Student Interviews

Hiroki Hada

In order to analyse frequently appearing malware variants in an effective and efficient way, I am researching into the development of a unique analysis method.

As my expertise has become more widely known, I have been asked to collaborate on research projects

The experience of my Master's degree at IISEC and a wide range of contacts I developed during that time has been very helpful in my work. I also wanted to continue my academic research. Hence, I enrolled in the doctoral programme in 2015, two years after completing my Master's course. At my company, I was in charge of developing managed security services and emergency response in case of emergencies, but I didn't carry out virus analysis. However, the master's course gave me a broad and systematic understanding of security, including those lower-level technologies. This broadened my perspective and allowed me to be more persuasive when making proposals to customers. The course also gave me the confidence to understand and deal with most problems in an emergency situation.
Furthermore, my supervisor, Professor Goto, encouraged me to actively participate in conference presentations, which led to my expertise being widely known in the security industry. There have been some positive spill-over effects, such as requests for joint research from both a business and research perspective, via various sources. Also, my good reputation outside the company has reached my bosses and CEO.

In the PhD programme, I hope to address questions about my Master's thesis that have arisen in practice and to enhance its usefulness

My master's thesis is "Extracting Differences Among the Same Kind of Malware to Make Static Analysis Efficient". My current research aims to resolve questions that have arisen from re-examining my thesis in practice. In my master's thesis, I applied a method to compare two programmes and extracted common functions. Now I would like to develop a more effective analysis method by myself. Both the Master's and Doctoral courses here are taught by highly respected professors in the field of information security. If you actively challenge yourself by attending lectures and hands-on practices, giving presentations at conferences, and writing papers, these opportunities will expand your possibilities for the future.

Hiroki Hada
Hiroki Hada
NTT Security Corporation
Enrolled in October 2015
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