Research

I no longer pursue academic research. Works already in the publication pipeline may emerge.

Prior to startup life, I conducted research on electronic voting systems designed to provide strong notions of secrecy and to provide verifiable proof of correct operation:

I developed a framework for proving verifiability of voting systems, applied that framework to analyse Helios, Helios-C, helios-server-mixnet, JCJ, and Zeus, found vulnerabilities in each, introduced patches, and proved patched systems secure (IACR'19, Voting'18, AFRICACRYPT'18, ESORICS'10, ARSPA-WITS'10). I also surveyed existing frameworks for proving verifiability, finding each to be inadequate (IPL'20).

I developed a compatible framework for ballot secrecy, analysed Helios, helios-server-mixnet, and Zeus, found vulnerabilities in Helios, introduced patches, and proved patched Helios secure (IACR'19, IJSN'19, IWSEC'15, JCS'12, ESORICS'13, CSF'11). I also extended the ProVerif software tool to enable automated analysis of ballot secrecy (JCS'18, CSF'16, IFIPTM'08).

Ballot secrecy offers baseline privacy; stronger privacy notions are necessary to prevent vote selling and coercion. I surveyed existing frameworks for proving whether a voting system prevents vote selling (ProvSec'19) and coercion (IACR'19), largely finding frameworks inadequate. Additionally, I built Athena, a verifiable, coercion-resistant voting system with linear complexity (IACR'19).

I identified a relationship between voting and auction systems, exploited that relation to build auction systems Hawk and Aucitas from the Helios and Civitas voting systems (FC'14), and generalised results to derive a construction for secure, verifiable auction systems from voting systems (TCS'18).

Beyond voting systems, I discovered attacks against GSMA's next generation eSIM architecture (FC'18). Discovered TLS truncation attacks against Microsoft Live, Google, and Helios (Black Hat'13,WOOT'13). And discovered an attack against the RSA-based Direct Anonymous Attestation system by HP, IBM, and Intel (ESAS'07), developed a framework for proving security of such systems, and proved my patch sufficient to secure the RSA-based system (SCP'15,FAST'11).

I've written introductory texts on: TLS 1.3 and OpenJDK's implementation (arXiv'20), GSMA's next generation eSIM architecture (arXiv'19), secret, verifiable elections (IACR'18,arXiv'18), the Applied Pi calculus (IOS Press'11), and ProVerif (2011), a software tool for automatic analysis of systems modelled in a variant of that calculus.

Publications

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See also: Google Scholar, DBLP, AMiner, Microsoft Academic, Semantic Scholar, ORCID

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Miscellaneous