स सन्न्यासी च योगी च न निरग्निर्न चाक्रियः ॥
Dr. Ankur Chowdhary is a cybersecurity researcher. He received Ph.D. (2020) and M.S. (2015) with specialization in cybersecurity from Arizona State University (ASU). His research interests include Cloud Security, Software Defined Networks, and application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the field of cybersecurity. Ankur has co-authored over 30 research papers and one textbook in the field of cybersecurity. Ankur co-founded cybersecurity startup CyNET LLC (2017). Ankur has been quite active in cybersecurity education. Ankur was ASU’s National Cybersecurity Defense Competition (NCCDC) captain (2015-2018), and he is current team coach (2018-). He co-founded hacking club DevilSec in 2019 to teach offensive and defensive security to students at ASU.
March 2024
- Promoted to Staff Security Engineer, Appsec at 6sense Insights, Inc.
February 2024
- Presented my research “Unlocking Potential of ChatGPT in Pentesting” at Cactuscon, 2024, Mesa, AZ
September 2023
- My paper “Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-Based Autonomous Penetration Testing for Web Applications.” published in Sensors Journal [Link]
August 2023
- Presented my research work Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) based autonomous penetration testing for Web Applications at AppSec Village, DEFCON 31
June 2023
- Earned the certification Certified Red Team Expert (CRTE) from Altered Security.
May 2023
- Earned the certification Certified Red Team Professional (CRTP) from Altered Security.
April 2023
- Serving guest editor for MDPI Sensor Networks Journal “Intelligent Sensing Techniques for detection of attacks against Public Infrastructure”
- ASU stood third in WRCCDC 2022 regional round. Team was top in the defense category.
March 2023
- Our paper Unraveled – A Semi-Synthetic Dataset for Advanced Persistent Threats accepted at Computer Networks Journal, 2023
- Served as guest editor for MDPI journal special issue Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in detection of advanced cyber attacks [Link].
November 2022
- Accepted position Sr. Application Security Engineer at 6Sense Insights, Inc.
June 2022
- Intent-Driven Security Policy Management for Software-Defined Systems accepted at IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM), 2022 [Link]
May 2022
- SCVS: On AI and Edge Clouds Enabled Privacy-Preserved Smart-City Video Surveillance Services accepted at ACM Transactions on Internet of Things, 2022 [Link]
April 2022
- ASU stood third in WRCCDC 2022 regional round. Team was top in the defense category. [Media Coverage]
March 2022
- SmartDefense: A Distributed Deep Defense Against DDoS attacks with Edge Computing accepted at Computer Networks Journal, 2022 [Link]
- Earned the certification eLearning Web App Penetration Tester (eWPT).
Feb 2022
- ASU WRCCDC team qualified for regional round. The team stood second after Stanford in the qualifier round
Team ASU was second in WRCCDC qualifiers, we will compete in the regional with seven other teams.
Jan 2022
- Towards scalable graph-based security analysis for cloud networks, accepted at Computer Networks Journal, 2022 [Link]
- Coaching ASU WRCCDC team for season 2021-22
November 2021
- Training for CCDC 2021-22 team has started [Link].
September 2021
- Conducted Cloud Security Tools and Technologies Workshop with my Capstone teams.
August 2021
- Conducted Cybersecurity Tools and Technologies training for ASU students with DevilSec.
April 2021
- Object Oriented Policy Conflict Checking Framework in Cloud Networks (OOPC), accepted at “IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE TDSC)“
March 2021
- SDN-based Moving Target Defense using Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, accepted at “1st International Conference on Autonomous Intelligent Cyber-defense Agents (AICA 2021)“
- Conducting Cyber Defense Tools and Technology Workshop for Naval Academy Students, March 13-14, 2021
February 2021
- Our current Western Region Cybersecurity Defense Competition (WRCCDC) team that I mentored stood 3rd in Invitationals, team will compete in next round WRCCDC – Regional [Link]
- Can Artificial Intelligence detect Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) [Talk]
- CactusCon 2021 QnA Session [Link]
December 2020
- Can Artificial Intelligence detect Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) – I will tell you during my talk at CactusCon 2021.
- Autonomous Security Analysis and Penetration Testing, a reinforcement learning approach, to be presented at”The 16th International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN 2020)” [Paper] [Talk] [Presentation].
November 2020
- Accepted position of Sr. Cybersecurity Engineer at Lincoln Heritage Life Insurance Company
- Graduated with Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, from Arizona State University. Presented my dissertation defense titled “Software-defined Situation-aware Cloud Security”
October 2020
- Presented “IoT Security Tools, Techniques, and Procedures”, Guest Lecture, CSE468 Computer Network Security, Fall 2020 [PDF][Talk]
September 2020
- Research paper on AI-based pentesting accepted at “The 16th International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking (MSN 2020)“.
August 2020
- Presented “DAPT 2020 – Constructing a Benchmark Dataset for Advanced Persistent Threats” at MLHat, SigKDD, 2020 [Link]
- Presented “Autonomous Security Assessment and Penetration Testing (ASAP)” at DEFCON, Red Team Village, 2020 [Link]
July 2020
- Invited by popular podcast Security Weekly to talk about “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Cybersecurity” [Link]
- Fighting the COVID-19, the battle against yourself, an interesting perspective [Link]
- My research paper titled “Generating benchmark dataset for Advanced Persistent Threat” accepted at ACM SigKDD workshop MLHat 2020
- My talk proposal “Autonomous Security Assessment and Penetration Testing (ASAP)” accepted at DEFCON Red Team Village [News]
June 2020
- Flaws of facial recognition tech [LinkedIn]
- Bug Bounty Hunting Methodology [Talk]
- 269 GB of US Police and Fusion Center’s data leaked [HackerNews]
- List of good practical paper for attack/defense [ExploitDB]
May 2020
- A good list of Infosec discord channels [Link]
- An industry perspective on Threat Modeling [HackerNews]
- Malware that targets dedicated ATMs [News]
- Capstone group I mentored (August 2019 – May 2020) successfully completed their Capstone: Cybersecurity Defense Competition [Presentation]
April 2020 – Honors thesis students I mentored Eric Dejarnett and Connor Belanger defended their honor’s thesis on AI-based Autonomous Penetration Testing. [Thesis Defense]
March 2020 – COVID lock-down, moved research base to my home office.
Jan 2020 – Working as a Security Consultant for Bishop Fox