PhD in Information Security, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia – 2018
Master’s Degree in Information Security, University of Technology Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru, Malaysia – 2014
Bachelor of Science (First-Class Honours) in Computer Security, Staffordshire University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – 2012
Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Charles Sturt University (CSU), Port Macquarie, Australia – 2020
UNSW Canberra
School of Professional Studies
Dr Arash Mahboubi (PhD) is an academic and researcher in Cybersecurity at the School of Professional Studies, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra, Australia. Before joining UNSW, he was a Research Acceleration Fellow and faculty member at the Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Institute, Charles Sturt University (CSU), where he also served as Deputy Leader of the Cybersecurity Research Group. He earned his PhD in Information Security from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2018, a Master’s degree in Information Security from the University of Technology Malaysia (UTM) in 2014, and a Bachelor of Science (First-Class Honours) in Computer Security from Staffordshire University in 2012. Dr Mahboubi’s research focuses on cybersecurity, ransomware resilience, AI-driven threat detection, and the security of agricultural technologies (AgTech). He has developed patented and trademarked innovations, including the REDWIRE ransomware-resilient system (WO2024148395A1) and the Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) cyber threat intelligence platform. His interdisciplinary projects involve collaboration with CSIRO, the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC), and multiple state governments and agencies, advancing practical cybersecurity solutions across critical sectors.
Jiang Y; Bewong M; Mahboubi A; Halder S; Islam R; Islam MZ; Ip RHL; Gauravaram P; Xue J, 2025, 'A Graph-Based Approach for Software Functionality Classification on the Web', in , pp. 58 - 73, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-0576-7_5
Book Chapters | 2025
Mahboubi A; Aboutorab H; Camtepe S; Bui HT; Luong K; Ansari K; Wang S; Barry B, 2025, 'Ransomware Encryption Detection: Adaptive File System Analysis Against Evasive Encryption Tactics', in , pp. 399 - 414, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-9101-2_21
Book Chapters | 2025
Mahboubi A; Bui HT; Aboutorab H; Luong K; Camtepe S; Ansari K, 2025, 'A Lightweight Detection of Sequential Patterns in File System Events During Ransomware Attacks', in , pp. 204 - 215, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-0576-7_16
Book Chapters | 2024
Zhang Y; Kwashie S; Bewong M; Hu J; Mahboubi A; Guo X; Feng Z, 2024, 'Discovering Graph Differential Dependencies', in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Nature Switzerland, pp. 259 - 272, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47843-7_18
Book Chapters | 2021
Mahboubi A; Ansari K; Camtepe S, 2021, 'Using Process Mining to Identify File System Metrics Impacted by Ransomware Execution', in , pp. 57 - 71, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67550-9_5
Journal articles | 2025
Chen P; Yan S; Janicke H; Mahboubi A; Bui HT; Aboutorab H; Bewong M; Islam R, 2025, 'A Survey on Unauthorized UAV Threats to Smart Farming', Drones, 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/drones9040251
Journal articles | 2025
Ferdous J; Islam R; Mahboubi A; Islam MZ, 2025, 'A Survey on ML Techniques for Multi-Platform Malware Detection: Securing PC, Mobile Devices, IoT, and Cloud Environments', Sensors, 25, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s25041153
Journal articles | 2025
Ferdous J; Islam R; Mahboubi A; Islam MZ, 2025, 'A novel technique for ransomware detection using image based dynamic features and transfer learning to address dataset limitations', Scientific Reports, 15, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-17647-1
Journal articles | 2025
Foster K; Costadopoulos N; Mahboubi A; Ur Rehman S; Zahidul Islam M, 2025, 'Toward Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing - An Australian Healthcare Perspective', IEEE Access, 13, pp. 39405 - 39427, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3545778
Journal articles | 2025
Halder S; Rafiqul Islam M; Mamun Q; Mahboubi A; Walsh P; Zahidul Islam M, 2025, 'A comprehensive survey on AI-enabled secure social industrial Internet of Things in the agri-food supply chain', Smart Agricultural Technology, 11, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atech.2025.100902
Journal articles | 2025
Luong K; Mahboubi A; Jarrad G; Camtepe S; Bewong M; Bahutair M; Aboutorab H; Bui HT, 2025, 'ConceptUML: Multiphase unsupervised threat detection via latent concept learning, Hidden Markov Models and topic modelling', Journal of Information Security and Applications, 93, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2025.104160
