| 3rd December, 2025, Wednesday |
| 12:00 – 16:30 | AVAR Help Desk |
| 14:00 – 16:30 | MARC I (Malware Analysis Report Competition) Lena Yu, Malware Village |
| 16:30 – 18:00 | Registration |
| 19:00 | Welcome drinks reception and dinner |
| Conference Day 1: 4th December, 2025, Thursday |
| 09:00 – 09:30 | Registration | ||||||
| 09:30 – 09:40 | Welcome Address: Kesavardhanan J, CEO, AVAR Conference Opening: Righard Zwienenberg, Chairman, AVAR |
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| 09:40 – 10:00 | Keynote Address: Dato’ Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab, CEO, Cyber Security Malaysia |
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| 10:00 – 10:20 | Keynote Address: Tanvinder Singh, Director Cyber Security & Privacy, PWC |
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| 10:20 – 10:40 | Keynote Address: Michael Daniel, President & CEO, Cyber Threat Alliance |
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| 10:40 – 11:00 | Break | ||||||
| Track 1 | Track 2 | CISO Workshop | |||||
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Sniffing Around: Unmasking the LongNosedGoblin operation in Southeast Asia and Japan Anton Cherepanov, Peter Strýček, ESET |
11:00 – 11:30 | High Stakes, Hidden Threats: Unmasking the Vault Viper Network with DNS Maël Le Touz, John Wojcik, Infoblox |
11:00 – 11:05 | Introduction to CISO workshop Dr. Peter Leong |
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| 11:05 – 11:25 | Quantum Reckoning: Cyber Security At A Tipping Point Felissa Mariz Marasigan, Mark Gabriel Rizare, EY GDS (CS) Philippines, Inc. |
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| 11:30 – 12:00 | Inside the Shadows: APT Tactics Using MSC Files, Grim Resource Injection, and AppDomain Hijacking Hossein Jazi, Douglas Santos, Fortinet |
11:30 – 12:00 | Lotus in Perpetual Bloom: Sustained Espionage in Southeast Asia with Evolving Sagerunex Backdoors Joey Chen, Cisco |
11:25 – 11:45 | Countering the Unthinkable: Disrupting Advanced Threats with Unconventional Defenses Ken Soh, Athena Dynamics |
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| 12:00 – 12:30 | Shadows in Native Code: The Rise of AOT Compilation in Modern .NET Malware Sarang Popat Sonawane, Crowdstrike |
12:00 – 12:30 | NTLM Exploit Redux! Anurag Shandilya, Arnab Mandal, Satyam Yadav, K7 Computing |
11:45 – 12:25 | Leading with Risk – How CISOs Can Drive Business Decisions (Panel Discussion) Ridzwan Mahdi, Maxis Dr. Peter Leong, MY CIO Service Vikneswaran Kunasegaran, CREST Arivindran Saidoo, KPMG Malaysia Malini Kanesamoorthy, AmBank Group Dharshan Shanthamurthy, SISA |
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| 12:30 – 13:00 | No Payload For You: Inside Sidewinder’s Selective Exploitation Strategy Eliad Kimhy, Santiago Pontiroli, Acronis |
12:30 – 13:00 | SESE: Social Engineering Second Edition Righard Zwienenberg, Eddy Willems, ESET, WAVCi |
12:25 – 13:00 | Training session: Building a Secure Malware Analysis Environment Lena Yu, Malware Village |
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| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch | ||||||
| 14:00 – 14:30 | ConnectUnwise: How Threat Actors Abuse ConnectWise Installer as Builder for Signed Malware Lance Jansen Caoile Go, Karsten Hahn, G Data AV Lab Inc / G Data Cyberdefense AG |
14:00 – 14:30 | ValleyRAT Unleashed: A Deep Dive into its Modern Arsenal and Tactics Hiromu Kubiura, Shota Nakajima, Ryonosuke Kawakami, LY Corporation / Cyber Defense Institute, Inc. |
