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prof.dr.ir. A. Pras (Aiko)

Professor in Internet Security

About Me

Aiko Pras is full professor in the area of Network Operations and Management with a focus on Internet Security at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He is member of the Design and Analysis of Communication Systems Group (DACS). In 1995 he received a Ph.D. degree from the same university for his thesis titled "Network Management Architectures" and in 2013 he was appointed as full professor. In 2016 he has been honoured with the IFIP/IEEE “Salah Aidarous Memorial Award” for providing unremitting service and dedication to the IT and Telecommunications Network Operations and Management community.

Aiko is interested in questions like Digital Independence and Internet security, with a research focus on DDoS attacks and DNS security. His approach is usually based on measurements.

He is research coordinator of the EU Concordia project, which is one of the three Cybersecurity Competence Networks within Europe. He is "Beirat" of the  CODE Cybersecurity research institute in München, member of the SURF Scientific Technical Council (WTR) and board member of the Dutch chapter of the Internet Society (isoc.nl). He has chaired the IFIP Technical Committee on "Communications Systems" (IFIP-TC6, 2013-2017), as well as the EU Future Internet cluster (2012-2014). He has been coordinator of the European Network of Excellence on "Management of the Future Internet" (FLAMINGO, 2012-2017). 

He has participated in many European and Dutch research projects, as member, evaluator and as reviewer. He has contributed to research and standardization activities as a founding member of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Network Management Research Group (NMRG) and as RFC author. He has been editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine series on "Network & Service Management", associate editor of the International Journal of Network Management (IJNM), and Editorial Advisory Board member for the Journal of Network and Systems Management (JNSM). He is Steering Committee member of the IFIP/IEEE NOMS and IM Symposia (NISC), CNSM, IFIP Networking as well as TMA.

 

Current PhD students

He is currently supervisor of the following Ph.D. students (see the page on Research for a list of past students)

  • Morteza Karimzadeh:  Mobility Management in the Future Mobile networks. 
    Start: 1/03/2013
  • Jessica Steinberger: Distributed DDoS Defense - A collaborative Approach at Internet Scale. 
    Start: 13/01/2014 (Joint with University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt)
  • Luuk Hendriks: Security of IPv6. 
    Start: 01/04/2014 
  • Christian Dietz: Early Botnet Detection. 
    Start: 01/07/2014 (Joint PhD with the Universität der Bundeswehr München)
  • Mathijs Jonker: DDoS Mitigation. 
    Start: 01/10/2014
  • Wouter de Vries: Using Anycast to mitigate DDoS attacks. 
    Start: 01/07/2015
  • Moritz Muller: 
    Start: 01/04/2017 (External from SIDN)
  • Olivier van der Toorn: Threat Identification Using Active DNS Measurements
    Start: 15/09/2017
  • Nils Rodday: 
    Start: 01/11/2017 (Joint PhD with the Universität der Bundeswehr München)

Expertise

Engineering & Materials Science
Denial-Of-Service Attack
Internet
Intrusion Detection
Network Management
Routers
Servers
Websites
Business & Economics
Attack

Research

Aiko Pras' research focuses on the detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks, DNS security and, more general, Internet security. Topics that his Ph.D. students are working on include amongst others booters, IPv6 security, anycast techniques as well as DNS data analyses (for details, see below).  The approach taken is often measurement-based, including flow (IPFIX) measurement. My earlier research focussed on network management technologies.

