Hi there! I’m Herson Esquivel-Vargas.

Picture of Herson Esquivel-Vargas I currently work as a lecturer and researcher at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC). I am part of the management and teaching staff of the Cybersecurity Masters Program. I also teach bachelor courses on cybersecurity and lead the cybersecurity research group of the university: “El Hackatorio”.

I did my PhD on cybersecurity at the Univerity of Twente, The Netherlands, under the supervision of Andreas Peter, Marco Caselli, and Pieter Hartel. Here is a link to my PhD thesis. During my time in Twente I participated as a Teaching Assistant of the Privacy-Enhancing Technologies course of the 4TU.Cyber Security masters program. I also became part of the coordination team of the ethical hacking group of the university: the Twente Hacking Squad.

Publications

  • “Identifying Near-Optimal Single-Shot Attacks on ICSs with Limited Process Knowledge”. Esquivel-Vargas, H., Castellanos, J. H., Caselli, M., Tippenhauer, N. O., & Peter, A. Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 20th International Conference, ACNS 2022, Rome, Italy.
  • “BACGraph: Automatic Extraction of Object Relationships in the BACnet Protocol”. Esquivel-Vargas, H., Caselli, M., & Peter, A., Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN (Supplements) 2021, Taipei, Taiwan.
  • “Putting Attacks in Context: A Building Automation Testbed for Impact Assessment from the Victim’s Perspective”. Esquivel-Vargas, H., Caselli, M., Laanstra, G. J., & Peter, A. Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment - 17th International Conference, DIMVA 2020, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • “BACRank: Ranking building automation and control system components by business continuity impact”. Esquivel-Vargas, H., Caselli, M., Tews, E., Bucur, D. & Peter, A. Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security: 38th International Conference, SAFECOMP 2019, Turku, Finland.
  • “Automatic Deployment of Specification-based Intrusion Detection in the BACnet Protocol”. Esquivel-Vargas, H., Caselli, M. & Peter, A. Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems Security and PrivaCy, CPS 2017, Dallas, TX, USA.