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Dr Ilir Gashi

Head of Computer Science

School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science

Contact details

Address

Dr Ilir Gashi A401A, College Building
City, University of London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

About

Overview

Ilir holds PhD (2007) and BEng (Honours) (2003) degrees in Software Reliability and Computing respectively from City, University of London. He joined the Centre for Software Reliability (CSR) in July 2003, first as a Research Assistant and then as a PhD student. He was appointed a Research Fellow in January 2009, Lecturer in November 2012, Senior Lecturer in April 2014, and Reader in October 2019.

Since July 2019, he is serving as the Head of Department of Computer Science. Prior to this he has served as Deputy Head of department (2018/19), Director of Undergraduate programmes (2017/18), and the Course Director for the MSc in Management of Information Security and Risk (2012-2018).

He served as Principal Investigator in two projects which investigated the potential benefits of diversity and defence in depth for security: the UK EPSRC-funded D3S project (2015-2018); and the EU H2020-funded DiSIEM project (Diversity Enhancements for SIEMs) (2016-2019).

He has worked previously in the DOTS and DIRC projects, a research project sponsored by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) on technological trends of secure system evolution as well as the EU Framework Programme 6 (FP 6) project ReSIST and EU FP 7 project AMBER. He was the CSR lead on the ReSIST activity FOREVER. He was also a co-investigator in the SESAMO project.

He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), and a member of IEEE, ACM and BCS.

With colleagues Vladimir Stankovic and Peter Popov, Ilir has setup a spin-off company called ResilSoft Ltd, which aims to commercialise research on diverse databases which formed part of Ilir's and Vladimir’s PhD theses, which were supervised by Peter.

Qualifications

  1. PhD Software Reliability, City, University of London, United Kingdom, Jan 2007
  2. BEng Computing, City, University of London, United Kingdom, 2003

Employment

  1. Reader, City, University of London, Oct 2019 – present
  2. Senior Lecturer, City, University of London, Apr 2014 – Sep 2019
  3. Lecturer, City, University of London, Nov 2012 – Apr 2014
  4. Research Fellow, City, University of London, Jan 2009 – Nov 2012
  5. Research Associate, City, University of London, Sep 2005 – Dec 2008
  6. Teaching Assistant, City, University of London, Oct 2004 – Jun 2007
  7. Research Assistant, City, University of London, Jul 2003 – Oct 2004

Memberships of professional organisations

  1. Member, IEEE, Dec 2013 – present
  2. CISSP, Sep 2013 – present
  3. Member, ACM
  4. Associate Fellow, HIgher Education Academy
  5. Member, British Computer Society (BCS)

Teaching

Educational Leadership

Current:
Head of Department of Computer Science (2019-present)

Previous:
Deputy Head of Department of Computer Science (2018-2019)
Head of Employability and NSS (National Student Survey) coordination (2018-2019)
Director of Undergraduate programmes (2017-2018)
Course Director for MSc in Management of Information Security and Risk (MISR) (2012-2018)
Director of the Applied Postgraduate Stream (2012-2016)

Undergraduate modules taught

Current:
IN2018 Team Project
IN2030 Work Based Project

Previous:
IN1011 Operating Systems (2018-2019)
IN3012 IT Security (2012-2018)
IN2018 Team Project (2007-2011)
IN2016 Software Measurements (2008-2010)

Postgraduate modules taught

Previous:
INM416 Information Security Management (2012-2018)
INM440 Information Security Management (2014-2018)
INM330 Software Systems Design (2014)

Research

Research

Ilir's research area is Software and Systems Engineering. His research focus is on quantitative assessment of the dependability and security of software-based systems. This focus has led him to research methods for assessing fault-tolerant and intrusion-tolerant systems that make use of “design diversity” – using more the one diverse protection system or end system to increase the overall system dependability and security. Other terms used in literature for “design diversity” are “layered defence”, “defence in depth” and “defence in breadth”. He has been closely involved in most of the security research undertaken at CSR since 2005, co-authoring the papers and proposals that resulted from this research. The research on diversity has included numerous application areas:
- Operating Systems
- Database Systems,
- AntiVirus (AV) products,
- Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs),
- Static Analysis Tools (SATs),
- Botnet detectors and malicious web crawling detection;
- Biometric Fingerprint Authentication Systems

He served as PI on two research projects: EPSRC D3S (2015-2018) and H2020 DiSIEM (2016-2019).

In 2010-2011 he was involved in a security review of the specifications of the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) on behalf of the UK railway industry.

He was one of 17 UK researchers to be selected to attend two workshops on Aviation Security organised by the UK Home Office and the US Department for Homeland Security in August and December 2010, which aimed to 'develop an assortment of creative and original ideas to help identify what aviation security could and should be in the year 2027'.

