I have a Master of Science in Information Security and Assurance from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and a Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Science from KLS Gogte Insitute of Technology, Belgaum

During the course of my academics I had the great fortune of being advised by Dr. Damon McCoy. My interests lie in the intersection of Computer Security, Economics of Cyber crime and Machine Learning. I am also a part of the Center for Evidence-based Security Research (CESR)

Since January 2015, I have founded and run Informant Networks. A company that focuses on solving problems in Network Security particularly against insider theft.

I previously was a Security Researcher at FireEye where I mainly researched new threats and did reverse engineering to improve malware detection. Prior to that I worked at The International Computer Science Institute where I was working on the monetization of bitcoin mining malware and web search order hijacking

I love the world of FOSS and have been involved with FOSSTR. , FOSS Matters and Science Hack Day India 2016/2017. In my spare time I fiddle with things which are available here

If you are feeling extra generous, I have a wish list on Amazon that you can pick from

Research Work

• Priceless: The Role of Payments in Abuse-advertised Goods
  Damon McCoy, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Christian Kreibich, Geoffrey M. Voelker and Stefan Savage
  Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Raleigh, NC, October 2012.
  
• Botnets and Crypto Currency - Effects of Botnets on the Bitcoin Ecosystem
  Hitesh Dharmdasani, Masters Degree Thesis
  George Mason University, 2013
• Botcoin: Bitcoin-Mining by Botnets. Abstract | Poster
  Danny Yuxing Huang, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Sarah Meiklejohn, Kirill Levchenko, Alex C. Snoeren, Stefan Savage, Nicholas Weaver, Chris Grier, Damon McCoy.
  IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Poster Session. San Francisco, CA. May 2013.
• Botcoin: Monetizing Stolen Cycles
  Danny Yuxing Huang, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Sarah Meiklejohn, Vacha Dave, Kirill Levchenko, Alex C. Snoeren, Stefan Savage, Nicholas Weaver, Chris Grier, and Damon McCoy
  Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, February 2014.
  
• Dissecting Android KorBanker
  Hitesh Dharmdasani and Vinay Pidathala
  FireEye Blog.
  
• MisoSMS: New Android Malware Disguises Itself as a Settings App, Steals SMS Messages
  Vinay Pidathala, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Jinjian Zhai and Zheng Bu
  FireEye Blog.
  
• Android.HeHe: Malware Now Disconnects Phone Calls
  FireEye Blog.
  
• From Windows to Droids: An Insight in to Multi-vector Attack Mechanisms in RATs
  Hitesh Dharmdasani, Thoufique Haq, Vinay Pidathala and Nart Villeneuve
  FireEye Blog.
  
• To Catch a Ratter: Monitoring the Behavior of Amateur DarkComet RAT Operators in the Wild
  Brown Farinholt, Mohammad Rezaeirad, Paul Pearce, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Haikuo Yiny, Stevens Le Blond, Damon McCoy, Kirill Levchenko
  IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (Oakland), San Jose, CA, May 2017.
  
• Schrodinger's RAT: Profiling the Stakeholders in the Remote Access Trojan Ecosystem
  Mohammad Rezaeirad, Brown Farinholt, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Paul Pearce, Kirill Levchenko, and Damon McCoy
  USENIX Security, Baltimore, MD, August 2018.
  

Talks

• 101 - Bitcoin and Botnets
  A talk on bitcoin and the monetization of CPU cycles by Bots to make bitcoins for the Research Group at the Security Lab at GMU
• MisoSMS: Attacks on people in Korea with Judicial Keywords
  A talk at the Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO) 2014
  
• Introduction to Apache Spark
  PyBelgaum 2015, Belgaum
  
• What in the World is Big Data?
  A talk at the Computer Science Department at Maratha Mandal Engineering College, Belgaum
  
• Cyber Crime for SME's and the Common Man
  A talk at the Rotary Club of Belgaum Main, Masonic Hall, Belgaum
  
• Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin
  A talk on Crytocurrencies and Bitcoin at KLS Institute of Management Education and Research, Belgaum
  
• Detecting Phishing URLs using Decision Trees
  PyCon India 2015, Bangalore
  
• Introduction to HDFS
  Talk for Masters of Technology graduates in Computer Science at GIT Belgaum
  
• Blockchain and Bitcoin
  Belgaum chapter of TiE Hubli, Belgaum
  
• What is the Internet?
  A talk for begineers in computer networking, part of the Prerna Lecture series
  
• Learn Python [Workshop Material]
  A one day workshop on Python at Goa University, Part of the Python Express Initiative
  
• Information Security, Network Security and Cyber crime
  Two day workshop for faculty of Master of Computer Applications at Gogte College Belgaum
  
• Internet, Online Attacks and Vulnerabilities
  A talk at the Jain College of Engineering