14:00 – 14:40 | Disaster Recovery – What Works, and Doesn’t, in the Real World (Panel Discussion) Wisnu Tejasukmana, SLB Ridzwan Mahdi, Maxis Ashok Kumar J, G3 Cyberspace Shah Mijanur Rahman, Inmagine Group Dinesh Barathy, Collectius Group |
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| 14:30 – 15:00 | Yet Another Cyberespionage Operation In Vietnam Tran Duy Nam, Dat Nguyen The,VNPT Cyber Immunity |
14:30 – 15:00 | Modern Fileless RAT Tactics: Node.js Abuse : Technical Analysis and Threat Attribution Reegun Richard Jayapaul |
14:40 – 15:20 | Compliance & AI – Governing the New Technology On The Block (Panel Discussion) Vikneswaran Kunasegaran, CREST Syarifah Bahiyah Rahayu, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia Ruban Bala, Banking Industry Cameron Camp, SecureIQLabs Yusfarizal Yusoff, PETRONAS Digital |
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| 15:00 – 15:30 | An Analysis of Cloud Infrastructure Utilization in Malware Command and Control Tran Thi Hieu Ngan, Bui Huy Anh, CMC Cyber Security |
15:00 – 15:30 | Generative AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Agentic AI in Offensive Cyber Operations Aaron Aubrey Ng, Stanford University |
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| 15:30 – 15:50 | Break | ||||||
| 15:50 – 16:10 | The Silent Invaders: Understanding and Combating macOS Infostealers Srinivasan Govindarajan, Pranjal Gupta, Microsoft |
15:50 – 16:50 | Shared Vision: Advancing Cybersecurity Through Collective Innovation (Panel Discussion) Vanja Svajcer, Cisco Erik Heyland, AV-Test Xavier P. Capilitan Jr., G Data AV Lab Inc Santeri Kangas, F-Secure James Thang, Help Group Ken Soh, Athena Dynamics Jacky AW, Kenanga Group |
15:50 – 16:50 | Training session: AI Management Systems for CISOs – Navigating Governance, Risk, and Compliance S Kumar Subramania, K7 Cyber Security |
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| 16:10 – 16:30 | Using Linguistics and Psychological Profiling in Threat Actor Attribution Rishika Desai, BforeAI |
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| 16:30 – 16:50 | Booking a Threat: Inside LummaStealer’s Fake reCAPTCHA Arvin Lauren L. Tan, John Rey B. Dador, Arvin Jay S. Bandong, G DATA AV Lab Inc. |
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| 16:50 – 17:10 | Beyond Pen Tests & Red Teams: A New Approach to Measuring Enterprise Cybersecurity Effectiveness Bijay Limbu Senihang, SecureIQLab |
16:50 – 16:55 | Closing remarks Dr. Peter Leong |
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| 19:00 – 19:30 | Pre-dinner Drinks | ||||||
| 19:30 – 22:00 | Gala Dinner | ||||||
| Conference Day 2: 5th December, 2025, Friday |
| 10:00 – 10:20 | The (Un)Natural Science of Malware Lena Yu, Malmons World Ltd & World Cyber Health – Malware Village |
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| Track 1 | Track 2 | |||
| 10:20 – 10:50 | Unmasking AI-Themed Malvertising Targeting Social Media Users Jaromír Hořejší, Check Point |
10:20 – 10:50 | Simplicity as a Weapon for Stealth and Persistence Chetan Raghuprasad, Cisco |
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| 10:50 – 11:20 | AI Voice Honeypots – Turning Scam Calls into Real-Time Threat Intelligence Claudiu Laurentiu Tirisi, Alexandru Paul Marinescu, Bitdefender |
10:50 – 11:20 | Ghost Math: Syscall‑Only Injection, Deterministic Shellcode & QUIC C2 – A Modern EDR Bypass Monograph Ananda Krishna, Anand Sreekumar, UST |
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| 11:20 – 11:40 | Break | |||