In the summer of 2011 he spent two months on a research visit to the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). The visit was sponsored by NIST, and he researched open-ended vulnerability testing and assessment methods for electronic voting systems that could be used in US federal elections.

In the last 10 years he has served as a member of the Programme Committee (PC) for the IEEE ISSRE (where he co-chaired the PC in 2017), DSN, EDCC, PRDC and NCA conferences as well as Springer-Verlag SAFECOMP conference. In 2018, he guest-edited a special issue of the IEEE Transaction on Reliability. He has reviewed for various journals including IEEE TSE, TDSC and TR.

Projects

- D3S (2015-2018) (PI)
- DiSIEM (2016-2019) (PI)
- SESAMO (co-I)
- DOTS
- DIRC
- Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL)
- ReSIST
- AMBER
- FOREVER

Research students

Attila Brozik

Attendance: Apr 2021 – present, part-time

Thesis title: Explaining Behavioural Representations of Antivirus Detections

Role: 1st Supervisor

Amr Elkhawas

Attendance: Jul 2020 – present, part-time

Thesis title: Federated Machine Learning Applications in Malware Detection

Role: 2nd Supervisor

Pedro Marques

Attendance: Oct 2018 – present, full-time

Thesis title: Using design diversity and optimal adjudication for detecting malicious web scraping and malware samples

Role: 1st Supervisor

Ambrose Andongabo

Attendance: Oct 2016 – present, part-time

Thesis title: Deciphering trends and relationships in large scale public security data

Role: 1st Supervisor

Areej Algaith

Attendance: Oct 2013 – Dec 2018, full-time

Thesis title: Empirical Assessment of Diversity and Defence in Depth for Security

Role: 1st Supervisor

Further information: PhD awarded in March 2019;

Cher Devey

Attendance: Sep 2013 – Mar 2019

Thesis title: A framework for data breach incident response and stakeholder notification in the EU-UK

Role: 2nd Supervisor

Further information: PhD awarded in June 2019

Publications

Publications by category

Chapters (2)

  1. Algaith, A., Gashi, I., Sobesto, B., Cukier, M., Haxhijaha, S. and Bajrami, G. (2016). Comparing Detection Capabilities of AntiVirus Products: An Empirical Study with Different Versions of Products from the Same Vendors. IEEE.
  2. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T., Stankovic, V. and Strigini, L. (2003). On Designing Dependable Services with Diverse Off-the-Shelf SQL Servers. In Lemos, R.D., Gacek, C. and Romanovsky, A.B. (Eds.), Architecting Dependable Systems II - [the book is a result of the ICSE 2003 Workshop on Software Architectures for Dependable Systems] (pp. 191–214). Springer. ISBN 3-540-23168-4.

Conference papers and proceedings (37)

