Nanda Rani

Biography

Nanda Rani is a Prime Minister's Research Fellow (PMRF) and Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, working under the supervision of Prof. Sandeep Kumar Shukla. Her doctoral research primarily focuses on Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Attribution. She also has a strong interest in related domains, including Cyber Threat Intelligence, the intersection of LLM and Cybersecurity, APT Analysis, Intrusion Detection Systems, Industrial Control System Security, and Malware Analysis. As part of her doctoral work, she collaborated with Prof. Davide Balzarotti during a research visit to the Digital Security Department at the Eurecom Institute, France.

Prior to her Ph.D., she completed her Master’s in Computer Science & Engineering (Cybersecurity) from the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Pune, under the guidance of Dr. Sunita Vikrant Dhavale. She also gained industry experience as a Senior Software Engineer at Persistent Systems, Pune, and worked as a research intern at the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), New Delhi.

Current Status: PhD Thesis Submitted, Expected Completion: Sept/Oct 2025

Open to Postdoctoral Research Opportunities in Cybersecurity and AI

Recent Announcements

Patents

• 🔒 System for Extracting Malware Capabilities and Method Thereof
  Inventors: B Saha, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla
  India: Patent No. 563203 (GRANTED)   |   US: Patent Application No. 18/812,003 (Filed)
• 🔒 System and Method for Adaptive Masking-based Deception Orchestration
  Inventors: VSC Putrevu, S Mukhopadhyay, S Manna, NANDA RANI, A Vaid, H Chunduri, PM Anand, & SK Shukla
  India: Patent Application No. 202411006680 (Filed)   |   US: Patent Application No.: 63/627,859 (Filed)
• 🔒 System for Attributing Cyber Threats and Method Thereof
  Inventors: NANDA RANI, B Saha, V Maurya, & SK Shukla
  India: Patent Application No. 202411061807 (Filed)   |   US: Patent Application No.: 19/210,186 (Filed)

Publications

📰 Journals / Transactions

• 📝 NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2025). AURA: A Multi-Agent Intelligence Framework for Knowledge-Enhanced Cyber Threat Attribution. Under review for the Special Issue "Generative AI in Cybersecurity", Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) journal. Paper Cite

  @article{rani2025aura,
    title={AURA: A Multi-Agent Intelligence Framework for Knowledge-Enhanced Cyber Threat Attribution},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.10175},
    year={2025}
  }

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• 📝 M Udeshi, M Shao, H Xi, NANDA RANI, K Milner, VSC Putrevu, B Dolan-Gavitt, SK Shukla, P Krishnamurthy, F Khorrami, R Karri, & M Shafique (2025). D-CIPHER: Dynamic Collaborative Intelligent Agents with Planning and Heterogeneous Execution for Enhanced Reasoning in Offensive Security. Under review at IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. Paper Code Cite

  @article{udeshi2025d,
    title={D-CIPHER: Dynamic Collaborative Intelligent Agents with Planning and Heterogeneous Execution for Enhanced Reasoning in Offensive Security},
    author={Udeshi, Meet and Shao, Minghao and Xi, Haoran and Rani, Nanda and Milner, Kimberly and Sai Charan Putrevu, Venkata and B Dolan-Gavittrendan and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar and Krishnamurthy, Prashanth and Khorrami, Farshad and others},
    journal={arXiv e-prints},
    pages={arXiv--2502},
    year={2025}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, B Saha, & SK Shukla (2025). A Comprehensive Survey of Advanced Persistent Threat Attribution: Taxonomy, Methods, Challenges and Open Research Problems. Journal of Information Security and Applications. Paper Data Cite

  @article{rani2025comprehensive,
    title={A comprehensive survey of automated Advanced Persistent Threat attribution: Taxonomy, methods, challenges and open research problems},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Saha, Bikash and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={Journal of Information Security and Applications},
    volume={92},
    pages={104076},
    year={2025},
    publisher={Elsevier}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, B Saha, V Maurya, & SK Shukla (2024). Chasing the Shadows: TTPs in Action to Attribute Advanced Persistent Threats. Submitted response to major revision at Information Security Journal: A Global Perspectivey. Paper Code Cite

  @article{rani2024chasing,
    title={Chasing the Shadows: TTPs in Action to Attribute Advanced Persistent Threats},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Saha, Bikash and Maurya, Vikas and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.16400},
    year={2024}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, D Singh, B Saha, & SK Shukla (2024). Automated Classification of Cybercrime Complaints using Transformer-based Language Models for Hinglish Texts. arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16614. Paper Cite