| 11:40 – 12:10 | IDFKA Backdoor: The Hidden Threat of Rust Implants in Modern APT Campaigns Vladimir Stepanov, Anna Mazurkiewicz, Rostelecom-Solar |
11:40 – 12:20 | Transparency Wars: Exposing Hidden Biases in Testing (Panel Discussion) Luis Corrons, Gen Simon Edwards, SE Labs Righard Zwienenberg, ESET Samir Mody, K7 Computing |
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| 12:10 – 12:40 | The Open doorX : From Directory Listing to Attribution Shogo Hayashi, Nobuyuki Amakasu, NTT Security Holdings |
12:20 – 12:50 | No Impregnable Fortress: How Team46 Carries Out Successful Attacks on Russian Companies Vladislav Lunin, Positive Technologies |
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| 12:40 – 13:10 | Meet VenomSEO: New Threat Targeting Malaysian Websites for Black SEO Igor Zdobnov, Ivan Korolev, Doctor Web |
12:50 – 13:10 | Hidden Malice: Inside Tiny FUD’s Mac Backdoor Suresh Reddy Lomada, K7 Computing |
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| 13:10 – 14:10 | Lunch | |||
| 14:10 – 14:40 | From Code to Clues: Leveraging LLMs to RAT out Android SpyMax Baran Kumar, K7 Computing |
14:10 – 14:40 | Cracking the Vault: Real-World Crypto Wallet Exploits and Defense Strategies Rijul Chauhan, Mansi Aggarwal, Mastercard |
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| 14:40 – 15:10 | When Firewalls Go Blind: Custom Tools, AI Agents, and the Fall of Traditional Network Inspection Sangay Lama, Cameron Camp, SecureIQLab |
14:40 – 15:10 | Leveraging Generative AI for dynamic file honeypots in Windows Kernel Vladimir Strogov, Sergey Ulasen, Acronis |
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| 15:10 – 15:30 | Windows threats and COM interfaces (Sponsor Presentation) Vanja Svajcer, Cisco |
15:10 – 15:30 | Tracing the Origin: Fingerprints in MSC File for Clustering and Attribution Kazuya Nomura, Rintaro Koike, NTT Security Holdings |
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| 15:30 – 15:50 | Break | |||
| 15:50 – 16:20 | Emmenhtal Loader: The Silent Enabler of Modern Malware Campaigns Lovely Jovellee Lyn Antonio, Ricardo Pineda Jr, Louis Victor Sorita Jr, G Data AV Lab Inc |
15:50 – 16:30 | Data Without Borders? Sovereignty, Trust, and the Cloud Dilemma (Panel Discussion) Michael Daniel, Cyber Threat Alliance Selvakumar Manickam, Universiti Sains Malaysia Murugason R. Thangaratnam, Novem CS Syahril Aziz, Secure InSight Sdn Bhd Vimalaasree Anandhan, Poshmark |
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| 16:20 – 17:00 | Internal Threats – Strategies for Partner-Dependent Organizations (Panel Discussion) Peter Stelzhammer, AV-Comparatives Jairam Ramesh, AIA Digital+ Tanvinder Singh, PwC Jonathan Tam, Schneider Electric Ekneswaran Matandor |
16:30 – 17:00 | Operation DRAGONCLONE: Chinese Telecommunication industry targeted via VELETRIX & VShell malware Sathwik Ram Prakki, Subhajeet Singha, Quick Heal |
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| 17:00 – 17:10 | Closing address | |||
| 17:10 – 17:55 | EGM and Member’s meeting | |||
| 6th December, 2025, Saturday |
| 8:30 – 19:00 | Malaysia Tour |
| Click here for more details. | |
| Poster Presentation |
| A Threat-Aware Hybrid Quantum-Classical Machine Learning Framework for Network Intrusion Detection Dr. Kalpana B N, Dr. Karthi M, St. Joseph’s Group of Institutions |
| Reserve Papers |
| Unveiling Swan Vector APT Targeting Taiwan and Japan with varied DLL Implants Sathwik Ram Prakki, Subhajeet Singha, Quick Heal |
| The MITRE of GenAI’s ATT&CK Samir Mody, K7 Computing |