  1. Medeiros, I., Gashi, I., Kamp, M. and Ferreira, P. (2021). Third International Workshop on Data-Centric Dependability and Security (DCDS). 2021 51st Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W) 21-24 June.
  2. Medeiros, I., Gashi, I., Kamp, M. and Ferreira, P. (2020). Second International Workshop on Data-Centric Dependability and Security (DCDS). 2020 50th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W) 29 Jun 2020 – 2 Jul 2020.
  3. Alves, F., Andongabo, A., Gashi, I., Ferreira, P.M. and Bessani, A. (2020). Follow the Blue Bird: A Study on Threat Data Published on Twitter.
  4. (2019). Message from the DCDS 2019 Organizers. 2019 49th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W) 24-27 June.
  5. Marques, P., Dabbabi, Z., Mironescu, M.-.M., Thonnard, O., Bessani, A., Buontempo, F. … Gashi, I. (2018). Detecting Malicious Web Scraping Activity: A Study with Diverse Detectors. 2018 IEEE 23rd Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC) 4-7 December.
  6. Algaith, A., Nunes, P., Jose, F., Gashi, I. and Vieira, M. (2018). Finding SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities with Diverse Static Analysis Tools. 2018 14th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) 10-14 September.
  7. Marques, P., Dabbabi, Z., Mironescu, M.-.M., Thonnard, O., Buontempo, F., Gashi, I. … Bessani, A. (2018). Using Diverse Detectors for Detecting Malicious Web Scraping Activity. 2018 48th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-W) 25-28 June.
  8. Asad, H. and Gashi, I. (2018). Diversity in Open Source Intrusion Detection Systems.
  9. Shahegh, P., Dietz, T., Cukier, M., Algaith, A., Brozik, A. and Gashi, I. (2017). AntiVirus and Malware Analysis Tool. 16th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications 30 Oct 2017 – 1 Nov 2017, Boston, USA.
  10. Algaith, A., Elia, I.A., Gashi, I. and Vieira, M. (2017). Diversity with Intrusion Detection Systems: An Empirical Study. The 16th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications 30 Oct 2017 – 1 Nov 2017, Boston, USA.
  11. Shahegh, P., Dietz, T., Cukier, M., Algaith, A., Brozik, A. and Gashi, I. (2017). AVAMAT: AntiVirus and malware analysis tool. 2017 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA) 30 Oct 2017 – 1 Nov 2017.
  12. (2017). Message from the Program Co-Chairs. 2017 IEEE 28th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 23-26 October.
  13. Andongabo, A. and Gashi, I. (2017). vepRisk - A Web Based Analysis Tool for Public Security Data. 2017 13th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) 4-8 September.
  14. Movahedi, Y., Cukier, M., Andongabo, A. and Gashi, I. (2017). Cluster-Based Vulnerability Assessment Applied to Operating Systems. 2017 13th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) 4-8 September.
  15. Gashi, I., Povyakalo, A. and Strigini, L. (2016). Diversity, Safety and Security in Embedded Systems: Modelling Adversary Effort and Supply Chain Risks. 2016 12th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) 5-9 September.
  16. Busnel, Y. and Gashi, I. (2016). EDCC 2015 - Fast Abstracts & Student Forum Proceedings.
  17. Turkay, C., Mason, S., Gashi, I. and Cukic, B. (2014). Supporting Decision-Making for Biometric System Deployment through Visual Analysis. 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW) 3-6 November.
  18. Mason, S., Gashi, I., Lugini, L., Marasco, E. and Cukic, B. (2014). Interoperability between Fingerprint Biometric Systems: An Empirical Study. 2014 44th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 23-26 June.
  19. Gashi, I., Povyakalo, A., Strigini, L., Matschnig, M., Hinterstoisser, T. and Fischer, B. (2014). Diversity for Safety and Security in Embedded Systems. IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks 23-26 June, Atlanta, GA, USA.
  20. Mason, S., Gashi, I., Lugini, L., Marasco, E. and Cukic, B. (2014). Interoperability between fingerprint biometric systems: An epirical sudy.
  21. Gashi, I., Sobesto, B., Mason, S., Stankovic, V. and Cukier, M. (2013). A Study of the Relationship Between Antivirus Regressions and Label Changes. IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering 4-7 November, Pasadena, CA, US.
  22. Cukier, M., Gashi, I., Sobesto, B. and Stankovic, V. (2013). Does Malware Detection Improve With Diverse AntiVirus Products? An Empirical Study. 32nd International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP) 24-27 September, Toulouse, France.
  23. Lugini, L., Marasco, E., Cukic, B. and Gashi, I. (2013). Interoperability in Fingerprint Recognition: A Large-Scale Empirical Study. 43rd Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2013) 24-27 June, Budapest, Hungary.
  24. Gashi, I. (2012). How secure is ERTMS? Workshop on Dependable and Secure Computing for Large-scale Complex Critical Infrastructures (DESEC4LCCI) 25 September, Herrenkrug, Germany.
  25. Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Cukier, M. and Sobesto, B. (2012). Diversity with AntiVirus Products: Additional Empirical Studies. 42nd IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2012 25-28 June, Boston, USA.
  26. Stroud, R. and Gashi, I. (2012). Methodology for a security audit of ERTMS. 42nd IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2012 25-28 June, Boston, USA.
  27. Bishop, P., Bloomfield, R., Gashi, I. and Stankovic, V. (2012). Diverse protection systems for improving
    security: a study with AntiVirus engines.
  28. Garcia, M., Bessani, A., Gashi, I., Neves, N., Obelheiro, R. and IEEE, (2011). OS Diversity for Intrusion Tolerance: Myth or Reality?
  29. Bishop, P., Bloomfield, R., Gashi, I., Stankovic, V. and IEEE, (2011). Diversity for Security: a Study with Off-The-Shelf AntiVirus Engines.
  30. Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Leita, C., Thonnard, O. and IEEE, (2009). An Experimental Study of Diversity with Off-The-Shelf AntiVirus Engines.
  31. Stankovic, V., Bessani, A., Daidone, A., Gashi, I., Obelheiro, R. and Sousa, P. (2009). Enhancing Fault / Intrusion Tolerance through Design and Configuration Diversity. 3rd Workshop on Recent Advances on Intrusion-Tolerant Systems (WRAITS 2009) Estoril, Lisbon, Portugal.
  32. Bloomfield, R.E., Gashi, I., Povyakalo, A. and Stankovic, V. (2008). Comparison of Empirical Data from Two Honeynets and a Distributed Honeypot Network.
  33. Bessani, A.N., Reiser, H.P., Sousa, P., Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Distler, T. … Obelheiro, R.R. (2008). FOREVER: Fault/intrusiOn REmoVal through Evolution & Recovery.
  34. Gashi, I. and Popov, P. (2007). Uncertainty explicit assessment of off-the-shelf software: Selection of an optimal diverse pair.
  35. Bishop, P., Gashi, I., Littlewood, B. and Wright, D. (2007). Reliability modeling of a 1-out-of-2 system: Research with diverse Off-the-shelf SQL database servers.
  36. Gashi, I. and Popov, P.T. (2006). Rephrasing Rules for Off-The-Shelf SQL Database Servers.
  37. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T. and Strigini, L. (2004). Fault Diversity among Off-The-Shelf SQL Database Servers.

