Research
Applied cryptography, secure systems, and privacy-preserving infrastructure.
Security Research · Applied Cryptography · Detection Engineering
PhD Candidate · Security Researcher · Detection Engineer
$ cat /etc/philosophy.conf
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
Research
Applied cryptography, secure systems, and privacy-preserving infrastructure.
Practice
Threat detection engineering, security tooling, and telemetry-driven validation.
Direction
Bridging academic rigor with operationally useful security outcomes.
About
My work sits at the intersection of rigorous security research and practical implementation.
Joshua Berkoh is a PhD candidate in Information Technology at the University of Cincinnati, where his dissertation develops a cross-layer graph framework for measuring the I2P anonymous overlay network. His research fuses network-layer router data with application-layer eepsite crawls into a single directed multiplex graph, making it possible to study how anonymity infrastructure and the hidden services that ride on top of it interact as one system rather than two disconnected layers. Joshua's broader research interests center on the application of graph theory to complex, real-world systems, with extensions into anonymous communications, applied cryptography, detection engineering, and machine learning for security. He is particularly interested in research and applied settings, including national laboratories, federal research programs, and industry research labs where graph-theoretic methods can be brought to bear on hard problems in security, infrastructure, and large-scale networked systems.
Alongside his academic work, Joshua is a practicing detection engineer and SOC analyst. He previously served as a Security Operations Center Analyst at Virtual Infosec Africa, defending the security systems of financial institutions, and as a Security Engineering Intern at Intuit, where he integrated automated compliance checks into the security pipeline. He maintains a home detection lab built on Elastic Stack, Sysmon, and KQL rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, which he uses both for self-directed research and as a teaching platform.
Joshua's professional path has been shaped by a long history of community involvement and applied practice. He has served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Cincinnati, mentored at the OWASP Cincinnati Chapter, contributed to ISC2 as a certification examination developer, and held an AWS Community Builder role. He is also a former bug bounty researcher, with hall-of-fame recognition across multiple programs, and has competed in cybersecurity capture-the-flag events including Security Innovation, Hacker101, MetaCTF, and Tracelabs OSINT.
Writing
A mix of research reflections, study notes, and engineering write-ups grounded in security practice.
Deconstructing a high-risk internal data diversion scheme. Correlating identity authentication logs with endpoint process arguments to map out unauthorized internal reconnaissance and decode obfuscated, reverse-string PowerShell command arrays.
Triaging a complex supply-chain intrusion targeting regional energy distribution. Tracks the complete lifecycle from perimeter XSS probing and weaponized phishing documents to lateral movement and source-code exfiltration using raw web...
Investigating a high-stakes, state-sponsored campaign targeting election infrastructure. Reconstructing attacker persistence mechanisms, multi-hop C2 structures, and domain registrar anomalies.
Projects
Selected work that reflects my current engineering interests and experimentation.
Selected public repositories I actively build and maintain.
This is my Personal Website
This is my agentic threat intelligence feed project.
A Python-based telemetry tool for Proxmox Virtual Environments running on Supermicro hardware. This script provides daily resource utilization reports and real-time hardware power consumption stats via Slack.
Capabilities
Core languages, security domains, and systems skills that shape my research and engineering work.
Publications
Current academic work and emerging directions in secure systems and privacy-preserving infrastructure.
Contact
If your work sits near applied cryptography, secure systems, or detection engineering, let’s talk.
Ready to collaborate on cryptography research or cybersecurity projects? Let's connect.