A security gateway that sits between LLM-powered apps or autonomous agents and their backends. Every outbound request becomes a ticket a human approves before it reaches the model. Around that gate: analyzers for prompt injection and data exfiltration, layered guardrails, a 300+ probe red-team engine that drives garak, promptfoo and PyRIT through the same pipeline, static analysis of LLM app source, tamper-evident audit logging, and a 44-tool MCP server. Ships as a dashboard, CLI, container and Helm chart.
Keyur Aghao
Security Engineer / Vulnerability Researcher
I find the flaws others miss, from a CVSS 9.8 critical CVE to hardware fault-injection and AI-agent security. MS Information Security at Carnegie Mellon, building offensive tooling and defensible research.
Breaking things
with rigour.
I'm a master's student in Information Security at Carnegie Mellon University (cumulative QPA 3.80/4.0, graduating Dec 2026), specializing in cyber forensics and incident response. My work spans offensive security, hardware and firmware research, AI-system security, and vulnerability research.
I published the first public proof-of-concept for CVE-2025-20260, a CVSS 9.8 flaw in ClamAV's PDF parser, and was twice acknowledged by Microsoft MSRC for coordinated disclosures. At Bajaj Finserv I uncovered 60+ vulnerabilities across APIs, Active Directory, and cloud infrastructure, authoring PSIRT-grade reports mapped to MITRE ATT&CK.
My CMU team took 1st place at MITRE's eCTF embedded-security competition: KiCad PCB design, low-level C firmware, and voltage-glitching fault injection. I'm also a member of Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), CMU's competitive hacking team.
Where I've worked.
Enterprise Creation Intern
Deep-Tech Commercialization- Supported commercialization of CMU deep-tech research, evaluating startup potential across security, AI and hardware verticals.
- Conducted market sizing, competitive analysis and IP-landscape assessments for emerging cybersecurity technologies.
Red Team Engineer / Domain Manager
Offensive Security · Detection Engineering- Discovered 60+ vulnerabilities across APIs, wireless, IoT, web apps, Active Directory and cloud via full-scope penetration testing.
- Authored PSIRT-grade reports with MITRE ATT&CK mappings, driving an estimated $1M+ in cost savings and a 39% reduction in critical findings.
- Evaluated 500+ AI/ML models for adversarial robustness; tuned Splunk & QRadar SIEM detections; led Akamai WAF and API-gateway hardening.
Software Engineer, Application Security
AppSec · DevSecOps · Incident Response- Built and maintained automated tooling for cloud-exposure enumeration and EDR-resilience testing across AWS/Azure/GCP.
- Integrated SAST and DAST (Semgrep, CodeQL, Burp, ZAP) into CI/CD, shifting security left across 15+ development teams.
- Performed live incident response, reverse-engineering malicious binaries in IDA Pro and GDB to attribute TTPs and contain breaches.
API Governance & AppSec Intern
API Security · Automation- Assessed 4000+ APIs for OWASP API Top 10 misconfigurations and produced remediation reports for development teams.
- Published the company-wide API inventory catalog used for compliance audits and faster incident triage.
- Automated API security scanning with Python and Postman, cutting manual testing time by ~40%.
Things I've built & broken.
The first public proof-of-concept for a critical buffer-overflow in ClamAV's PDF-scanning path, used inside Cisco Secure Email/Web. Published after coordinated disclosure and patch, for defensive research and detection engineering. Documents the vulnerable logic, trigger conditions, the affected/fixed version matrix, and a core-dump analysis of the crash.
A cross-platform Mobile & IoT SAST / DAST / pentest toolkit unifying MobSF, Frida, objection, mitmproxy, nmap and binwalk behind one interface: desktop app, CLI and MCP server over the same engine layer. Bundles 20+ one-click Frida hooks, traffic interception over Wi-Fi/USB/WireGuard, a built-in simulator, and consolidated PDF/HTML/XLSX reporting.
A cross-platform GUI, CLI and MCP server for forensic database analysis. Opens ESE (ntds.dit, SRUDB, Exchange, WebCache), SQLite, Windows event logs, LevelDB, Access, dBase and SQL/BSON dumps, strictly read-only, with pure-Python parsers, SQL over any format, a cross-database timeline, artifact views for ~60 applications, and signed encrypted project files for hand-over.
Device-free sensing that detects motion and objects using the RF ordinary WiFi hardware already transmits, with no router modification. A single-link RSSI track (validated end-to-end at 82,886 frames / 1041 Hz on real hardware) plus a ~12-node ESP32 mesh for 3D radio-tomographic imaging, sharing one signal-processing and modelling pipeline. Firmware builds for six ESP32 families.
An installable CLI for external attack-surface discovery: aggregates subdomains from five OSINT sources, resolves them in parallel with a compiled C++ DNS resolver, optionally runs Nuclei for vulnerability scanning, and delivers a rich terminal report plus a self-contained HTML report, with optional AI-powered security analysis.