Internet publications (3)

  1. (2013). Message from fast abstract co-chairs. IEEE.
  2. Gashi, I. and Kreidl, O.P. (2012). 6th workshop on recent advances in intrusion tolerance and reSilience (WRAITS 2012).
  3. Vieira, M. and Gashi, I. (2012). EDCC 2012 - Fast Abstracts & Student Forum Proceedings.

Journal articles (8)

  1. Marques, P., Rhode, M. and Gashi, I. (2021). Waste not: Using diverse neural networks from hyperparameter search for improved malware detection. Computers & Security, 108, pp. 102339–102339. doi:10.1016/j.cose.2021.102339.
  2. Movahedi, Y., Cukier, M. and Gashi, I. (2021). Predicting the Discovery Pattern of Publically Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing pp. 1–1. doi:10.1109/tdsc.2020.3014872.
  3. Movahedi, Y., Cukier, M. and Gashi, I. (2019). Vulnerability prediction capability: A comparison between vulnerability discovery models and neural network models. Computers & Security, 87, pp. 101596–101596. doi:10.1016/j.cose.2019.101596.
  4. Movahedi, Y., Cukier, M., Andongabo, A. and Gashi, I. (2019). Cluster-based vulnerability assessment of operating systems and web browsers. Computing, 101(2), pp. 139–160. doi:10.1007/s00607-018-0663-0.
  5. Garcia, M., Bessani, A., Gashi, I., Neves, N. and Obelheiro, R. (2013). Analysis of operating system diversity for intrusion tolerance. Software - Practice and Experience.
  6. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T. and Stankovic, V. (2009). Uncertainty explicit assessment of off-the-shelf software: A Bayesian approach. , 51, pp. 497–511. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2008.06.003.

    [publisher’s website]

  7. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T. and Strigini, L. (2007). Fault Tolerance via Diversity for Off-the-Shelf Products: A Study with SQL Database Servers. , 4, pp. 280–294. doi:10.1109/TDSC.2007.70208.

    [publisher’s website]

  8. Asad, H. and Gashi, I. Dynamical Analysis of Diversity in Rule-Based Open Source Network Intrusion Detection Systems. Empirical Software Engineering.

Report

  1. Gashi, I. and Bloomfield, R.E. (2008). Evaluating the resilience and security of boundaryless, evolving socio-technical Systems of Systems. City University London.

Professional activities

Collaborations (academic) (3)

  1. of Research on analysis of biometric fingerprint data project (2012 – present)
    Other partners: Bojan Cukic
  2. of Research on diverse AnitVirus detection capability analysis project (2011 – present)
    Other partners: Michel Cukier
  3. of Research on analysis of vulnerabilities from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) project (2008 – present)
    Other partners: Nuno Neves, Alysson Bessani, Miguel Garcia

Editorial activity

  1. I have served as Program Committees (co-) chair for the following conferences, workshops and streams of conferences:
    - 2017 IEEE ISSRE conference
    - 2013 IEEE ISSRE Fast Abstracts
    - 2012 6th Workshop on Recent Advances in Intrusion Tolerance and Resilience (WRAITS)
    - 2011 IEEE ISSRE Fast Abstracts
    - 2010 IEEE ISSRE Student papers

    I served as the co-Program Manager for the ISSRE 2013 conference

    I served on the PC of the following conferences:
    - IEEE ISSRE 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010
    - Safecomp 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
    - IEEE EDCC 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
    - IEEE DSN 2021, 2019, 2018, 2013, 2012, 2011
    - IEEE PRDC 2013, 2012
    - IEEE EWDC 2013
    - IEEE NCA 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010    , Service in program committes and editorial boards.

Keynote lectures/speeches (3)

  1. Diversity with AntiVirus Products: overview of research. Morgantown, WV, USA (2013). Invited seminar
  2. Vulnerability diversity with Operating Systems: an empirical study with data from NIST NVD. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK (2011). Invited seminar
  3. Security review of the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) specifications. DHS, Washington DC, USA (2011). Invited seminar