Journal articles | 2025
Mahboubi A; Luong K; Aboutorab H; Bui HT; Camtepe S; Ansari K; Barry B, 2025, 'The evolving threat landscape of botnets: Comprehensive analysis of detection techniques in the age of artificial intelligence', Internet of Things the Netherlands, 33, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.2025.101728
Journal articles | 2025
Mahboubi A; Luong K; Jarrad G; Camtepe S; Bewong M; Bahutair M; Pogrebna G, 2025, 'Lurking in the shadows: Unsupervised decoding of beaconing communication for enhanced cyber threat hunting', Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 236, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2025.104127
Journal articles | 2025
Pieprzyk J; Pawłowski M; Morawiecki P; Mahboubi A; Duda J; Camtepe S, 2025, 'Pseudorandom bit generation with asymmetric numeral systems', International Journal of Information Security, 24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10207-025-00995-4
Journal articles | 2024
Bui HT; Aboutorab H; Mahboubi A; Gao Y; Sultan NH; Chauhan A; Parvez MZ; Bewong M; Islam R; Islam Z; Camtepe SA; Gauravaram P; Singh D; Ali Babar M; Yan S, 2024, 'Agriculture 4.0 and beyond: Evaluating cyber threat intelligence sources and techniques in smart farming ecosystems', Computers and Security, 140, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2024.103754
Journal articles | 2024
Ferdous J; Islam R; Mahboubi A; Zahidul Islam M, 2024, 'AI-Based Ransomware Detection: A Comprehensive Review', IEEE Access, 12, pp. 136666 - 136695, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3461965
Journal articles | 2024
Gao Y; Camtepe SA; Sultan NH; Bui HT; Mahboubi A; Aboutorab H; Bewong M; Islam R; Islam MZ; Chauhan A; Gauravaram P; Singh D, 2024, 'Security threats to agricultural artificial intelligence: Position and perspective', Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 227, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2024.109557
Journal articles | 2024
Mahboubi A; Camtepe S; Ansari K; Pawłowski M; Morawiecki P; Aboutorab H; Pieprzyk J; Duda J, 2024, 'Shared file protection against unauthorised encryption using a Buffer-Based Signature Verification Method', Journal of Information Security and Applications, 86, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2024.103873
Journal articles | 2024
Mahboubi A; Luong K; Aboutorab H; Bui HT; Jarrad G; Bahutair M; Camtepe S; Pogrebna G; Ahmed E; Barry B; Gately H, 2024, 'Evolving techniques in cyber threat hunting: A systematic review', Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 232, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2024.104004
Journal articles | 2023
Ferdous J; Islam R; Mahboubi A; Islam MZ, 2023, 'A Review of State-of-the-Art Malware Attack Trends and Defense Mechanisms', IEEE Access, 11, pp. 121118 - 121141, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3328351
Journal articles | 2023
Pieprzyk J; Duda J; Pawłowski M; Camtepe S; Mahboubi A; Morawiecki P, 2023, 'The Compression Optimality of Asymmetric Numeral Systems', Entropy, 25, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e25040672
Journal articles | 2022
Camtepe S; Duda J; Mahboubi A; Morawiecki P; Nepal S; Pawłowski M; Pieprzyk J, 2022, 'ANS-based compression and encryption with 128-bit security', International Journal of Information Security, 21, pp. 1051 - 1067, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10207-022-00597-4
Journal articles | 2021
Camtepe S; Duda J; Mahboubi A; Morawiecki P; Nepal S; Pawlowski M; Pieprzyk J, 2021, 'Compcrypt-Lightweight ANS-Based Compression and Encryption', IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 16, pp. 3859 - 3873, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2021.3096026
Journal articles | 2020
Mahboubi A; Camtepe S; Ansari K, 2020, 'Stochastic Modeling of IoT Botnet Spread: A Short Survey on Mobile Malware Spread Modeling', IEEE Access, 8, pp. 228818 - 228830, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3044277
Journal articles | 2017
Mahboubi A; Camtepe S; Morarji H, 2017, 'A Study on Formal Methods to Generalize Heterogeneous Mobile Malware Propagation and Their Impacts', IEEE Access, 5, pp. 27740 - 27756, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2772787
Preprints | 2026
Ferdous J; Islam R; Mahboubi A; Islam MZ, 2026, TL-RL-FusionNet: An Adaptive and Efficient Reinforcement Learning-Driven Transfer Learning Framework for Detecting Evolving Ransomware Threats, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2604.20260
Conference Papers | 2026
Sultan NH; Bo Y; Gao Y; Camtepe S; Mahboubi A; Bui HT; Chauhan A; Aboutorab H; Bewong M; Gauravaram P; Singh D; Islam R; Abuadbba S, 2026, 'Setup Once, Secure Always: A Single-Setup Secure Federated Learning Aggregation Protocol with Forward and Backward Secrecy for Dynamic Users', in Asia Ccs 2026 Proceedings of the 21st ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 1074 - 1090, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3779208.3785414
