Assistant Professor
Computer Science
Purdue University
My research interests focus on practical and applied cryptography, namely the design and analysis of real world cryptographic systems. I aim to make it easier to design and securely deploy new and complex cryptographic systems while preventing insecurities from occurring in such systems. While this currently involves a large amount of manual work, my goal is to instrument many of these processes through the use of cryptographic automation, including automating the discovery of cryptographic vulnerabilities and building tools to aid in the deployment of complex cryptography.
I run the BARC (Boilermakers' Applied Research in Cryptography) Lab at Purdue. I am fortunate to be able to work with many great students on this research!
See my CV for more information.
I am currently looking for Ph.D. students and other talented, highly motivated students to join my research group.
If you are a prospective Ph.D. student, please make sure to apply and put my name on the application!
If you are already at Purdue and are interested in working with me, please send me an email and fill out this form so that I can get to know you!
News
| 10/2024 |
Our paper on evaluating cryptographic function detection tools for binaries, that highlights a number of research gaps and proposes a new evaluation framework, has been accepted to ACSAC 2024. Congratulations to Yongming Fan! |
| 8/2024 |
Our paper on improving the security and performance of Tor's onion services by building CenTor, the first CDN for onion services, has been accepted to PETS 2025. Congratulations to Arushi Arora! |
| 5/2024 |
Very appreciative of IEEE S&P for awarding us the Test of Time Award for our work on Zerocash a decade ago, and truly humbled and grateful to have been a part of this and the subsequent journey that turned this into Zcash. |
| 4/2024 |
Congratulations to Arushi Arora for successfully defending her PhD entitled "Privacy and Security Enhancements for Tor"! If you haven't seen it, checkout her great work on improving the security/privacy of Tor with our Bento architecture. Very proud of the work she's done and great things she'll do in the future. |
| 4/2024 |
Our work and paper on exploring side channel attacks that target the conditional branch predictor found on Intel processors has been accepted to ASPLOS! As part of this, we have also demonstrated how to recover images during processing and encryption keys during cryptographic operations. Check us out. |
| 3/2024 |
We presented our work on zk-creds at RWC 2024. Check out the talk if you're interested in learning more about building anonymous credentials from existing identity infrastructure! |
| 1/2024 |
Our paper on SNARKProbe, an automated security analysis framework for R1CS-based zkSNARKs, has been accepted to ACNS. Congratulations to Yongming Fan and Yuquan Xu! |
| 12/2023 |
Our work and paper on surveying and categorizing various SGX attacks and the information they leak, as well as exploring the effectiveness of SGX's update mechanism in preventing attacks on real world systems, has been accepted to Oakland! As part of this, we have also demonstrated how to exfiltrate secrets from deployed systems using SGX, including the Secret Network and PowerDVD. Check us out at sgx.fail. Congraluations to Alex Seto who was an integral part of this work! |
| 11/2023 |
I am excited to announce that I will be a Co-Organizer of the 2024 NSF/SaTC Aspiring PI Workshop. If you are new to the NSF SaTC space, please check our workshop out and consider submitting an application to attend! |
| 5/15/2023 |
Our work presenting a global view of nation-state Internet censorship, illuminating current and emerging online censorship trends, and providing a holistic view of changes in trends over the past two decades has been accepted to FOCI'23! Check it out at A Worldwide View of Nation-state Internet Censorship. Congratulations to Alex Master who was an integral part of this work! |
| 7/22/2022 |
Our paper on strengthening the security of operational technology via better understanding of bill of materials has been accepted to the Journal of Critical Infrastructure Policy. Congratulations to Arushi Arora! |
| 4/27/2022 |
Our poster on improving the security and performance of Tor's onion services has won a Best Poster Presentation Award at NDSS 2022. Congratulations to Arushi Arora on great work and a great presentation! |
| 2/26/2021 |
I am honored to receive a CAREER Award from NSF for my proposal on "Removing the Human Element: Securing Deployed Cryptographic Systems through the use of Cryptographic Automation". |
Research
My research interests focus on practical and applied cryptography, namely the design and analysis of real world cryptographic systems. I aim to make it easier to design and securely deploy new and complex cryptographic systems while preventing insecurities from occurring in such systems.
PapersGetting Involved
I am always looking for highly motivated PhD, Masters, and undergraduate students to join my group! If you're interested in applied cryptography research, please drop me an email and fill out this interest form so that I can get to know you.
Teaching
In Spring 2024 I am teaching CS 426, Computer Security. If you are interested in working with me and in gaining a broad introduction to security and privacy topics, I encourage you to take this course!