Denis Donadel

Postdoc in Cybersecurity

University of Verona, Italy

whoami

Hi! I’m Denis! I’m a postdoc at the University of Verona, working on cybersecurity of cyber-physical systems. I got my PhD in Brain, Mind and Computer Science (BMCS) from the University of Padua in 2024, where I was part of the SPRITZ Security and Privacy Research Group under the supervision of Prof. Mauro Conti, with a thesis on vehicles security. During the 2021 Summer I was granted the New Generation Internet (NGI) Explorers grant to support a collaboration with the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), which I visited for some months in 2023.

Interests

Cyber-Physical Systems Security
Automotive Security
Electric Vehicle Security
Social Robots Security
Industrial Control Systems Security
AI Applications to Cybersecurity

Education

PhD in Brain, Mind, and Computer Science, 2024
University of Padua, Italy
MSc in ICT for Internet and Multimedia, 2020
University of Padua, Italy
BSc in Information Engineering, 2018
University of Padua, Italy

Publications

Can LLMs Understand Computer Networks? Towards a Virtual System Administrator

Denis Donadel, Francesco Marchiori, Luca Pajola, Mauro Conti

arXiv

EVScout2.0: Electric Vehicle Profiling through Charging Profile

Alessandro Brighente, Mauro Conti, Denis Donadel, Federico Turrin

DOI

When Authentication Is Not Enough: On the Security of Behavioral-Based Driver Authentication Systems

Emad Efatinasab, Francesco Marchiori, Denis Donadel, Alessandro Brighente, Mauro Conti

arXiv

CANLP: NLP-Based Intrusion Detection System for CAN

Kavya Balasubramanian, Adithya Gowda Baragur, Denis Donadel, Dinuka Sahabandu, Alessandro Brighente, Bhaskar Ramasubramanian, Mauro Conti, Radha Poovendran

Electric Vehicles Security and Privacy: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Needs

Alessandro Brighente, Mauro Conti, Denis Donadel, Radha Poovendran, Federico Turrin, Jianying Zhou

arXiv

See all publications

Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Verona

Nov 2024 – Present Verona, Italy 🇮🇹

Conducting security researches on cyber-physical systems, with a focus on industrial control system security, under the supervision of Prof. Massimo Merro.

Visiting Researcher

University of Washington

Jun 2023 – Oct 2023 Seattle, USA 🇺🇸

Development of security solutions for CAN Bus in-vehicle networks employing ECU’s activations and NLP-like techniques, under the supervision of Prof. Radha Poovendran.

Security Engineer Apprenticeship

Omitech SRL

Oct 2021 – Oct 2024 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Responsibilities includes:

Development of security solutions for a Managed Service Provider and for social robots.
Providing security awareness courses to employees.
Conducting offensive security campaigns (e.g., penetration testing, phishing simulations)
Implementation of defense solutions (e.g., SIEM, intrusion detection)
Developing LLM-based applications

New Generation Internet (NGI) Explorer - Fellow

University of Washington (Virtual due to COVID)

Aug 2021 – Oct 2021 Seattle, USA 🇺🇸

Visiting period founded by the European’s Horizon 2020 program to develop a countermeasure against relay attacks in the Electric Vehicle Charging environment.

Predoctoral Research Fellow at SPRITZ - Security and Privacy Research Group

University of Padua

Feb 2021 – Sep 2021 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Research on Electric Vehicle and Cyber-Physical System Security.

Freelancer

Jan 2021 – Jan 2013 Italy 🇮🇹

Web designer / Webmaster / Graphic Designer / Photographer / Videomaker

Research Internship at SPRITZ - Security and Privacy Research Group

University of Padua

Jul 2020 – Oct 2020 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Research on Industrial Control System testbeds and datasets suited for cybersecurity research