prof.dr.ir. A. Pras (Aiko)

Aiko Pras is full professor in the area of Network Operations and Management with a focus on Internet Security at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He is member of the Design and Analysis of Communication Systems Group (DACS). In 1995 he received a Ph.D. degree from the same university for his thesis titled "Network Management Architectures" and in 2013 he was appointed as full professor. In 2016 he has been honoured with the IFIP/IEEE “Salah Aidarous Memorial Award” for providing unremitting service and dedication to the IT and Telecommunications Network Operations and Management community.

Aiko is interested in questions like Digital Independence and Internet security, with a research focus on DDoS attacks and DNS security. His approach is usually based on measurements.

He is research coordinator of the EU Concordia project, which is one of the three Cybersecurity Competence Networks within Europe. He is "Beirat" of the CODE Cybersecurity research institute in München, member of the SURF Scientific Technical Council (WTR) and board member of the Dutch chapter of the Internet Society (isoc.nl). He has chaired the IFIP Technical Committee on "Communications Systems" (IFIP-TC6, 2013-2017), as well as the EU Future Internet cluster (2012-2014). He has been coordinator of the European Network of Excellence on "Management of the Future Internet" (FLAMINGO, 2012-2017).

He has participated in many European and Dutch research projects, as member, evaluator and as reviewer. He has contributed to research and standardization activities as a founding member of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Network Management Research Group (NMRG) and as RFC author. He has been editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine series on "Network & Service Management", associate editor of the International Journal of Network Management (IJNM), and Editorial Advisory Board member for the Journal of Network and Systems Management (JNSM). He is Steering Committee member of the IFIP/IEEE NOMS and IM Symposia (NISC), CNSM, IFIP Networking as well as TMA.

Current PhD students

He is currently supervisor of the following Ph.D. students (see the page on Research for a list of past students)

Morteza Karimzadeh: Mobility Management in the Future Mobile networks.
Start: 1/03/2013
Jessica Steinberger: Distributed DDoS Defense - A collaborative Approach at Internet Scale.
Start: 13/01/2014 (Joint with University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt)
Luuk Hendriks: Security of IPv6.
Start: 01/04/2014
Christian Dietz: Early Botnet Detection.
Start: 01/07/2014 (Joint PhD with the Universität der Bundeswehr München)
Mathijs Jonker: DDoS Mitigation.
Start: 01/10/2014
Wouter de Vries: Using Anycast to mitigate DDoS attacks.
Start: 01/07/2015
Moritz Muller:
Start: 01/04/2017 (External from SIDN)
Olivier van der Toorn: Threat Identification Using Active DNS Measurements
Start: 15/09/2017
Nils Rodday:
Start: 01/11/2017 (Joint PhD with the Universität der Bundeswehr München)

Engineering & Materials Science

# Denial-Of-Service Attack
# Internet
# Intrusion Detection
# Network Management
# Routers
# Servers
# Websites

Business & Economics

# Attack

Aiko Pras' research focuses on the detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks, DNS security and, more general, Internet security. Topics that his Ph.D. students are working on include amongst others booters, IPv6 security, anycast techniques as well as DNS data analyses (for details, see below). The approach taken is often measurement-based, including flow (IPFIX) measurement. My earlier research focussed on network management technologies.

Bertholdo, L. M., Ceron, J. M. , de Vries, W. B., Schmitt, R. D. O., Granville, L. Z. , van Rijswijk - Deij, R. M. , & Pras, A. (2021). TANGLED: A Cooperative Anycast Testbed. In T. Ahmed, O. Festor, Y. Ghamri-Doudane, J-M. Kang, A. E. Schaeffer-Filho, A. Lahmadi, & E. Madeira (Eds.), 2021 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM) (pp. 766-771). [9463960] IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9463960

Müller, M. C. (2021). Making DNSSEC Future Proof. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036551816

Ceron, J. M., Scholten, C. , Pras, A. , Lastdrager, E. , & Santanna, J. (2020). Characterising attacks targeting low-cost routers: a MikroTik case study (Extended). ArXiv.org.

Bertholdo, L. M., Ceron, J. M. , Vries, W. B. D., Schmitt, R. D. O., Granville, L. Z. , Rijswijk-Deij, R. V. , & Pras, A. (2020). Tangled: A Cooperative Anycast Testbed. ArXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.12881

Rodday, N. M., van Baaren, R. , Hendriks, L. , van Rijswijk - Deij, R. M. , Pras, A., & Dreo Rodosek, G. (2020). Evaluating RPKI ROV Identification Methodologies in Automatically Generated Mininet Topologies. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT '20) (pp. 530-531). ACM SIGCOMM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3386367.3431669

Jonker, M. , Sperotto, A. , & Pras, A. (2020). DDoS Mitigation: A Measurement-Based Approach. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020) (pp. 1-6). [9110320] (IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110320