  @article{rani2024automated,
    title={Automated Classification of Cybercrime Complaints using Transformer-based Language Models for Hinglish Texts},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Singh, Divyanshu and Saha, Bikash and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16614},
    year={2024}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, B Saha, V Maurya, & SK Shukla (2024). TTPXHunter: Actionable Threat Intelligence Extraction as TTPs from Finished Cyber Threat Reports. Digital Threats: Research and Practice . Paper Code & Dataset Cite

  @article{rani2024ttpxhunter,
    title={TTPXHunter: Actionable threat intelligence extraction as TTPs from finished cyber threat reports},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Saha, Bikash and Maurya, Vikas and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={Digital Threats: Research and Practice},
    volume={5},
    number={4},
    pages={1--19},
    year={2024},
    publisher={ACM New York, NY}
  }

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• 📝 VSC Putrevu, S Mukhopadhyay, S Manna, NANDA RANI, A Vaid, H Chunduri, PM Anand, & SK Shukla (2024). ADAPT: Adaptive Camouflage Based Deception Orchestration For Trapping Advanced Persistent Threats. Digital Threats: Research and Practice . Paper Cite

  @article{putrevu2024adapt,
    title={Adapt: Adaptive camouflage based deception orchestration for trapping advanced persistent threats},
    author={Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan and Mukhopadhyay, Subhasis and Manna, Subhajit and Rani, Nanda and Vaid, Ansh and Chunduri, Hrushikesh and Putrevu, Mohan Anand and Shukla, Sandeep},
    journal={Digital Threats: Research and Practice},
    volume={5},
    number={3},
    pages={1--35},
    year={2024},
    publisher={ACM New York, NY}
  }

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🎤 Conferences

• 📝 A Vitale, S Aonzo, S Dambra, NANDA RANI, L Ippolito, P Kotzias, J Caballero, & D Balzarotti (2025). The Polymorphism Maze: Understanding Diversities and Similarities in Malware Families. Accepted at "The 30th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2025. Paper Cite

  Will be updated after paper publication

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• 📝 M Shao^*, H Xi^*, NANDA RANI^*, M Udeshi^*, VSC Putrevu, K Milner, B Dolan-Gavitt, SK Shukla, P Krishnamurthy, F Khorrami, R Karri, & M Shafique (2025). CRAKEN: Cybersecurity LLM Agent with Knowledge-Based Execution. Under review for the 39th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025). Paper Code Cite

  @article{shao2025craken,
    title={CRAKEN: Cybersecurity LLM Agent with Knowledge-Based Execution},
    author={Shao, Minghao and Xi, Haoran and Rani, Nanda and Udeshi, Meet and Putrevu, Venkata Sai Charan and Milner, Kimberly and B Dolan-Gavittrendan and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar and Krishnamurthy, Prashanth and Khorrami, Farshad and others},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.17107},
    year={2025}
  }

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  ^* Equal contribution

• 📝 B Saha, NANDA RANI, J Chakraborty, D Singh, SV Chakraborty, & SK Shukla (2025). PARAG: Proactive Answering Framework Integrating LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation. European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference (EICC 2025). Paper Code & Dataset Cite

  @inproceedings{saha2025parag,
    title={PARAG: Proactive Answering Framework Integrating LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation},
    author={Saha, Bikash and Rani, Nanda and Chakraborty, Joheen and Singh, Divyanshu and Chakraborty, Soumyo V and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference},
    pages={20--37},
    year={2025},
    organization={Springer}
  }

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• 📝 B Saha, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2025). MaLAware: Automating the Comprehension of Malicious Software Behaviours using Large Language Models (LLMs). 22nd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2025). Paper Code & Dataset Cite

  @inproceedings{saha2025malaware,
    title={Malaware: Automating the comprehension of malicious software behaviours using large language models (llms)},
    author={Saha, Bikash and Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={2025 IEEE/ACM 22nd International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)},
    pages={169--173},
    year={2025},
    organization={IEEE}
  }

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• 📝 B Saha, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2024). MAD: A Meta-Learning Approach to Detect Advanced Persistent Threats using Provenance Data in Industrial IoT. 2024 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference Workshops (ACSAC Workshops). Paper Cite

  @inproceedings{saha2024mad,
    title={MAD: A Meta-Learning Approach to Detect Advanced Persistent Threats using Provenance Data in Industrial IoT},
    author={Saha, Bikash and Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={2024 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference Workshops (ACSAC Workshops)},
    pages={201--207},
    year={2024},
    organization={IEEE}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, B Saha, R Kumar, & SK Shukla (2024). Genesis of Cyber Threats: Towards Malware-based Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Attribution. 2024 IEEE 6th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (TPS-ISA), Washington, DC, USA, pp. 399-408. Paper Code & Dataset Cite

  @inproceedings{rani2024genesis,
    title={Genesis of Cyber Threats: Towards Malware-based Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Attribution},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Saha, Bikash and Kumar, Ravi and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={2024 IEEE 6th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (TPS-ISA)},
    pages={399--408},
    year={2024},
    organization={IEEE}
  }

