Lorenzo "Gigi Sullivan" Cavallaro was raised in a fantastic epoch where information and knowledge was meant for those who were just curious enough. He grew up on pizza, spaghetti, Phrack (do "smashing the stack for fun and profit" and "IP spoofing demystified" ring a bell to you?), and W. Richard Stevens' TCP/IP illustrated masterpieces. Academic and underground research interests followed shortly thereafter and he has never stopped wondering and having fun ever since.
Lorenzo is currently a Senior Lecturer (roughly equivalent to Associate Professor in the USA) of Information Security in the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway University of London. His research focuses largely on systems security. To this end, he has founded and is leading the recently-established Systems Security Research Lab (S2Lab) within the ISG, which focuses on devising novel techniques to protect systems from a broad range of threats, including those perpetrated by malicious software. In particular, Lorenzo's lab aims ultimately at building practical tools and provide security services to the community at large. He is PI and co-I on UK EPSRC-and EU-funded research projects, sits as technical program committee member of a number of well-known information security academic conferences and workshops, and has published in top and well-established venues. Lorenzo's Coursera MOOC on "Malicious Software and its Underground Economy:Two Sides to Every Story" attracted 70,000+ enrolled students since its pilot in 2013, which makes him shamelessly bragging on his pizza, spaghetti, and Phrack heritage furthermore.
