Prasanna Kumar

Applied Projects

Reinforcement Learning Agent for Sonic The Hedgehog

AI agent that learns to play Sonic via reinforcement learning (trial-and-error with rewards).
Python Reinforcement Learning

Developed an AI agent capable of playing Sonic The Hedgehog by leveraging reinforcement learning techniques. The agent learns how to play through trial and error, receiving rewards based on its success on going right. This project involved designing and training the decision-making process to achieve the desired outcome.

Languages: Python

Done as part of AI course at University of Waterloo
Binary Lifting Enhancement with Ghidra

Improved a binary analysis tool for reverse engineering using LLVM IR, Python, and C++.
Python LLVM IR C++ Ghidra Reverse Engineering

Enhanced an existing binary analysis tool by adding support for 64-bit systems using LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR). This involved extending functionalities within Ghidra through a combination of Python scripting and C++ development. The project improved compatibility and analysis precision for modern architectures, enabling more effective reverse engineering and binary lifting workflows.

Technical Stack: Ghidra, LLVM IR, Python, C++

Domain: Binary Analysis, Reverse Engineering

Done as part of RA at University of Waterloo
Parcel Tracking Android App

IRCTC Internship where I worked with mostly Android projects
Java Kotlin XML Android Studio

Designed and developed an Android application to serve as sort of a prototype to demonstrate real-time parcel tracking functionality. The app showcases live tracking features and enhance user experience. This project involved integrating tracking APIs, designing intuitive UI components, and implementing background services to update parcel status in real time. Moreover, helped in removing some major security flaws with some existing works.
Technical Stack Android Studio (Java)
Done as part of an internship at IRCTC
Hotel Management Java Application

Completely working Hotel Management System
Java

Text based hotel booking management application where we allow admin to add rooms and modify them and allow users to book rooms while managing date and reservation conflicts.
Technical Stack Java
Done as part of Udacity Java Nanodegree

Research Work

ByzantineSecretBranch: robust private decision tree evaluation with model privacy

CS858, University of Waterloo, 2023

Authors: Prasanna Kumar, Jesse Elliott, Rohan B.

As part of my coursework during Master's, I developed a privacy-preserving machine learning protocol that enables secure and robust evaluation of decision trees while protecting both the clients' input and the models structure with two classmates. Our protocol is designed for a multi-server environment and guarantees information-theoretic security of clients' input vectors through secret sharing.

Cryptography: Secret Sharing, Reed-Solomon Error Correcting Codes

Application Domain: Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning, Multi-Server Protocols
Requirements Engineering: A framework to improve the use of Cryptographic APIs

CS846, University of Waterloo, 2023

Author: Prasanna Kumar

With the rise in the amount of sensitive data that is being exchanged and stored across different platforms, the security of such sensitive data has become a critical concern in modern application development. Cryptographic APIs are a way to enable developers to add security measures to their applications without having to understand the working of the cryptographic details of those APIs. This is an essential way in which we modernize development processes. Not every concept is needed to be understood in order to work with them. However, Cryptographic APIs are often seen to cause numerous vulnerabilities in applications due to improper usage. The paper investigates the root causes of such misuse and explores how proper requirements engineering can be used in order to guide the development of a framework that can mitigate these issues. Key research questions that we deal with in this paper include identifying threats posed by incorrect API usage, defining correct behavior, distinguishing whether vulnerabilities arise from poor design or improper use and specifying requirements that we need to consider when building a framework to deal with this issue. We present a structured approach to enhancing security through improved requirements engineering for Cryptographic APIs. The focus of this paper is on how better engineering practices at the API design and specification level can help avoid the ability of a developer to misuse the APIs because inherently the purpose of APIs is to allow someone without the understanding of inner working to be able to work with the APIs.

