Gautam Akiwate

Academic     Projects     Publications     Experience     Community     Misc     Contact I work as a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Empirical Security Research Group in the CS Department at Stanford University. My research is at the intersection of security and networking. One of the main threads in my research is understanding the security implications of various Internet protocols and mechanisms. Previously, I worked on a range of things right from mobile computing, kernels, to next generation storage systems. At Stanford, I work with Zakir Durumeric. At UC San Diego, I had three(!) great advisors: Geoffrey Voelker, Stefan Savage, and KC Claffy.

News!

• 2023-07-05 -- Our paper won the Distinguished Paper Award at Euro S&P 2023! Congrats Alex!


• 2023-02-24 -- I will be in Manila, Philippines attending APRICOT 2023 on February 27th and 28th. Come say hi!


• 2023-02-13 -- I will be in Atlanta attending NANOG 87 between February 12th to February 15th. Come say hi!


• 2022-10-25 -- IMC News -- ZDNS won the ACM IMC 2022 Community Contribution Award. I also won the M-Lab IMC Hackathon!


• 2022-10-21 -- I will be in Europe attending ACM IMC, IETF 115, and ICANN DNS Symposium in October and November. Come say hi!


• 2022-08-17 -- Five papers accepted at IMC 2022!


• 2022-05-31 -- I successfully defended my thesis! Identifying DNS Infrastructure Hijacks using Large Scale Measurements


• 2022-01-11 -- I was awarded the IETF/IRTF ANRP Award for the Risky BIZness paper!

Academic

	Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Science at Stanford University 2022-2024
	PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego 2017-2022
	MS in Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego 2013-2015
	BTech in Information Technology at College of Engineering, Pune 2008-2012

Experience

Teaching Experience

Awarded the Graduate Award for Teaching in 2015.

Teaching Assistant

CSE 221 - Operating Systems - Winter 2015

CSE 123 - Computer Networks - Fall 2014

CSE 100 - Advanced Data Structures - Spring 2014

CSE 141 - Introduction to Computer Architecture - Winter 2014

Professional Experience

	Member of Technical Staff Core Engineering August 2015 to May 2017
	Engineering Intern Automation and Tools Team June 2014 to September 2014
	Engineer Linux Performance Team June 2012 to August 2013

Publications

• [Accepted] IRRegularities in the Internet Routing Registry
  Ben Du, Katherine Izhikevich, Sumanth Rao, Gautam Akiwate, Cecilia Testart, Alex C. Snoeren, KC Claffy
  ACM IMC '23, Montreal, Canada, October 2023.

• In the Line of Fire: Risks of DPI-triggered Data Collection
  Ariana Mirian, Alisha Ukani, Ian Foster, Gautam Akiwate, Taner Halicioglu, Cindy Moore, Alex C. Snoeren, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage
  Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET), August 2023.

• Forward Pass: On the Security Implications of Email Forwarding Mechanism and Policy
  *Distinguished Paper Award*
  Enze Liu, Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Ariana Mirian, Grant Ho, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage
  IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, Delft, Netherlands, July 2023.

• Retroactive Identification of Targeted DNS Infrastructure Hijacking
  Gautam Akiwate, Raffaele Sommese, Mattijs Jonker, Zakir Durumeric, KC Claffy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage
  ACM IMC '22, Nice, France, October 2022.

• ZDNS: A Fast DNS Toolkit for Internet Measurement
  *IMC 2022 Community Contribution Award*
  Liz Izhikevich, Gautam Akiwate, Briana Berger, Spencer Drakontaidis, Anna Ascheman, Paul Pearce, David Adrian, Zakir Durumeric
  ACM IMC '22, Nice, France, October 2022.

• Where .ru? Assessing the Impact of Conflict on Russian Domain Infrastructure
  Mattijs Jonker, Gautam Akiwate, Antonia Affinito, kc Claffy, Alessio Botta, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Roland van Rijswijk-Deij, Stefan Savage
  ACM IMC '22, Nice, France, October 2022.

• Stop, DROP, and ROA: Effectiveness of Defenses through the lens of DROP
  Leo Oliver, Gautam Akiwate, Matthew Luckie, Ben Du, KC Claffy
  ACM IMC '22, Nice, France, October 2022.

• Mind Your MANRS: Measuring the MANRS Ecosystem
  Ben Du, Cecilia Testart, Romain Fontugne, Gautam Akiwate, Alex C. Snoeren, KC Claffy
  ACM IMC '22, Nice, France, October 2022.

• Domain Name Lifetimes: Baseline and Threats
  Antonia Affinito , Raffaele Sommese , Gautam Akiwate, Stefan Savage , KC Claffy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Alessio Botta , Mattijs Jonker
  TMA '22, Enschede, June 2022.

