As we move to memory safe language, pointer arithmetic no longer is the main source of bugs, instead API misuse becomes a key issue. Complex code is hidden behind API abstractions and developers may make mistakes in how they use these APIs. While API mining has been an active field …
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39c3: Master reset in Hamburg
Another year, another CCC. As every year, I went to Hamburg to appreciate all galactic life forms in their diverse multi-dimensional environment. My goal this year was the usual meet ups with friends I haven't seen in a long time, get inspired for new research directions, to catch some talks …
read moreNot To Be Trusted - A Fiasco in Android TEEs
Android has become a diverse, multi-faceted, and complex ecosystem. In our research, we came across a Xiaomi Redmi Note 11S and wanted to get root. This is our journey from unprivileged user-land to the most secure layer of Android through a chain of three (or four) bugs as presented at …
read moreAISec and the exploration of the Chinese soul
Just a few weeks ago, Chao Zhang invited me to a workshop in AI security at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Chao and myself overlapped as post docs in Dawn Song's BitBlaze group at UC Berkeley and we're both deeply interested in low level systems security, binary analysis, fuzzing, and mitigation …
read more38c3: Hutzelwutze in Hamburg
Another year, another CCC. It's been a long road from Berlin to Leipzig and Hamburg. Each year, I repeat the ritual of going to the "Kongress", the most amazing hacker get together in the world. The Kongress is special, hackers of all denominations meet, engage, hack, and enjoy a few …
read more37c3: Chaos returning to Hamburg
After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Chaos Communication Congress is finally back at an onsite venue. For those that don't know, the congress is the biggest hacker Conference in Europe. It is known not just for deep technical talks and amazing hacks but also for political talks …
read moreMilkomeda: colliding galaxies or how to repurpose security checks across domains
On one hand, GPUs expose broad functionality for graphics and machine learning workloads, on the other hand, this functionality may be exploited due to large amounts of unvetted code, complex functionality, and the information gap between user-space application, kernel, and the auxiliary GPU. We introduce a novel framework that allows …
read moreRaising the BAR at NDSS 2018
Just like every year, this year's NDSS was mid February in sunny (but not too warm) San Diego. To help cure the minimal 3 hour jetlag, I enjoyed a couple of morning runs with some of my colleagues -- if you want to get a workout done at a security conference …
read moreRoundtable on rigor in experimentation
This year at CSET yours truly had the pleasure to organize a round table on rigor in experimentation with Geoff Voelker, Micah Sherr, and Adam Doupé as panelists. After a quick introduction and mission statements we discussed rigor in experimentation along several dimensions. The most interesting aspects were open source …
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