Application Domain: Requirements Engineering, Software Security
Cryptographic API Misuse: A Data-Driven Perspective

CS898, University of Waterloo, 2023

Author: Prasanna Kumar

This project examines the pervasive issue of Cryptographic API misuse through a data-driven lens. We focus on what data we have available from both static and dynamic analysis tools taking a look at various tools like Cryptolint (a lightweight static analysis tool) but also consider the perspective that benchmarking tools may not be very useful when it comes to Cryptographic rules because they can change as the existing rules are broken and new ones are made. A look at various data sources and analyzing it does potray a clear picture that this issue is worth looking at and more prevalent than one would think. Therefore, using both existing data and finding patterns, we need to work to work on building a robust framework that can be extended and modified. The focus here is to identify trends using data that we have available in order to understand both the importance of the issue we are discussing as well inform the reader on how we can leverage the existing data in order to better detection tools.

Application Domain: Data Driven Technologies, Software Security
SDN Security: Measures, Analysis, and Comparison

CS798, University of Waterloo, 2023

Author: Prasanna Kumar

Survey paper exploring security challenges in Software Defined Networking (SDN) done as part of Advanced Network Technology Course. This work builds on a prior collaborative project (see below) that focused on mitigation techniques, while the focus of this paper is to highlight and deep dive into a survey of the current landscape of SDN security. Both the papers aim to analyze how traditional network security issues translate to SDN environments. But this paper highlights common vulnerabilities to emphasize that while SDN offers architectural advantages, we need to remember that even with those advantages security continues to be a critical and complex concern. The study aims to raise awareness and foster deeper consideration of SDN-specific security risks.

Application Domain: Network Security
Analysis of Simple and Stupid Bugs (SStuBs) in Java Projects

CS846, University of Waterloo, 2021

Authors: Prasanna Kumar, Vijay Ravi, Manoj T.

A collaboration project that analyzes simple single-statement bugs known as “Simple and Stupid Bugs” (SStuBs) in Java projects using the ManySStuBs4J dataset. It investigates root causes, the influence of project popularity and contributor diversity on bug occurrence and fix time, and patterns of bug location within source files. Python tools and data mining techniques were applied to gain insights that could improve automated program repair approaches for such bugs. We did this as part of a software engineering course.

Application Domain: Software Engineering, Program Repair
SDN Security: Overview, Threats and Mitigation Techniques

CS798, University of Waterloo, 2021

Author: Prasanna Kumar, Vijay Ravi

A collaborative paper that offers an early examination of SDN specific security concerns. It also serves as a guide to various aspects of Network Security that we need to consider when dealing with SDN. Provides a brief look at the core challenges that exist in traditional networking environment and contrasts them with issues that arise when we deal with SDN architecure. Paper aims to highlight why the controller in SDN is a major point of failure according to so many studies and provides a small-scale case study using publicly available datasets to observe a correlation between network traffic patterns and DDoS activity. It further reviews several mitigation techniques so as to serve as a foundation for deeper work in this space.

Application Domain: Network Security
A survey on TeX

CS846, University of Waterloo, 2022

Author: Prasanna Kumar

An overview of the history behind TeX and a survey of how and why TeX became important. Explores the journey of TeX and its related works since its inception and explores and explains why despite modern word processors becoming easier to use and feature rich, TeX is still one of the best way to typeset technical documents due to its simple and elegantly efficient way of handling these documents and their typesetting processes.

Application Domain: Document Typesetting, Digital Publishing

Side Projects

Portfolio Project

Personal Website to serve as a portfolio
HTML CSS JS Front End

A personal portfolio website designed with ease of navigation and user interaction in mind while trying to maintain a clean and minimal theme.

Tech sack: JS, HTML and CSS

Ongoing Work

Android App

Community Platform for a popular FPS
Kotlin XML Android Mobile Application

An android app that allows user to share detailed objects with others where the theme of the app dictates how this content is shaped and created.

Tech Stack: Android Studio (Kotlin)
Get fit with PK

A full stack web project to help others on their fitness journey
Full Stack Web Project

A customer facing website focusing on both providing with a product and giving an overview of the creators personal journey in the world of fitness.

Archived Projects

Library Management Android App

My first application project
Full Stack Web Project

An android app developed during my undergraduate studies and my first hands on project. While this project was much smaller in scale than my projects made during Master's or my passion projects, this laid foundation to both my approach toward building working applications and designing user interfaces.

Tech Stack: Android Studio (Java)