A multi-cloud tool that discovers publicly reachable object storage across AWS S3, Azure Blob, GCS and DigitalOcean Spaces from a browser dashboard: live scanning with a real-time log stream, concurrent multiprocessing scans, Azure blob enumeration, scheduled recurring scans, and optional AI-based risk classification.
MITRE eCTF, Winning Design
Took 1st place in MITRE's national embedded-systems security competition. Built a secure embedded design: hardened C firmware with UART/SPI/I2C protocol handling and custom KiCad PCBs, then broke rival designs with voltage-glitching fault injection on ChipWhisperer, bypassing secure-boot signature checks and debug-lock fuses, plus side-channel and protocol-replay analysis.
DJI Drone Security Evaluation
A structured security evaluation of the DJI Mavic Mini. Reverse-engineered the DJI DUML protocol over Enhanced Wi-Fi from monitor-mode captures, recovered firmware decryption keys, and performed static analysis of the firmware partitions in Ghidra and binwalk, uncovering 14 vulnerabilities that compose into a full remote unauthenticated root-compromise chain. Findings are in responsible disclosure with the advisor.
A published VS Code extension: a live function and class hierarchy docked beside your code, with fuzzy subsequence search. It follows the cursor, rebuilds as you type, and falls back to a built-in pattern parser when no language server is available. No sidebar, no clicking around.
A catalogued reference of Windows AMSI evasion techniques and the detection gaps they expose. Each entry is annotated with how modern AV/EDR detects or blocks it and mapped to MITRE ATT&CK. Written so blue teams can build detections for the evasion vectors rather than chase individual payloads.
The toolkit.
01 Offensive Security
- Red Teaming
- Penetration Testing
- Exploit Development
- VAPT
- Adversary Simulation
02 AI Red Teaming & Security
- AI Red Teaming
- LLM Security
- Prompt Injection
- Jailbreak Testing
- Adversarial ML
- Data Poisoning
- Model Extraction
- Guardrails
- AI Governance
03 AI Security Tooling
- PyRIT
- promptfoo
- garak
- Rebuff
- LLM Guard
- NeMo Guardrails
- Lakera Guard
- OWASP LLM Top 10
04 Hardware & Firmware
- Fault Injection
- Voltage Glitching
- ChipWhisperer
- KiCad PCB
- UART / SPI / I2C
- C Firmware
05 Reverse Engineering
- Ghidra
- IDA Pro
- GDB
- binwalk
- x86 / x64 Assembly
- Firmware RE
06 Forensics & Response
- Digital Forensics
- Incident Response
- Threat Hunting
- Autopsy
- Mobile Forensics
07 Cloud Security
- AWS / Azure / GCP
- CSPM
- Cloud Exposure
- Active Directory
08 Application & API Security
- SAST / DAST
- API Security
- Secure SDLC
- OWASP API Top 10
09 Detection & SIEM
- Splunk
- IBM QRadar
- ELK Stack
- MITRE ATT&CK
- IOC Analysis
10 Languages
- Python
- C / C++
- Go
- PowerShell
- TypeScript
- SQL
- Assembly
11 Offensive Tooling
- Burp Suite
- Metasploit
- Cobalt Strike
- Nmap
- Nuclei
- Wireshark
12 Standards & Frameworks
- MITRE ATT&CK
- OWASP (Web / API / LLM)
- PSIRT Reporting
- Coordinated Disclosure
- Threat Modelling
Awards & honours.
1st Place, MITRE eCTF
National embedded-systems security competition: secure C firmware and KiCad PCB design, then offensive voltage-glitching fault injection on ChipWhisperer against rival designs.
First Public PoC, CVE-2025-20260
Published the first public proof-of-concept for a CVSS 9.8 heap-manipulation flaw in Cisco ClamAV's PDF parser.
2× Microsoft MSRC Acknowledged
Two independently acknowledged coordinated disclosures: an Azure AD OAuth token race condition and a PowerShell execution-policy bypass.
Published Researcher & Speaker
Springer book chapter on the Meltdown hardware vulnerability, plus accepted talks at NICE-DT '23, Pulzion '22 and Impetus '23 on micro-architectural attacks.
Research & writing.
Security Evaluation & Reverse Engineering of DJI Drones and Their Protocols
Hardware Vulnerability: Meltdown
Academic foundation.
MS, Information Security
Cumulative QPA 3.80 / 4.0 · Cyber Forensics & Incident Response- Coursework: Host-Based & Network Forensics, Applied Threat Analysis, Hacking & Offensive Security, Mobile & IoT Security, Security of Networked Systems, Quantum Cryptography & ML Lab.
- Member: Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), CyLab Security & Privacy Institute, MITRE eCTF team.
BE, Computer Engineering
GPA 3.89 / 4.0 · Springer Publication (2023)- Coursework: Computer Networks, Operating Systems, Cryptography, Database Management, Algorithm Design.
Licenses & certifications.
Professional
Applied & Coursework
Let's build something secure.
Whether you're hiring a security engineer, want to discuss research, or just want to talk shop, my inbox is always open.
kaghao@andrew.cmu.edu