Yazan Boshmaf Email & Phone Number

Education City, Qatar

As part of the Senior Staff, I'm leading two core projects at QCRI, namely Fanar LLM Apps (e.g., TokenX, aiXamine) and the Cybersecurity Initiative for Blockchain Research. This involves leading cross-functional development among teams of 10+ scientists and engineers, working with local stakeholders and focal points to scope out new use cases across various government and business entities, leading the development of quick MVPs for use case validation, reading and writing research papers in… Show more As part of the Senior Staff, I'm leading two core projects at QCRI, namely Fanar LLM Apps (e.g., TokenX, aiXamine) and the Cybersecurity Initiative for Blockchain Research. This involves leading cross-functional development among teams of 10+ scientists and engineers, working with local stakeholders and focal points to scope out new use cases across various government and business entities, leading the development of quick MVPs for use case validation, reading and writing research papers in AI/ML, cybersecurity, and blockchain, leading the evaluation and benchmarking of products under development, meeting with internal and external stakeholders for status updates and feedback, and exploring commercialization opportunities.Before that, in collaboration with UBC, I designed and implemented a system for analyzing cryptographic API (mis)use in Android applications. The system was used to analyze more than 120K applications, which include apps of major Qatari stakeholders who accordingly patched their apps.In collaboration with Ooredoo, I designed and developed a real-time processing platform for analyzing DRDoS attacks. The system is used for analytics and visualization of these attacks that pass through Qatari ISPs using locally deployed honeypots. The system was deployed by Ooredoo to find the best access control rules that save network bandwidth by blocking the traffic which is attributed to pass-through DRDoS attacks.In collaboration with QU, I designed and implemented a method to show the feasibility of deanonymizing Tor hidden service users by exploiting public Bitcoin information. Using Bitcoin addresses from 88 hidden services, five billion tweets, and one million BitcoinTalk forum pages, the method was able to link 125 unique users to various hidden services, including sensitive ones, such as The Pirate Bay, Silk Road, and WikiLeaks. This work resulted in a private briefing to the US FTC, in addition to worldwide news coverage. Show less

Doha, Qatar

Founded QuickByte as a remote-first tech venture studio to satisfy the market's need in Qatar. I built an amazing team that combined design/engineering expertise, operational support, and capital to turn ideas into lean startups. Notably, we bootstrapped Lobbyz, a social e-commerce app for food delivery, with a functional MVP and $100K in pre-seed funding and 50+ onboarded merchants. I also contributed strategically in securing its partnership with Snoonu, a leading delivery super-app in Qatar.

Vancouver, Canada Area

Developed disruptive products, experimented with emerging technologies, and promoted lean innovation. As a full stack engineer, I worked with a wide array of technologies and languages such as Python, Flask, Django, NGINX, Tornado, MongoDB, MySQL, RAML, Blueprint, PHP, Vagrant, Ansible, Javascript, AngularJS, React Native, PhoneGap/Cordova, Objective-C, Java, and Ionic. Along with the Labs team, I developed and released Hootsuite Amplify, an employee advocacy app that resulted in millions of… Show more Developed disruptive products, experimented with emerging technologies, and promoted lean innovation. As a full stack engineer, I worked with a wide array of technologies and languages such as Python, Flask, Django, NGINX, Tornado, MongoDB, MySQL, RAML, Blueprint, PHP, Vagrant, Ansible, Javascript, AngularJS, React Native, PhoneGap/Cordova, Objective-C, Java, and Ionic. Along with the Labs team, I developed and released Hootsuite Amplify, an employee advocacy app that resulted in millions of dollars in revenue. Show less

Vancouver, Canada Area

Motivated by the rise of malicious socialbots, I worked on building scalable and robust defense systems to fight against abusive automation on the (social) web. My research has been covered by many international news outlets (e.g., BBC, CBC, New Scientist), and is currently being used by online services to protect millions of users (e.g., Tuenti, Telefonica).