Preprints | 2025
Mahboubi A; Aboutorab H; Camtepe S; Bui HT; Luong K; Ansari K; Wang S; Barry B, 2025, Data Encryption Battlefield: A Deep Dive into the Dynamic Confrontations in Ransomware Attacks, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2504.20681
Conference Papers | 2025
Mahboubi A; Ansari K; Camtepe S, 2025, 'Multi-Stage Payload Execution with Fragmented Double-Layer Encoding', in Proceedings of IEEE ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications Aiccsa, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/AICCSA66935.2025.11315276
Preprints | 2025
Sultan NH; Bo Y; Gao Y; Camtepe S; Mahboubi A; Bui HT; Chauhan A; Aboutorab H; Bewong M; Singh D; Gauravaram P; Islam R; Abuadbba S, 2025, Setup Once, Secure Always: A Single-Setup Secure Federated Learning Aggregation Protocol with Forward and Backward Secrecy for Dynamic Users, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2502.08989
Conference Papers | 2025
Thomson S; Bewong M; Mahboubi A; Zia T, 2025, 'Social Engineering Attacks: A Systemisation of Knowledge on People Against Humans', in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Big Data Bigdata, pp. 3752 - 3761, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BigData66926.2025.11402315
Preprints | 2025
Thomson S; Bewong M; Mahboubi A; Zia T, 2025, Social Engineering Attacks: A Systemisation of Knowledge on People Against Humans, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2601.04215
Conference Papers | 2024
Halder S; Bewong M; Mahboubi A; Jiang Y; Islam MR; Islam MZ; Ip RHL; Ahmed ME; Ramachandran GS; Ali Babar M, 2024, 'Malicious Package Detection using Metadata Information', in Www 2024 Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference, pp. 1779 - 1789, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3589334.3645543
Preprints | 2024
Halder S; Bewong M; Mahboubi A; Jiang Y; Islam R; Islam Z; Ip R; Ahmed E; Ramachandran G; Babar A, 2024, Malicious Package Detection using Metadata Information, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2402.07444
Conference Papers | 2024
Mahboubi A; Camtepe S; Ansari K; Pawłowski M; Morawiecki P; Duda J; Pieprzyk J, 2024, 'File System Shield (FSS): A Pass-Through Strategy Against Unwanted Encryption in Network File Systems', in Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, pp. 213 - 233, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7737-2_12
Preprints | 2022
Mahboubi A; Ansari K; Camtepe S; Duda J; Morawiecki P; Pawłowski M; Pieprzyk J, 2022, Digital Immunity Module: Preventing Unwanted Encryption using Source Coding, http://dx.doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.17789735.v1
Preprints | 2022
Pieprzyk J; Duda J; Pawlowski M; Camtepe S; Mahboubi A; Morawiecki P, 2022, Compression Optimality of Asymmetric Numeral Systems, http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2209.02228
Conference Papers | 2018
Mahboubi A; Camtepe S; Morarji H, 2018, 'Reducing USB Attack Surface: A Lightweight Authentication and Delegation Protocol', in 2018 International Conference on Smart Computing and Electronic Enterprise Icscee 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSCEE.2018.8538400
Chief Investigator (Completed)
Ransomware Resilient File Safe Havens
Ransomware Resilient File Safe Havens for Cloud Data
THRD: Threat Detection and Response with Heterogeneous Data Sources
SCATES: Securing Critical Agriculture Technology and Emerging Solutions
Co-Investigator (Completed)
Software Security with Focus on Critical Technologies
SCReeD: Sharing Cybersecurity Data for Australian Research
AgriTwins: Bridging Cyber-Secure Emerging Technologies and Data-Centric Twin Tech for Resilient Agriculture of the Future
Autonomous AI-Driven Cyber Threat Prediction and Defence System (CSIRO–Telstra)
Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award (Early Career Researcher) – Charles Sturt University, 2024
Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Institute Impact Award – Charles Sturt University, 2024
Australian Information Security Association (AISA) Finalist – Researcher of the Year – 2024
iAwards NSW Finalist – 2024
Dr Mahboubi’s research advances cyber resilience through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and cybersecurity engineering. His current work integrates agentic and multi-agent AI, collective and distributed intelligence (CI/DI), and secure DevOps (CI/CD) frameworks to enhance cyber defence, automation, and intelligent decision-making in complex digital environments. Key areas of research include:
Ransomware resilience and prevention
AI-driven threat intelligence
Automated vulnerability detection
Cybersecurity for agriculture and emerging technologies (AgTech)
