Welcome!

 

I have obtained my PhD in Computer Science from University of Leuven-KU Leuven Belgium. Before joining KU Leuven, I worked as a research intern in IMDEA Software under the supervision of Prof. Juan Caballero. I also worked as a research engineer in nexGIN RC with Prof. Muddassar Farooq. I did my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from CASE Pakistan. My research interest lies in Computer and Network Security, Data Mining, Cybercrime metering, Behavioral malware analysis, Digital Piracy, and VoIP security.

email: rafique.zubair@gmail.com

Selected Publications:
[Usenix Security 2016]  FalseClick: Analyzing Social Engineering Campaigns and Content via Trick Ads. M. Zubair Rafique, Wouter Joosen.
[NDSS 2016]  It’s Free for a Reason: Exploring the Ecosystem of Free Live Streaming Services. M. Zubair Rafique, Tom Van Goethem, Wouter Joosen, Christophe Huygens, Nick Nikiforakis. In Proceedings of the 2016 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, February, 2016. [Acceptance Rate: 15.4%]
Media Coverage: WashingtonTimes , BBC , Fortune , TechWeekEurope , BoxCryptor, Anonymous , Trusted Reviews , Advanced Television , After Dawn , Dream Team FC , Anonymous Headquarter , KU-Leuven
[IJIS 2015] The MALICIA dataset: Identification and Analysis of drive-by download Operations. Antonio Nappa, M. Zubair Rafique, Juan Caballero. International Journal of Information Security, pp: 1-19, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Feburary 2015. [ISI SCI-E]
[ACSAC 2014] Network Dialog Minimization and Network Dialog Diffing:
Two Novel Primitives for Network Security Applications. M. Zubair Rafique, Juan Caballero, Christophe Huygens, Wouter Joosen. 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2014), New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 2014. [Acceptance Rate: 19.9%]
[GECCO 2014]  Evolutionary Algorithms for Classification of Malware Families through Different Network Behaviors. M. Zubair Rafique, Ping Chen, Christophe Huygens, Wouter Joosen. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2014, Vancouver, Canada, 2014. [Acceptance Rate: 33%]
[WWW 2014]   Stranger Danger: Exploring the Ecosystem of Ad-based URL Shortening Services. Nick Nikiforakis, Federico Maggi, Gianluca Stringhini, M. Zubair Rafique, Wouter Joosen, Christopher Kruegel, Frank Piessens, Giovanni Vigna, Stefano Zanero. 23rd International World Wide Web Conference Seoul, Korea, 2014. [Acceptance Rate: 12.9%]
[NDSS 2014] CyberProbe: Towards Internet-Scale Active Detection of Malicious Servers. Antonio Nappa, Zhaoyan Xu, M. Zubair Rafique, Juan Caballero, and Guofei Gu. 2014 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium San Diego, CA, USA, 2014. [Acceptance Rate: 18.6%]
[RAID 2013] FIRMA: Malware Clustering and Network Signature Generation with Mixed Network Behaviors.   M. Zubair Rafique and Juan Caballero. 16th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses St. Lucia, 2013. [Acceptance Rate: 22.6%]

Full list…

Professional Activities:

  • TPC Member for Securware 2014, the eighth International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • TPC Member for PESARO 2014, the fourth International Conference on Performance, Safety and Robustness in Complex Systems and Applications, Niece France.
  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.
  • TPC Member for Securware 2013, the seventh International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies, Barcelona, Spain.
  • TPC Member for PESARO 2013, the third International Conference on Performance, Safety and Robustness in Complex Systems and Applications, Veince, Italy.
  • TPC Member for PESARO 2012, the second International Conference on Performance, Safety and Robustness in Complex Systems and Applications, Chamonix, France.
  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems.

Some Bug findings:

Reviews and Media Coverage: