All Years Seminars
[INMA] 2025-12-02 (14:00) : Expanding BGP Data Horizons
At EULER (room A.002)
Speaker :
Cristel Pelsser (INGI/ICTEAM/UCL)
Abstract : BGP data collection platforms as currently architected face fundamental challenges that threaten their long-term sustainability: their data comes with enormous redundancy and yet dangerous visibility gaps. GILL is a new BGP routes collection platform that can collect routes from at least an order of magnitude more routers compared to existing platforms while limiting the increase in human effort and data volume. GILL’s key principle is an overshoot-and-discard collection scheme: Any AS can easily peer with GILL and export their routes. GILL offers a lossy compression algorithm that only stores the nonredundant routes as well as lossless compression leveraging redundancy in BGP attributes, in our new bgproutes.io platform. Our new mode of data selection and delivery enables to improve BGP data analysis such as topology mapping, AS ranking, and forged origin hijack detection.
We have built such a detector. DFOH is a system designed to detect forged-origin hijacks across the entire Internet. Forged-origin hijacks are typically malicious BGP hijacks where attackers manipulate the AS path of BGP messages to make them appear as legitimate routing updates. DFOH is particularly useful because the proposed BGP extensions for cryptographically verifying the validity of AS paths (e.g., BGPSec or ASPA) are challenging to deploy widely. With DFOH, operators can quickly and confidently determine when their traffic is being hijacked.
[INGI] 2025-11-27 (13:00) : Uncovering Malicious Persistence: Machine Learning-Based Detection of Windows Scheduled Tasks
At Shannon, Maxwell a.105
Speaker :
Khaled Rahal (ERM & ULB)
Abstract : Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) represent a serious security concern because they
carry out long-term and carefully planned attacks. While a lot of research has gone into finding
ways to detect these threats; one crucial area often gets less attention, namely the persistence
mechanisms that allow attackers to stay hidden and maintain access to systems over
time. In this work, we investigate scheduled tasks, a widely used persistence technique
in Windows environments, and analyze their role in APT operations. We conducted an
in-depth study of how attackers leverage scheduled tasks to maintain stealthy access and
execute malicious actions over time. We introduce Detecting APT Through Malicious
Scheduled Tasks (DAPTASK), an approach that leverages Sysmon log data, Word2Vecbased
feature representation, and Machine Learning (ML) classifiers to identify malicious
1scheduled tasks commonly used in APT persistence techniques. Our approach achieves
a high detection performance, with an F1-score of 95.19%. Furthermore, we provide a
labeled dataset, which can serve as a valuable resource for researchers developing APT
detection methods, the dataset and the code used are publicly available at https://gitlab.cylab.
be/cylab/daptask. Our approach enhances APT detection by addressing persistence
techniques, a critical yet often neglected attack vector.
[INMA] 2025-11-25 (14:00) : A constrained Lie group approach to the modeling of dynamic mechanical systems
At EULER (room A.002)
Speaker :
Olivier Bruls (University of Liège)
Abstract : This talk addresses general-purpose geometric modeling methods for a wide class of mechanical systems which includes robotic systems, biomechanical systems, deployable space structures, automotive vehicles, or industrial machines. These systems are represented as a set of rigid and flexible bodies whose dynamics is restricted due to the presence of kinematic joints and contact conditions.
It is well-known that the motion of an isolated rigid body can be conveniently represented on the special Euclidean group SE(3). In the first part of the talk, I will show that this SE(3) representation can be extended to model deformable structures, such as rods, shells or more complex 3D flexible bodies. The Lie group framework can then be exploited for the construction of geometrically-consistent spatial discretization schemes and offers to the possibility to write the equations of motion in local frames (and not in an inertial frame).
In the second part of the talk, I will address the treatment of bilateral constraints, which model kinematic joints, leading to a formulation of the equations of motion as a differential-algebraic equation (DAE) on a Lie group. Geometric time discretization methods for such DAE will then be discussed. Notice that unilateral constraints, which model contact conditions, can also be considered by adapting the formulation of measure differential inclusions and nonsmooth time integration schemes to the Lie group settings. Finally, a few numerical examples will be presented to illustrate the generality of the proposed framework.
[EULER] 2025-11-21 (08:30) : Harvesting of Polymetallic Nodules: Opportunity for Energy Transition vs. Particulate Pollution
At Auditorium BARB01
Speaker :
Théo Clotman (UCLouvain)
,
and
Deleersnijder, Eric
Abstract : The growing global demand for critical minerals to support the low-carbon transition has spurred increasing interest in deep-sea mining in the eastern Pacific, particularly the extraction of polymetallic nodules. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), which oversees environmental impacts, currently has limited capacity to assess and mitigate potential effects on deep-sea ecosystems.
This seminar presents results from a 3D hydrodynamic model coupled with a Lagrangian sediment transport model simulating sediment plume dispersal during mining operations. Findings highlight the dominant role of fine particles in shaping the spatial footprint of disturbances as well as the strong sensitivity of impact assessments and mitigation strategies to biological harm thresholds. An analytical approach based on Green’s functions and residence times is also discussed, offering insights into collector trajectories that may minimise environmental impacts -- The full announcement is available here.
[INMA] 2025-11-18 (14:20) : Data-Driven Methods for Formal Verification and Synthesis of Dynamical Systems
At Euler building (room A.002)
Speaker :
Sadegh Soudjani (Max Planck Institute)
Abstract : Ensuring the safe and reliable behavior of dynamical systems under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge in control and verification. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances in data-driven and certificate-based approaches for the formal verification and synthesis of such systems. I will first present results on necessary and sufficient certificates for reachability in stochastic systems, which provide exact characterizations of when a target set can be reached with probability one. With this, we have closed the long-standing question of characterizing certificates that are both necessary and sufficient. I will then show that the common practice of fixing a template for computing such certificates results in losing completeness: there are polynomial systems that do not admit polynomial certificates. Building on this foundation, I will discuss one of the results from our EIC SymAware project on data-driven approaches for distributionally robust control in multi-agent systems subject to logical and temporal constraints. By leveraging samples from uncertain environments, these methods enable the synthesis of controllers that are robust to distributional uncertainty while satisfying high-level behavioral specifications utilizing knowledge of the behavior of other agents in the system. Credit for the works being discussed in the talk also goes to my collaborators and hard-working students.
Seminars
INMA Contact Info
Mathematical Engineering (INMA)
L4.05.01
Avenue Georges Lemaître, 4
+32 10 47 80 36
secretaire-inma@uclouvain.be
Mon – Fri 9:00A.M. – 5:00P.M.
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