Publications

Recent
Dietz, C., Antzek, M., Dreo, G. , Sperotto, A. , & Pras, A. (2022). DMEF: Dynamic Malware Evaluation Framework. In P. Varga, L. Z. Granville, A. Galis, I. Godor, N. Limam, P. Chemouil, J. Francois, & M.-O. Pahl (Eds.), Proceedings of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2022: Network and Service Management in the Era of Cloudification, Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2022 (Proceedings of the IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2022: Network and Service Management in the Era of Cloudification, Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2022). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS54207.2022.9789908
Bertholdo, L. M., Ceron, J. M. , de Vries, W. B., Schmitt, R. D. O., Granville, L. Z. , van Rijswijk - Deij, R. M. , & Pras, A. (2021). TANGLED: A Cooperative Anycast Testbed. In T. Ahmed, O. Festor, Y. Ghamri-Doudane, J.-M. Kang, A. E. Schaeffer-Filho, A. Lahmadi, & E. Madeira (Eds.), 2021 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM) (pp. 766-771). Article 9463960 IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9463960
Müller, M. C. (2021). Making DNSSEC Future Proof. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036551816
Rodday, N. M., van Baaren, R. , Hendriks, L. , van Rijswijk - Deij, R. M. , Pras, A., & Dreo Rodosek, G. (2020). Evaluating RPKI ROV Identification Methodologies in Automatically Generated Mininet Topologies. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT '20) (pp. 530-531). ACM SIGCOMM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3386367.3431669
Jonker, M. , Sperotto, A. , & Pras, A. (2020). DDoS Mitigation: A Measurement-Based Approach. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020) (pp. 1-6). Article 9110320 (IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110320
Sperotto, A. , Steinberger, J., Baier, H. , & Pras, A. (2020). Distributed DDoS Defense: A collaborative Approach at Internet Scale. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020): Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2020 Article 9110300 (Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2020: Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110300
Ceron, J. M., Scholten, C. , Pras, A. , & Santanna, J. (2020). MikroTik Devices Landscape, Realistic Honeypots, and Automated Attack Classification. In Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2020: Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence Article 9110336 (2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110336
Dietz, C., Dreo, G. , Sperotto, A. , & Pras, A. (2020). Towards Adversarial Resilience in Proactive Detection of Botnet Domain Names by using MTD. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020): Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence Article 9110332 (IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110332
Hesselman, C., Grosso, P. , Holz, R., Kuipers, F., Xue, J. H. , Jonker, M., de Ruiter, J. , Sperotto, A. , van Rijswijk-Deij, R., Moura, G. C. M. , Pras, A., & de Laat, C. (2020). A Responsible Internet to Increase Trust in the Digital World. Journal of network and systems management, 28(4), 882-922. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-020-09564-7
Roddav, N., Streit, K., Rodosek, G. D. , & Pras, A. (2019). On the Usage of DSCP and ECN codepoints in internet backbone traffic traces for IPv4 and IPv6. In 2019 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications, ISNCC 2019 Article 8909187 IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISNCC.2019.8909187
de Vries, W. B. (2019). Improving Anycast with Measurements. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036548977
Jonker, M. (2019). DDoS Mitigation: A Measurement-Based Approach. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036548687
Other Contributions

Past PhD students

Other PhD students (external supervision and committee)

  • Nikolay Melnikov, Jacobs University Bremen (planned: 2013)
  • Robert Koch, UniBW, Munchen, 25-11-2011
  • Lien Deboosere, Ghent University, 14-9-2011
  • Eduardo Silva, University of Twente, 11-5-2011
  • Piotr Zuraniewski, University of Amstedrdam, 11-3-2011
  • Emmanuele Zambon, University of Twente, 20-1-2011
  • Christian Morariu, University of Zurich, 07-2010
  • Radu State, Universite Henri Poincare, Nancy, 7-12-2009 (Habilitation)
  • Bruno Van Den Bossche, Universiteit Gent, 11-9-2009
  • Assed Jehangir, University of Twente, 9-4-2009
  • Peter Racz, University of Zurich, 29-2-2008
  • Abdelkader Lahmadi, Universite Nancy, 11-12-2007

Google Scholar Link

Education

My teaching activities are focused on the  Cyber Security specialization of the Computer Science master programme, a cooperation of the Dutch 4TU Federation and the master programme of Internet Science and Technology (former Telematics master). 

Affiliated Study Programmes

Bachelor

Master

Media

Dutch (and also international) media consult Aiko Pras on a regular basis concerning internet security, DDos attacks and other related topics.

In the press

A selection of news items:

    News on utwente.nl

    Contact Details

    Visiting Address

    University of Twente
    Drienerlolaan 5
    7522 NB Enschede
    The Netherlands

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    Mailing Address

    University of Twente
    P.O. Box 217
    7500 AE Enschede
    The Netherlands

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