Getting tenure was a great journey. I want to thank my students, collaborators, and colleagues for their help! This wouldn't have been possible without them.

Recent S&P or NDSS notification not the one you hoped for?

uASC'27 Cycle 2 may be a good home for strong microarchitecture security work: attacks/defenses, side channels, TEEs, reverse engineering, reproducibility & more.

Deadline: Oct 27 (AoE)
uasc.cc

The uASC'27 submission deadline has been extended by one week to August 4, 2026.

We welcome work on all aspects of microarchitectural security, including attacks, defenses, analysis, and hardware-software interactions.

uasc.cc

#uASC #Microarchitecture

After an embargo of 256 days, I'm happy to reveal our newest work: we present TREVEX, a black-box CPU fuzzer that detects transient execution vulnerabilities in an automated manner. Running TREVEX on AMD, Intel, and Zhaoxin CPUs discovered multiple new CPU vulnerabilities!

New StackWarp Attack Threatens Confidential VMs on AMD Processors securityweek.com/new-stackwarp-…

We're [1] disclosing StackWarp, a CPU vulnerability allowing complete AMD SEV VM takeovers!

The project was lead by @Rayiizzz, who is also on the academic job market, so hit him up if u want research like this on your campus!
[1] @Rayiizzz, T. Hornetz, me, @fth0mas, @misc0110

StackWarp: A new CPU vulnerability affecting AMD SEV-SNP (Zen 1-5). A malicious host can manipulate the stack pointer inside the confidential virtual machine, breaking integrity and confidentiality guarantees.

/cc @Rayiizzz

stackwarpattack.com

Today we reveal StackWarp: a new CPU vulnerability exploiting a synchronization bug in AMD’s stack engine across Zen 1–5 CPUs. It enables deterministic manipulation of Confidential VM's stack pointer, allowing RCE and privilege escalation via both control- and data-flow hijacking

New StackWarp Attack Threatens Confidential VMs on AMD Processors: Researchers have disclosed technical details on a new AMD processor attack that allows remote code execution inside confidential VMs.

The post New StackWarp Attack Threatens… securityweek.com/new-stackwarp-…

I‘ll be joining the Microarchitecture Security Conference (uasc) in Leuven this February - come by and say hello. 👋

Registration is open for MICSEC Winter School 2025 (Dec 1–5)!
An incredible week in side-channel and microarchitectural security with talks and hands-on sessions from world-class experts.

Register now: micsec.wp.imt.fr

Thrilled to present our (Lukas G., @LTrampert ,Youheng L, @jovanbulck ,@misc0110) newest paper ("SCASE: Automated Secret Recovery via Side-Channel-Assisted Symbolic Execution") at #USENIX Security this week!
1/n

I am chairing the second edition of the microarchitecture security conference (uASC'26). Paper deadline for the first cycle is July 15. Please spread the word, submit, and/or join us in charming Leuven in February 2026! More info: uasc.cc

✅ Write constant-time crypto code
☠️ Compiler introduces timing side-channels

Do Compilers Break Constant-time Guarantees?
fc25.ifca.ai/preproceedings…

TL;DR: Yes!🥲

👏👏👏Great work @misc0110 & team!

@LTrampert and I just gave a talk at Black Hat Asia showing how CSS can be abused to deanonymize you when opening an email!
cc: @BlackHatEvents #BHASIA25

Heading to Black Hat Asia now! @LTrampert and I will give a briefing about deanonymizing users not only on the web but also in their email clients! #BHASIA

The second #DIMVA25 deadline is upcoming: February 12 AoE. If you're planning to submit a paper, register it already: dimva.org/dimva2025/

DIMVA has a great community and is quite visible: 3 out of my 10 top cited papers are DIMVA papers!

Hope to see many of you in Austria!

github.com/google/securit…
Our newest research project is finally public! We can load malicious microcode on Zen1-Zen4 CPUs!

The uASC registration is open now:
uasc.cc

Also the uASC deadline is approaching: January 27 AoE.

We accept papers, posters, and talks. We have conference proceedings. We're interested in any insights broadly around microarchitecture security.

CFP for uASC 25 is still open. We have rolling reviews, and 1 submission is already accepted. If you have interesting results on microarchitecture security (incl. weak threat models or reproducing prior work), check out the CFP at uasc.cc
The CFP closes **Jan 28**

Super excited to present our (L. Niemann, @____salmon____, @jan__reineke, @misc0110) newest paper at #ACSAC2024! We show how modern CPU hardware can be leveraged to stop side-channel attacks almost instantly (~200 CPU cycles)!
Code/Paper: github.com/cispa/IRQGuard