Embedded Security Researcher · Side-Channel Analysis · Hardware Security · Deep Learning

📍 Cava de' Tirreni, Italy · 🎓 M.Sc. Cybersecurity @ Università di Salerno 🔬 M.Sc. Thesis @ STMicroelectronics — Explainable Deep Learning for Side-Channel Leakage Analysis

My work focuses on the intersection of hardware security, side-channel analysis, and machine learning. I am particularly interested in:

• Profiled side-channel attacks using deep neural networks
• Explainability methods for ML-based SCA (perceived information, layer-wise relevance)
• Threat modeling and risk assessment of embedded automotive systems
• Firmware reverse engineering and hardware penetration testing

• U. Della Monica, K. Munjal, M. P. Tamas, B. Boi, C. Esposito, R. Khondoker. "Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment (TARA) Analysis of an Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) System". Applied Sciences, MDPI, 2025. [DOI]

• Upcoming paper on Large Language Models applied to VHDL hardware design (ACM proceedings, in press).

🔬 STMicroelectronics — Cybersecurity Engineering Intern (2026, ongoing) M.Sc. Thesis on Explainable Deep Learning for Side-Channel Leakage Analysis. Profiled SCA attacks on AES implementations using CNN architectures, with layer-wise interpretability methods.

🔧 STMicroelectronics — Cybersecurity Engineering Intern (2024) Development of automotive penetration testing methodology aligned with ISO/SAE 21434.

Side-Channel Analysis (DPA, CPA, profiled) · Fault Injection · JTAG/SWD/SPI/UART/I2C · Firmware Extraction · Secure Boot Analysis

Ghidra · radare2 · binwalk · OpenOCD · JTAGulator · Attify Badge

PyTorch · TensorFlow/Keras · scikit-learn · CNN/MLP architectures · Explainability methods

Python · C · C++ · Assembly (ARM) · Bash

STM32 · Cortex-M · ESP32 · Bare-metal C · Linux toolchains

📌 Pinned repositories below showcase my work in hardware security, embedded systems, and applied research. Highlights include:

• Linksys WRT54GL Firmware Extraction & Exploitation — Full JTAG firmware dump and reverse shell injection on consumer router. [Write-up →]
• S.I.D.E. — Modular intrusion detection engine for ICS/SCADA networks (Modbus, OPC-UA, SNAP7). [Repo →]
• m0rph CTF — Reverse engineering challenge solved as part of CyberChallenge.IT 2025.

📧 [email protected] 🌐 umbertodellamonica.github.io