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• 📝 B Saha, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2023). MalXCap: A Method for Malware Capability Extraction. International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC), Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. Paper Cite

  @inproceedings{saha2023malxcap,
    title={MalXCap: A Method for Malware Capability Extraction},
    author={Saha, Bikash and Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience},
    pages={230--249},
    year={2023},
    organization={Springer}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, B Saha, V Maurya, & SK Shukla (2023). TTPHunter: Automated Extraction of Actionable Intelligence as TTPs from Narrative Threat Reports. Proceedings of the 2023 Australasian Computer Science Week. Paper Code & Dataset Cite

  @incollection{rani2023ttphunter,
    title={TTPHunter: Automated extraction of actionable intelligence as TTPs from narrative threat reports},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Saha, Bikash and Maurya, Vikas and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={Proceedings of the 2023 Australasian Computer Science Week},
    pages={126--134},
    year={2023}
  }

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• 📝 V Maurya, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2022). RemOD: Operational Drift-Adaptive Intrusion Detection. International Conference on Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering, Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. Paper Cite

  @inproceedings{maurya2022remod,
    title={RemOD: Operational drift-adaptive intrusion detection},
    author={Maurya, Vikas and Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    booktitle={International Conference on Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering},
    pages={314--333},
    year={2022},
    organization={Springer}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, A Mishra, R Kumar, S Ghosh, SK Shukla, & P Bagade (2022). A Generalized Unknown Malware Classification. International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Systems, Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. Paper Cite

  @inproceedings{rani2022generalized,
    title={A generalized unknown malware classification},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Mishra, Ayushi and Kumar, Rahul and Ghosh, Sarbajit and Shukla, Sandeep K and Bagade, Priyanka},
    booktitle={International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Systems},
    pages={793--806},
    year={2022},
    organization={Springer}
  }

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• 📝 NANDA RANI, SV Dhavale, A Singh, & A Mehra (2022). A Survey on Machine Learning-Based Ransomware Detection. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Mathematics and Computing: ICMC 2021, Singapore: Springer Singapore. Paper Cite

  @inproceedings{rani2022survey,
    title={A survey on machine learning-based ransomware detection},
    author={Rani, Nanda and Dhavale, Sunita Vikrant and Singh, Amarjit and Mehra, Atul},
    booktitle={Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Mathematics and Computing: ICMC 2021},
    pages={171--186},
    year={2022},
    organization={Springer}
  }

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📖 Book Chapters

• 📝 B Saha, NANDA RANI, & SK Shukla (2025). Generative AI in Financial Institution: A Global Survey of Opportunities, Threats, and Regulation . arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.21574. Book title: Generative AI For Cybersecurity. Publisher: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Florida, USA Paper Cite

  @article{saha2025generative,
    title={Generative AI in Financial Institution: A Global Survey of Opportunities, Threats, and Regulation},
    author={Saha, Bikash and Rani, Nanda and Shukla, Sandeep Kumar},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.21574},
    year={2025}
  }

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Teaching Experiences

Presentations

Awards

• Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) Aug 2022 – Present
  Ministry of Education, Government of India
  Prestigious fellowship awarded to research scholars at premier institutes to advance innovation in science and technology fields of national importance.
• Raman Charpak Fellowship Mar 2023 – Aug 2023
  Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR/CEFIPRA)
  Prestigious program promoting doctoral research collaboration between India and France in advanced science and technology domains.
• Winner, Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2020 July 2020 – Aug 2020
  Ministry of Education, Government of India
  Nationwide innovation competition aimed at solving real-world challenges faced by industries and government organizations. Awarded a prize of ₹1,00,000.

Volunteer Experiences

Peer Review

• Program Committee Member – NDSS 2026 (Artifact Evaluation)
• Program Committee Member – ACM CCS 2025 (Artifact Evaluation)
• Reviewer – Computer Networks Journal
• Reviewer – International Journal of Information Security (IJIS)
• Reviewer – AICTC 2022 (International Conference)
• Sub-reviewer – Computers & Security Journal

Academic References

Collaborators

Prof. Sandeep Kumar Shukla
Professor (HAG), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Kanpur

Prof. Ramesh Karri
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New York University

Prof. Davide Balzarotti
Full Professor & Head, Digital Security Department
Eurecom Graduate School and Research Center, France

Priyanka Bagade
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Kanpur

Brendan Dolan-Gavitt
Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at NYU Tandon

Prof. Sunita Dhavale
Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer engineering, Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune

Bikash Saha
PhD Scholar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Kanpur

Soumyo V. Chakraborty
Wharton School, Virginia Tech, Two Sigma Investments

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