Sperotto, A. , Steinberger, J., Baier, H. , & Pras, A. (2020). Distributed DDoS Defense: A collaborative Approach at Internet Scale. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020): Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2020 [9110300] (Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2020: Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence, NOMS 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110300

Ceron, J. M., Scholten, C. , Pras, A. , & Santanna, J. (2020). MikroTik Devices Landscape, Realistic Honeypots, and Automated Attack Classification. In Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2020: Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence [9110336] (2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110336

Dietz, C., Dreo, G. , Sperotto, A. , & Pras, A. (2020). Towards Adversarial Resilience in Proactive Detection of Botnet Domain Names by using MTD. In 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2020): Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence [9110332] (IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS); Vol. 2020). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/NOMS47738.2020.9110332

Hesselman, C., Grosso, P. , Holz, R., Kuipers, F., Xue, J. H. , Jonker, M., de Ruiter, J. , Sperotto, A. , van Rijswijk-Deij, R., Moura, G. C. M. , Pras, A., & de Laat, C. (2020). A Responsible Internet to Increase Trust in the Digital World. Journal of network and systems management, 28(4), 882-922. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-020-09564-7

de Vries, W. B. , van Rijswijk-Deij, R. , de Boer, P-T. , & Pras, A. (2020). Passive Observations of a Large DNS Service: 2.5 Years in the Life of Google. IEEE transactions on network and service management, 17(1), 190-200. [8805156]. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2019.2936031

Roddav, N., Streit, K., Rodosek, G. D. , & Pras, A. (2019). On the Usage of DSCP and ECN codepoints in internet backbone traffic traces for IPv4 and IPv6. In 2019 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications, ISNCC 2019 [8909187] IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISNCC.2019.8909187

de Vries, W. B. (2019). Improving Anycast with Measurements. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036548977

Jonker, M. (2019). DDoS Mitigation: A Measurement-Based Approach. [PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT, University of Twente]. University of Twente. https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036548687

Ceron, J. M. , Chromik, J. J. , Cardoso de Santanna, J. J. , & Pras, A. (2019). Online discoverability and vulnerabilities of ICS/SCADA devices in the Netherlands. University of Twente.

Past PhD students

Jair Santanna: DDoS-as-a-Service - Investigating Booter Websites,
University of Twente, November 2017
Roland van Rijswijk-Deij: Improving DNS security: a measurement-based approach, University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036543293, June 2017
Rick Hofstede: Flow-based compromise detection,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036540667, June 2016
Ricardo Schmidt: Measurement-Based Link Dimensioning for the Future Internet,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036537988, November 2014
Rafael Barbosa: Anomaly detection in SCADA systems: a network based approach,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036536455, April 2014
Idilio Drago: Understanding and Monitoring Cloud Services,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036535779, December 2013
Giovane Moura: Internet Bad Neighborhoods,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036534604, March 2013
Anna Sperotto: Flow-Based Intrusion Detection,
University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036530897, October 2010
Tiago Fioreze: Self-Management of Hybrid Optical and Packet Switching Networks, University of Twente, DOI: 10.3990/1.9789036529662, February 2010
Remco van de Meent: Network Link Dimensioning - A Measurement and Modelling based approach, University of Twente, ISBN: 90-365-2305-2, March 2006
Robert Parhonyi: Micro Payments Gateways,
University of Twente, ISBN: 90-365-2239-0, October 2005

Other PhD students (external supervision and committee)

Nikolay Melnikov, Jacobs University Bremen (planned: 2013)
Robert Koch, UniBW, Munchen, 25-11-2011
Lien Deboosere, Ghent University, 14-9-2011
Eduardo Silva, University of Twente, 11-5-2011
Piotr Zuraniewski, University of Amstedrdam, 11-3-2011
Emmanuele Zambon, University of Twente, 20-1-2011
Christian Morariu, University of Zurich, 07-2010
Radu State, Universite Henri Poincare, Nancy, 7-12-2009 (Habilitation)
Bruno Van Den Bossche, Universiteit Gent, 11-9-2009
Assed Jehangir, University of Twente, 9-4-2009
Peter Racz, University of Zurich, 29-2-2008
Abdelkader Lahmadi, Universite Nancy, 11-12-2007

View my profile

My teaching activities are focused on the Cyber Security specialization of the Computer Science master programme, a cooperation of the Dutch 4TU Federation and the master programme of Internet Science and Technology (former Telematics master).

Bachelor

Master

Aiko Pras has many years of experience in European projects, as reviewer for projects like Alicante, Aragorn, AutoI, COMET, Efipsans, Envision, Scampi and MOME, as evaluator of FP6 projects, and as member within projects like FLAMINGO, SALUS, UNIVERSELF, EMANICS, Candle, Cassiopeia, PANGLOSS and SEDOS. He is also leader of the EU Future Internet Cluster.