• IRR Hygiene In the RPKI Era
  Ben Du, Gautam Akiwate, Thomas Krenc, Cecilia Testart, Alexander Marder, Bradley Huffaker, Alex C. Snoeren, and KC Claffy
  PAM '22, Virtual Event, March 2022.

• Risky BIZness: Risks Derived from Registrar Name Management
  *IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) 2022*
  Gautam Akiwate, Stefan Savage, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and KC Claffy
  ACM IMC '21, Virtual Event, November 2021.

• Home is Where the Hijacking is: Understanding DNS Interception by Residential Routers
  Audrey Randall, Enze Liu, Ramakrishna Padmanabhan, Gautam Akiwate, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage, and Aaron Schulman
  ACM IMC '21, Virtual Event, November 2021.

• Who’s Got Your Mail? Characterizing Mail Service Provider Usage
  Enze Liu, Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Ariana Mirian, Stefan Savage, and Geoffrey M. Voelker
  ACM IMC '21, Virtual Event, November 2021.

• Characterization of Anycast Adoption in the DNS Authoritative Infrastructure
  *Best Paper Award*
  Raffaele Sommese, Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Giovane C. M. Moura, Marco Davids, Roland van Rijswijk-Deij, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage, KC Claffy, and Anna Sperotto
  TMA '21, Virtual Event, September 2021.

• Clairvoyance: Inferring Blocklist Use on the Internet
  Vector Guo Li, Gautam Akiwate, Kirill Levchenko, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage
  PAM '21, Virtual Event, March 2021.

• Unresolved Issues: Prevalence, Persistence and Perils of Lame Delegations
  Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Raffaele Sommese, Ian Foster, Stefan Savage, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and KC Claffy
  ACM IMC '20, Virtual Event, October 2020.

• Trufflehunter: Cache Sniffing Rare Domains at Large Public DNS Resolvers
  *IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) 2021*
  Audrey Randall, Enze Liu, Gautam Akiwate, Ramakrishna Padmanabhan, Stefan Savage, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Aaron Schulman
  ACM IMC '20, Virtual Event, October 2020.

• MAnycast2 -- Using Anycast to Measure Anycast: Challenges and Opportunities
  Raffaele Sommese, Leandro Bertholdo, Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Roland van Rijswijk-Deij, Alberto Dainotti, KC Claffy, and Anna Sperotto
  ACM IMC '20, Virtual Event, October 2020.

• Measuring Security Practices and How They Impact Security
  Louis F. DeKoven, Audrey Randall, Ariana Mirian, Gautam Akiwate, Ansel Blume, Lawrence K. Saul, Aaron Schulman, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage
  ACM IMC '19, Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 2019.

• Inferring Persistent Interdomain Congestion
  *Best Paper Award*
  Amogh Dhamdhere, David D. Clark, Alexander Gamero-Garrido, Matthew Luckie, R. K. P. Mok, Gautam Akiwate, Kabir Gogia, Vaibhav Bajpai, Alex C. Snoeren and KC Claffy
  ACM SIGCOMM '18, Budapest, Hungary, August 2018.

Posters

• DNS Baseline Dynamics
  Gautam Akiwate, Mattijs Jonker, Ian Foster, Geoffrey M.Voelker, Stefan Savage
  IMC '19, Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 2019.

Talks

ICANN SSAC Talk, 2020
DINR Workshop, 2020
AIMS-KISMET Workshop, 2020

Thesis

• PhD Thesis: Identifying DNS Infrastructure Hijacks using Large Scale Measurements
  

• MS Thesis: A New Look at DMCA Section 512 Process
  

Projects

A New Look at DMCA Section 512 Process

This work focussed on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the potential "chilling effects" that might arise from the DMCA Section 512 process which allows copyright holders to take down content which they believe infringes their copyright. The goal driven was to enable a data-driven analysis of this extra-judicial takedown provision thereby enable recommendations that are primarily based in solid data. As a first step towards this goal, we establish a framework to begin understanding the takedown process and its effect on the Internet. [Report]

SWAYAM CUBESAT Mission, COEP

Worked on a CUBESAT standard satellite "Swayam", that was launched by ISRO in June 2016. I worked on the design and implementation of the Onboard Computer and was part of the Systems Engineering group as well. [Link]

Other Projects

Next Generation Sequencing Performance Investigation

Machine Translation for Standardization of Localization

Monitoring Framework for BTRFS

Community

Chez Bob

I helped manage Chez Bob. For more information visit: chezbob.ucsd.edu

PS: Do NOT owe money to Chez Bob. Bobfather will find you! :)

ARCHAC

I served as the Co-Chair for ARCHAC (Associated Residential Community Housing Advisory Committee) University Committee. If you have questions, concerns, suggestions for Graduate Student Housing at UCSD please email archac@gsa.ucsd.edu Also, feel free to reach out to me if there is something I can help answer.

Misc

Google Summer of Code, 2012

Contact

Email: gakiwate -- at -- cs.stanford.edu