Hovav Shacham is a professor in

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. He has made many advances to both cryptography and computer security.

Biography

Shacham his PhD from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

under the supervision of Dan Boneh, where he wrote his dissertation on "New Paradigms in Signature Schemes". He currently has over 50 publications in the area of computer security and cryptography. In 2007 he participated in the California's 2007 "Top-to-Bottom" voting systems review. He was the program chair of IEEE S&P 2019 and 2020, one of the leading computer security conferences.

Research

Shacham's research covers the areas of cryptography and security. In cryptography, Shacham developed a scheme to digital signature scheme based on the

Weil pairing In mathematics, the Weil pairing is a pairing (bilinear form, though with multiplicative notation) on the points of order dividing ''n'' of an elliptic curve ''E'', taking values in ''n''th roots of unity. More generally there is a similar Weil ...

with Dan Boneh and Ben Lynn. The scheme was important because of the size of the signature: half of that of typical other signatures. For this reason this method, or those based on it, are now one of the leading signature schemes. In security, Shacham is best known for developing Return Oriented Programming (ROP), a method to exploit a memory corruption vulnerability. In his 2007 ACM CCS paper, he showed that it was possible to perform

Turing complete Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical comput ...

computation by re-using existing executable code in a program without needing to inject new code. ROP attacks are now the most common type of memory corruption exploit. Most operating systems now implement defenses to help prevent this attack, and some microprocessors such as modern Intel CPUs include new hardware instructions that prevent this attack. Shacham performed a high-profile audit of the security systems in modern software-controlled cars in a paper published at IEEE S&P 2010, which in 2020 was recognized by IEEE with the test of time award. In this work, Shacham showed that many cars had little to no security and it was possible to "disable the brakes, selectively brake individual wheels on demand, or stop the engine". Shacham also researched the security of

Backscatter X-ray Backscatter X-ray is an advanced X-ray imaging technology. Traditional X-ray machines detect hard and soft materials by the variation in x-ray intensity transmitted through the target. In contrast, backscatter X-ray detects the radiation that r ...

full body scanners as used in many airports. He found that it was possible to infect these scanners with malware, and that it was possible to hide weapons through the scanners.

Awards

Shacham received the ACM CCS 2017 and 2019 test of time award, and the IEEE S&P 2020 Test-of-Time Award.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Shacham, Hovav Living people American computer security academics Stanford University alumni Year of birth missing (living people)