Muntashir Al-Islam
Muntashir Al-Islam
(a.k.a. Muntashir Akon)
Ph.D Student, University of California, Riverside
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
465 Winston Chung Hall, Riverside, CA 92521
Embedded Files
Recent News
Recent News
[April'25] Started teaching as a TA at UC Riverside
[September'24] Started Ph.D. at UC Riverside.
[May'24] Raised $2,200 for App Manager in the third funding campaign.
[March'24] Offered Dean's Distinguished Award by the Bourns College of Engineering, UC Riverside!
[June'23] I survived a road accident leaving a semi-permanent scar in the forehead. Thanks to the driver and others who came forward!
[March'23] Raised $1,000 for App Manager in the second funding campaign.
[October'22] Promoted to Software Engineer in Divine Companion Inc.
[October'22] Graduated from RUET as the first class first with honours!
[October'22] Defended undergraduate thesis.
[April'22] Raised $1,000 for App Manager in the first ever funding campaign.
[July'21] Founded App Manager Community.
[May'21] ADACT has been published in Bioinformatics.
[January'21] Joined Divine Companion Inc. as a Software Engineer Intern.
I am a Ph.D. student at University of California, Riverside, advised by Dr. Heng Yin. Before that, I was a Software Engineer at Divine Companion Inc. I earned my B.Sc. degree from Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology (RUET) in October 2022. I've also been contributing to various open source projects since 2015.
My interest predominantly lies in improving privacy, security as well as usability of smart devices, Android devices, in particular. At present, I do this by developing and contributing to open source and community-driven software or tools that help the users of these devices improve their privacy and user experience. This is achieved by analysing and integrating modern and attractive user interface with privacy and security considerations and trade-offs, adaptive threat modelling, use of “hidden API”, reproducible builds, transparency in the decision making with active presence of the users, and targeting a wide range of audience of different backgrounds without diminishing usability. I also have interests in related concepts such as keychain, SSL pinning, E2EE, fingerprinting, sandboxing, process isolation, federation, TEE, baseband modem, and BLE.
My formal research included the development of an efficient tool for bioinformatics to generate phylogenetic trees, namely ADACT, which involved development of a web application with attractive user interface and features such as user management, parameter tuning and the development of a RESTful API. In my undergraduate thesis, I attempted to find an efficient model that identifies the optimum values for oral glucose metabolism in non-diabetic patients.
I maintain and contribute to a number of projects that largely promotes my interests, that is, privacy, security and usability. Among them, App Manager is, by far, the biggest project (~200K LOC, ~300 contributors) that I maintain. It also utilises other libraries and projects that I maintain separately for App Manager as well as the open source community. Of them, Android Debloat List aims at cataloguing useless system apps that often threaten users' privacy and security, Android Libraries at cataloguing popularly used libraries to help users' threat model regarding the use of proprietary libraries, and LibADB Android at granting privileged access to user apps which isn't possible in a normal setting. Recently, I've developed Captive Portal Controller to address the connectivity issues in Android discovered by Mullvad.net when VPN is enabled. I also write personal blogs featuring privacy and security.
I am also involved in several clubs and voluntary organisations such as Wikimedia Bangladesh, Society for the Popularisation of Science, Bangladesh where I helped arrange seminars, training sessions, olympiads, meetups, and other events. Recently, I have founded App Manager Community with the aim of increasing community involvement in the App Manager project to make it more sustainable, improve usability and spread privacy awareness.
Publication
Publication
Mujtahid Akon, Muntashir Akon, Mohimenul Kabir, M Saifur Rahman and M Sohel Rahman, Bioinformatics, Volume 37, Issue 10, May 2021, Pages 1468–1470.
Selected Projects
Selected Projects
A suite of tools and utilities for Android operating system that helps the users improve their privacy and usability.
A utility software for Android to primarily address the connectivity leaks related to captive portals and connectivity checks when VPN is enabled.
Allows an Android user to browse and modify setting items that aren't accessible from the Android Settings application.
An Android library to let applications utilise Android Debug Bridge (ADB) to perform operations that may require more privileges than that is offered by Android for third-party applications.
A utility software for macOS to visualise PCI hardware information and a produce output similar to Linux's lspci.
Honours and Awards
Honours and Awards
[2024] Dean's Distinguished Award, awarded by the Bourns College of Engineering, UC Riverside
[2022] First class (first) with honours, awarded by the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, RUET
[2018-22] Technical Scholarship, awarded by RUET
[2018, 2020, 2023] Student of the Year, awarded by the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, RUET
[2018] Honorary crest, awarded by the Rajshahi Students' Welfare Foundation, Rajshahi, Bangladesh
[2015-16] Secondary School Certificate Scholarship, Ministry of Education, Bangladesh
[2013] Champion award in Regional Mathematical Olympiad, Rangpur, Bangladesh
[2009-2011] Primary Scholarship, Ministry of Education, Bangladesh
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse