Alberto Giaretta holds a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Padova, Italy. He was a doctoral student at Örebro University from 2016 to 2021, where he defended his PhD thesis in Computer Science titled Securing the Internet of Things with Security-by-Contract. His doctoral research focused on enhancing the security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices by integrating formal descriptions of their security-relevant behavior.
Since 2025, he has been employed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Örebro University, funded by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP). He currently serves as co-director of the Collaborative AI and Robotics (CoAIRob) Industrial PhD School, Director of Communication for the Swedish Industrial Graduate School in Cybersecurity (SIGS-Cybersec), and deputy lab leader of the Machine Perception and Interaction (MPI) laboratory.
Research
Alberto's research focuses on cybersecurity and its intersection with artificial intelligence and robotics. He has authored several peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, including IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), Computer Networks (ComNet), Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing (JAIHC), and IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC-CS). One of his works, which has been covered by the MIT Technology Review magazine , investigates the challenges of storing digital information inside the DNA of bacteria and physically delivering this information to a destination.
Teaching
Alberto is responsible for the Computer Security (DT523A) course in Computer Science, and for two life-long learning courses, AI and Cybersecurity (DT722A), and Cybersecurity for the Internet of Things (DT726A).
| [1] |
A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and F. Massacci. S×C4IoT : A Security-by-Contract Framework for Dynamic Evolving IoT Devices. [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [2] |
A. Giaretta. Security and privacy in virtual reality : a literature survey. Virtual Reality, 29(1), 2025 [ BibTeX | DiVA | PDF ] |
| [3] |
Y. Zhu, Z. Chen, Q. Yan, S. Wang, A. Giaretta, E. Li, L. Peng, C. Zhao and M. Conti. Devils in the Clouds : An Evolutionary Study of Telnet Bot Loaders. In ICC 2023 - IEEE International Conference on Communications, pages 2338-2344, 2023 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [4] |
A. Giaretta and A. Loutfi. On the people counting problem in smart homes : undirected graphs and theoretical lower-bounds. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 14(4):3839-3851, 2023 [ BibTeX | DiVA | PDF ] |
| [5] |
N. Ritola, A. Giaretta and A. Kiselev. Operator Identification in a VR-Based Robot Teleoperation Scenario Using Head, Hands, and Eyes Movement Data. In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality for Human-Robot Interactions (VAM-HRI), 2023 2023 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [6] |
F. Tavella, A. Giaretta, M. Conti and S. Balasubramaniam. A machine learning-based approach to detect threats in bio-cyber DNA storage systems. Computer Communications, 187:59-70, 2022 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [7] |
J. Pirayesh, A. Giaretta, M. Conti and P. Keshavarzi. A PLS-HECC-based device authentication and key agreement scheme for smart home networks. Computer Networks, 216, 2022 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [8] |
G. Chimamiwa, A. Giaretta, M. Alirezaie, F. Pecora and A. Loutfi. Are Smart Homes Adequate for Older Adults with Dementia?. Sensors, 22(11), 2022 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [9] |
A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and F. Massacci. S×C4IoT : A Security-by-contract Framework for Dynamic Evolving IoT Devices. ACM transactions on sensor networks, 18(1), 2022 [ BibTeX | DiVA | PDF ] |
| [10] |
F. Tavella, A. Giaretta, T. M. Dooley-Cullinane, M. Conti, L. Coffey and S. Balasubramaniam. DNA Molecular Storage System : Transferring Digitally Encoded Information through Bacterial Nanonetworks. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 9(3):1566-1580, 2021 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [11] |
M. Mazzara, N. Dragoni, A. Bucchiarone, A. Giaretta, S. T. Larsen and S. Dustdar. Microservices : Migration of a Mission Critical System. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 14(5):1464-1477, 2021 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [12] |
A. Giaretta. Securing the Internet of Things with Security-by-Contract. Örebro University, School of Science and Technology, Ph.D. Thesis, 2021 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [13] |
M. D. Thomsen, A. Giaretta and N. Dragoni. Smart Lamp or Security Camera? Automatic Identification of IoT Devices. In Selected Papers from the 12th International Networking Conference, pages 85-99, 2021 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [14] |
L. Herskind, A. Giaretta, M. De Donno and N. Dragoni. BitFlow : Enabling Real‐time Cash‐flow Evaluations through Blockchain. Concurrency and Computation, 32(12), 2020 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [15] |
G. Matthíasson, A. Giaretta and N. Dragoni. IoT Device Profiling : From MUD Files to S×C Contracts. In Open Identity Summit 2020, pages 143-154, 2020 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [16] |
G. Sigurdsson, A. Giaretta and N. Dragoni. Vulnerabilities and Security Breaches in Cryptocurrencies. In Proceedings of 6th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications 2020 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [17] |
M. Venturini, F. Freda, E. Miotto, M. Conti and A. Giaretta. Differential Area Analysis for Ransomware : Attacks, Countermeasures, and Limitations. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, pages 1-16, 2025 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [18] |
A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and F. Massacci. IoT Security Configurability with Security-by-Contract. Sensors, 19(19), 2019 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [19] |
A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and F. Massacci. Protecting the Internet of Things with Security-by-Contract and Fog Computing. In 2019 IEEE 5th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT) 2019 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [20] |
A. Giaretta, S. Pepe and N. Dragoni. UniquID : A Quest to Reconcile Identity Access Management and the IoT. In Software Technology : Methods and Tools, pages 237-251, 2019 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [21] |
A. Giaretta, M. De Donno and N. Dragoni. Adding Salt to Pepper : A Structured Security Assessment over a Humanoid Robot. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [22] |
M. De Donno, N. Dragoni, A. Giaretta and M. Mazzara. AntibIoTic : Protecting IoT Devices Against DDoS Attacks. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications : SEDA 2016, pages 59-72, 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [23] |
A. Giaretta and N. Dragoni. Community Targeted Phishing : A Middle Ground Between Massive and Spear Phishing through Natural Language Generation. 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [24] |
M. De Donno, N. Dragoni, A. Giaretta and A. Spognardi. DDoS-Capable IoT Malwares : Comparative Analysis and Mirai Investigation. Security and Communication Networks 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [25] |
A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and M. Mazzara. Joining Jolie to Docker : Orchestration of Microservices on a Containers-as-a-Service Layer. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications : SEDA 2016, pages 167-175, 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [26] |
N. Dragoni, A. Giaretta and M. Mazzara. The Internet of Hackable Things. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications : SEDA 2016, pages 129-140, 2018 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [27] |
M. De Donno, A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni and A. Spognardi. A Taxonomy of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks. In i-Society 2017 : Proceedings, pages 99-106, 2017 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [28] |
M. De Donno, N. Dragoni, A. Giaretta and A. Spognardi. Analysis of DDoS-Capable IoT Malwares. In Proceedings of the 2017 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, pages 807-816, 2017 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [29] |
A. Giaretta, S. Balasubramaniam and M. Conti. Security Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures for Target Localization in Bio-NanoThings Communication Networks. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 11(4):665-676, 2016 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
| [30] |
M. De Donno, A. Giaretta, N. Dragoni, A. Bucchiarone and M. Mazzara. Cyber-Storms Come from Clouds : Security of Cloud Computing in the IoT Era. Future Internet, 11(6), 2019 [ BibTeX | DiVA ] |
