Ágatha de Freitas

M.Sc. Student | Portfolio: github.com/htafr

Summary

Currently pursuing M.Sc. degree in information security. I have interest in all areas of infosec, but currently I’m working with firmware security.

LARC USP (Jan 2023 – Dec 2023)
Scientific Initiation

The current world scenario has attack opportunities due to many manufacturers involved in component manufacturing and shipping. The standard Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) intends to offer a protection method against untrusted hardware, however, it was not widely tested and implemented by the time of this research. This project inserted the protocol API (LibSPDM) in the U-Boot and implemented it in the virtual block device firmware, testing its execution with QEMU in RISC-V 64 bits architecture. The project has a public repository at Github.

KNOMA USP (May 2021 – Jul 2022)
Scientific Initiation

The project aims to optimize the stencil algorithm that simulates seismic wave propagation for FPGA using OpenCL and oneAPI. The team has to consider the capabilities and limitations of the hardware in order to parallelize the code, taking advantage of the available resources. We have published an article for ERAD-SP 2022 comparing the performance among FPGA, GPU, and CPU with the frameworks mentioned earlier.

Stefanini Scala (Sep 2022 – Dec 2022)
Internship

I was allocated to the same project which an internet service provider bought aiming for business expansion intelligence. The project was finished by November utilizing machine learning to predict cities’ performance in case the company opened a facility at it. By December, an automotive part maker hired Scala Stefanini to improve their productivity. I was required to use IBM OPL to implement KPIs to analyze the mathematical model.

Stefanini Scala (Jan 2022 – Apr 2022)
Internship

An internet service provider hired the company aiming for help in future business expansion decisions. Our mission was to deliver a data pipeline with acquired data utilizing PySpark in Microsoft Azure Databricks. Moreover, it was included dashboards in PowerBI and city clustering for future sprints which helped the company with its time management, optimizing our work schedule so we could meet deadlines better than before.

UEFI Firmware with SPDM (Github)

As UEFI firmware adoption is rising, new attack methods targeting them are also rising, and, different from an OS attack, malicious modifications are even able to persist HD exchange. Regarding this threat, my M.Sc. project aims to provide means to defend the computer system’s firmware against untrusted devices during boot, not loading drivers to control components that aren’t allowed. Using EDKII, QEMU, and ongoing work from their own communities, we implemented authentication and measure for PCIe and USB devices with SPDM.

U-Boot with SPDM (Github)

Using QEMU, U-Boot, and Buildroot, before booting to Linux, authenticate and measure the mass storage device using Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) to check if the computer system should trust it.

Thiago Ferreira, Ágatha Freitas, Renan Alves, Bruno Albertini, Marcos Simplicio Jr., and Daniel Batista. 2024. SPDM-WiD: Uma Ferramenta para Inspeção de Pacotes do Security Protocol Data Model (SPDM). In Anais Estendidos do XLII Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores e Sistemas Distribuídos, maio 20, 2024, Niterói/RJ, Brasil. SBC, Porto Alegre, Brasil, 49-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc_estendido.2024.3175.
Renan C.A. Alves, Ágatha Freitas, Bruno C. Albertini, and Marcos A. Simplicio. 2025. Testing the limits of SPDM: Authentication of intermittently connected devices. Comput. Secur. 148, C (Jan 2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2024.104142
Ágatha Freitas, Lucas Cilento, Renato Guimarães, Jaime Souza, Hermes Senger, and Edson Gomi. 2022. Seismic Wave Stencil Computation Performance Comparison. In Anais da XIII Escola Regional de Alto Desempenho de São Paulo, abril 07, 2022, Online, Brasil. SBC, Porto Alegre, Brasil, 21-24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/eradsp.2022.222249.