San Francisco Bay Area

Designed, implemented, and evaluated a prototypical DBMS extension to Sketch, a distributed system for exploring large datasets. One application using the Sketch framework is a distributed spreadsheet for summarizing and visualizing large structured data at interactive speeds (i.e., few seconds). While Sketch performs data analytics computation in memory (e.g., summary statistic, histograms), the new extension offloads Sketch computation to a shared-nothing DBMS cluster, enabling interactive… Show more Designed, implemented, and evaluated a prototypical DBMS extension to Sketch, a distributed system for exploring large datasets. One application using the Sketch framework is a distributed spreadsheet for summarizing and visualizing large structured data at interactive speeds (i.e., few seconds). While Sketch performs data analytics computation in memory (e.g., summary statistic, histograms), the new extension offloads Sketch computation to a shared-nothing DBMS cluster, enabling interactive exploration of larger datasets that do not fit in the overall cluster memory. Sketch is currently being used at Microsoft for debugging massive server logs and exploring terabytes of social networks data. Show less

Barcelona Area, Spain

Designed, implemented, and evaluated a system for fake account detection in social networking websites. Along with the Big Data team, I deployed the system on top of Mahout and Giraph, where it delivered up to 30% improvement in classification AUC when compared to the state-of-the-art. The system scales nearly linearly with increasing user base, and it is currently being deployed and used in production at Tuenti, the largest Spanish social networking site with more than 15 million active user.

San Francisco Bay Area

Designed, implemented, and evaluated a tera-scale system for IP address reputation and botnet detection. Along with the Site Integrity team, I deployed the system in beta on production servers, where it delivered an additional 25% in detection sensitivity when compared to existing detection systems.

Vancouver, Canada Area

Designed, implemented, and evaluated a system for automated malware detection using large-scale machine learning. Along with SophosLabs team, I deployed the system in beta on production servers,where it achieved 99.9% specificity and 30% sensitivity in malware detection, in addition to automatically generating effective malware signatures in Virus Definition Language (VDL) format.

Stuttgart Area, Germany

Designed, implemented and benchmarked Lattice Boltzmann numerical methods on a massively parallel GPU cluster using CUDA. I integrated the vectorized methods into an existing software framework designed for highly parallel numerical algorithms on super-computers. In order to improve the overall performance, I also extended CUDA basic I/O libraries to reduce memory-bank conflicts and coalescing.

Heidelberg Area, Germany

Performed performance analysis and code optimization for SAP NetWeaver. I also reported performance bugs in Intel C/C++ Compiler to Intel Compiler team. As an Intel employee working at SAP, I evangelized Intel software tools and technologies to the software community in SAP.

Heidelberg Area, Germany

Gave consultation and training on software vecorization using Intel SSE technology. I designed and developed a vectorization framework for decompressing in-memory data structures in TREX, which is the SAP NetWeaver search and classification engine. Along with the TREX team, I integrated the framework into SAP NetWeaver, where it achieved up to 2.1x speedup when compared to a highly optimized sequential version.

Stuttgart Area, Germany

Developed Symbian C communication plug-ins for 3PC PCOM middleware. I also performed experimentations to improve weighted centroid localization in smart ubiquitous environments. As part of my M.Sc. thesis, I designed and developed low-cost automatic configuration algorithms in J2ME for component-based pervasive applications.

Sultanate Of Oman

Designed, deployed, and tested Microsoft enterprise solutions and server infrastructure for mobile number portability across providers at Nawras, a mobile network operator. I also designed, deployed, and tested a virtualized product staging environment for business software development at Nawras.

Jordan

As a CCNA, CCDA, SCJP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, and Certified Cisco Specialist in VoIP, Wireless Networking, and Sales, I gave Cisco and Microsoft solutions consultancy. Moreover, I lead a team of five to plan, design, implement, optimize and operate a campus-wide IEEE 802.11 wireless networking solution for the University of Jordan. I deployed a Cisco IP Telephony solution for Estarta Solutions, including PSTN integration. I also performed Microsoft SQL security auditing for the Housing Bank for Trade… Show more As a CCNA, CCDA, SCJP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, and Certified Cisco Specialist in VoIP, Wireless Networking, and Sales, I gave Cisco and Microsoft solutions consultancy. Moreover, I lead a team of five to plan, design, implement, optimize and operate a campus-wide IEEE 802.11 wireless networking solution for the University of Jordan. I deployed a Cisco IP Telephony solution for Estarta Solutions, including PSTN integration. I also performed Microsoft SQL security auditing for the Housing Bank for Trade & Finance. Finally, I gave technical training on computer networking and VoIP to clients and partners. Show less

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Engineering

Master Of Science (M.Sc.), Information Technology

Bachelor Of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Engineering