From April 2023, I am a Professor of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). Before joining RUB, I was an Associate Professor at the School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Adelaide. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Adelaide in 2014, and my M.Sc. in Computer Science and B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1993 and 1990, respectively. In between I have been the Vice President of Research in Memco Software and a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Girafa.com.

My research explores the security of the interface between the software and the hardware. In particular, I am interested in the discrepancy between the way that programmers think about software execution and the concrete execution in modern processors. I work on identifying micro-architectural vulnerabilities, and on exploitation and mitigation techniques.

9 Dec 2024

Published a preprint and the Code Artifact for On Borrowed Time – Preventing Static Side-Channel Analysis.

7 Nov 2024

Our work CryptOpt: Verified Compilation with Randomized Program Search for Cryptographic Primitives won the 2024 German IT Security Prize

15 Oct 2024

Spec-o-Scope: Cache Probing at Cache Speed received Distinguished Paper Award at CCS 2024.

15 Oct 2024

Testing Side-Channel Security of Cryptographic Implementations against Future Microarchitectures received Distinguished Paper Award at CCS 2024.

4 Jul 2024

Published the Code Artifact for Evict+Spec+Time: Exploiting Out-of-Order Execution to Improve Cache-Timing Attacks.

2 Jul 2024

Preprint available Protecting cryptographic code against Spectre-RSB (and, in fact, all known Spectre variants), co-authored with Santiago Arranz Olmos, Gilles Barthe, Chitchanok Chuengsatiansup, Benjamin Grégoire, Vincent Laporte, Tiago Oliveira, Peter Schwabe, and Zhiyuan Zhang.

Program Chair: SEED 2022, WOOT 2020, Kangacrypt 2018, SPACE 2018.

Event Organisation: SSS² 2023, CHES 2020, Kangacrypt 2018, ASEC 2018.

Steering Committees: CHES 2019–2020, WOOT 2020–.

Editorial Board: Communications in Cryptography 2024

Program Committees:

• 2025: CHES, IEEE EuroS&P, IEEE S&P, USENIX Security
• 2024: ASPLOS (ERC), CHES, IEEE EuroS&P, IEEE S&P, RWC, USENIX Security, WOOT
• 2023: ACISP, CCS, IEEE S&P (Associate Chair), RWC, SecDev, SILM, USENIX Security, WOOT
• 2022: ACISP, CARDIS, CCS, CFAIL, CHES, DRAMSec, HASP, IEEE S&P, RWC, SecDev, SILM, Top in HES, USENIX Security
• 2021: ACISP, ACSAC, AsiaCCS, CARDIS, CHES, CT-RSA, DATE, DRAMSec, ESORICS, IEEE S&P, SEED, SILM, USENIX Security
• 2020: ACSAC, CARDIS, CHES, IEEE S&P, SCAM, SILM, SPACE, USENIX Security
• 2019: ASPLOS (ERC), CARDIS, CCS, CHES, IEEE EuroS&P, Latincrypt, RWC, SAC, SPACE, USENIX ATC, USENIX Security, WOOT
• 2018: CARDIS, CHES, SysTEX
• 2017: Latincrypt, SPACE, USENIX Security
• 2015: SYSTOR

• German IT Security Prize; 2024
• Distinguished paper award — CCS 2024
• Distinguished paper award — CCS 2024
• Excellent Teaching Award Nominee — RUB 2024
• Humies Gold Award — GECCO 2023
• Distinguished Paper Award — PLDI 2023
• NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition 2020
• SA Young Tall Poppy Award — 2020
• Best student paper award — ICEIS 2020
• Chris Wallace Award for Outstanding Research — 2020
• Honorable Mention — NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition 2019
• Distinguished Paper Award — IEEE SP 2019
• Best Paper Award — EuroSys 2019
• Foreshadow chosen for IEEE Micro Top Pick — 2019
• Best Paper Award — APSys 2018
• Pwnie Award — Most Innovative Research — Black Hat 2018
• Pwnie Award — Best Privilege Escalation Bug — Black Hat 2018
• Knuth Reward Cheque — 1999
• Mifal Hapayis Research Prize — 1994

• My Erdös number is 2.
• PhD Thesis: Software-based Reference Protection for Component Isolation
• Master Thesis: The Deputy Mechanism for Transparent Process Migration
• Simulated Annealing for Standard-Cell Sizing (An Amirim—Science project report — in Hebrew).