, Lombardi, Federico, Montanari, Luca, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2015) Nirvana: A non-intrusive black-box monitoring framework for rack-level fault detection. In 2015 IEEE 21st Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC). IEEE.. (doi:10.1109/PRDC.2015.22).

2014

Aniello, Leonardo, Bonomi, Silvia, Lombardi, Federico, Zelli, Alessandro and Baldoni, Roberto (2014) An architecture for automatic scaling of replicated services. In Network Systems NETYS 2014. Springer. 122 pp . (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09581-3_9).
Lodi, Giorgia, Aniello, Leonardo, Di Luna, Giuseppe A. and Baldoni, Roberto (2014) An event-based platform for collaborative threats detection and monitoring. Information Systems, 39, 175-195. (doi:10.1016/j.is.2013.07.005).
Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Ciccotelli, Claudio, Di Luna, Giuseppe Antonio, Frontali, Francesco and Querzoni, Leonardo (2014) The overlay scan attack: inferring topologies of distributed pub/sub systems through broker saturation. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on Distributed Event-Based Systems.
Heinze, Thomas, Aniello, Leonardo, Querzoni, Leonardo and Jerzak, Zbigniew (2014) Tutorial: cloud-based data stream processing. In DEBS 14 : Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on Distributed Event-based Systems. 8 pp . (In Press)

2013

Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto and Querzoni, Leonardo (2013) Adaptive online scheduling in storm. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM international conference on Distributed event-based systems.
Aniello, Leonardo, Bonomi, Silvia, Breno, Marta and Baldoni, Roberto (2013) Assessing data availability of Cassandra in the presence of non-accurate membership. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Dependability Issues in Cloud Computing.
Aniello, Leonardo, Querzoni, Leonardo and Baldoni, Roberto (2013) Input data organization for batch processing in time window based computations. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing.

2012

Aniello, Leonardo, Di Luna, Giuseppe Antonio, Lodi, Giorgia and Baldoni, Roberto (2012) Collaborative inter-domain stealthy port scan detection using esper complex event processing. In, Collaborative Financial Infrastructure Protection: Tools, Abstractions, and Middleware.
Marchetti, Mirco, Colajanni, Michele, Messori, Michele, Aniello, Leonardo and Vigfusson, Ymir (2012) Cyber attacks on financial critical infrastructures. In, Collaborative Financial Infrastructure Protection: Tools, Abstractions, and Middleware.
Aniello, Leonardo, Baldoni, Roberto, Chockler, Gregory, Laventman, Gennady, Lodi, Giorgia and Vigfusson, Ymir (2012) Distributed attack detection using agilis. In, Collaborative Financial Infrastructure Protection: Tools, Abstractions, and Middleware.

2011

Aniello, Leonardo, Di Luna, Giuseppe Antonio, Lodi, Giorgia and Baldoni, Roberto (2011) A collaborative event processing system for protection of critical infrastructures from cyber attacks. Flammini, Francesco, Bologna, Sandro and Vittorini, Valeria (eds.) In Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. vol. 6894, pp. 310-323 .
Aniello, Leonardo, Lodi, Giorgia and Baldoni, Roberto (2011) Inter-domain stealthy port scan detection through complex event processing. In Proceedings of the 13th European Workshop on Dependable Computing. The Association for Computing Machinery..

Dr Leonardo Aniello

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