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.

19 Jul 2023

Preprint available On Borrowed Time – Preventing Static Power Side-Channel Analysis, co-authored with Robert Dumitru and Andrew Wabnitz.

19 Jul 2023

Our work CryptOpt: Verified Compilation with Randomized Program Search for Cryptographic Primitives won the 2023 Humies Gold Award at GECCO 2023

27 Apr 2023

The paper CacheFX: A Framework for Evaluating Cache Security with Daniel Genkin, William Kosasih, Fangfei Liu, Anna Trikalinou and Thomas Unterluggauer will appear in AsiaCCS 2023

2 Apr 2023

The paper CryptOpt: Verified Compilation with Randomized Program Search for Cryptographic Primitives with Joel Kuepper, Andres Erbsen, Jason Gross, Owen Conoly, Chuyue Sun, Samuel Tian, David Wu, Adam Chlipala, Chitchanok Chuengsatiansup, Daniel Genkin and Markus Wagner will appear in PLDI 2023

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: CCDS Special Issue on Offensive Cryptography, HASS Special Issue on SPACE 2018.

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

• 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).