Usman Ali, Ph.D.

Experience

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  Water and Power Development Authority

  Jun 2015 - Aug 2015

  Summer Internship
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  Sharif College of Engineering & Technology, Lahore.

  Aug 2015 - Oct 2015

  Intern

  Project: Home Security System using GSMDuration: 2 MonthsTeam: 3 membersUnderstanding of requirements, designing of the system (programming, circuit designing, PCB designing), implementation of the system, testing, and debugging.

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  Sharif College of Engineering & Technology, Lahore.

  Sept 2016 - Jan 2017

  Teacher Assistant

  Teacher Assistant (Subject: Programming Fundamentals)- Teaching of Java Programming.- Managing and assisting undergraduate level students in programming lab tasks.

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  Information Technology University

  Aug 2017 - Jul 2018

  Graduate Fellow

  Embedded Computing Lab, ITU, Lahore* Research Assistant- Meltdown (Kernel memory reading) and Spectre (speculative execution exploit) attacks.- Computer Architecture Simulator - Gem5 - Simulation of x86/ARMv8 64-bit architecture. - Successful implemented Prime+Probe, Flush+Reload, and Flush+Flush on famous RSA and AES (Full Key and Half Key) cryptography algorithms. - Implementation of side-channel attacks on caches on Intel x86.* Teacher Assistant- Linear Circuit Analysis, Fall 2017. Show less

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  University of South Brittany

  Sept 2018 - Oct 2018

  Visiting Researcher

  Joined Lab-STICC, UBS in Lorient, France for 7 weeks on researcher mobility program jointly awarded to ECLab, ITU, Lahore, Pakistan and Lab-STICC, UBS, Lorient, France. Job includes:Development of a framework on gem5 simulator to test newly purposed cache architecture design against timing-based side-channel attacks on caches.This mobility is fully funded under Peridot.e-health project by Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan and Campus France, France.

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  Ebryx (Pvt.) Ltd (for FireEYE Inc.)

  Aug 2019 - Dec 2019

  Malware Researcher

  * Malware Researcher for FireEYE Inc.- Gathering information about state-of-the-art malware's in wild, analyzing and understanding networking aspects of malware. Identification of unique signatures and exfiltration targets. Focus on the type of malware's that targets IoT devices, and Android mobile devices.* Tools- Internet (malware research groups, social media, and news organizations).- WireShark (analysis of malicious traffic)- SNORT rules (for network Intrusion detection systems)- Python/Django (for development of portals with an objective to automation and optimization of routine tasks) Show less

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  University of Connecticut

  Jan 2020 - Dec 2023

  Graduate Research Assistant

  Area of Research (Privacy Aware GNNs/LLMs, Secure Architecture, and Side-Channel Attacks and mitigations)* Side-Channel Attacks and mitigations - Micro-architectural side-channel attacks on caches (prime+probe, flush+reload), transient units (spectre, meltdown), Network-on-Chip, Memory, PCI-express root-complex, ring-interconnects. - Machine Learning-based detection of attacks (Performance counters for detection of cache attacks) - Publications in CNS'19, HOST'21, HPEC'21, ICCD'22* Secure Architecture - Isolation-based (MIT MI6, IRONHIDE) or obfuscation-based (CEASER, STT) mitigations against microarchitectural side-channel attacks. - Hardware Root-of-Trust including Intel SGX, ARM TrustZone, AMD SEV, and NXP HRoT. - Publications in ISQED'21, SEED'22, ePrint 2023/251, TACO'23, JETC'23* Computer Architecture - Quark (Graphite) Multicore simulator - gem5 simulator, - OpenPiton (with SPARC T1 and RISCV Ariane Core). - MIPS, x86 ISA, and microarchitectures - Interconnection networks (Network-on-Chip) in many-core and multi-core processors. Show less

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  Axiado Corporation

  Jun 2023 - Aug 2023

  Machine Learning Intern (Architecture Team)

  * Data Processing/Generation with Prompt Engineering (ChatGPT/Open AI).* Binary function similarity (zero-day vulnerability detection) with Machine Learning (GNNs and LLMs). - Extensive literature review for binary code-based similarity in assembly code. - CVE-based vulnerability dataset collection and generation. - Training and inference of machine learning models.* Ransomware detection with Machine Learning* Hardware-based Side-Channel Attack Detection on edge devices (i.e., Raspberry PI) with Machine Learning* Prototyped Vulnerability management, Ransomware Intelligence, and Detection demos and presented them to Investors and board members to raise the next round of funding. Show less

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  Meta

  Jan 2024 - now

  ASIC Engineer, Architect