Rate My Professor Frank Piessens

Frank Piessens is a full professor in the Faculty of Engineering Science at KU Leuven, holding his position in the Department of Computer Science. He is a prominent member of the DistriNet research unit, which focuses on distributed systems and secure software. Piessens' research specializes in software and systems security, bridging foundational aspects such as programming languages and formal verification with applied domains including web security, confidential computing, microarchitectural security, side-channel mitigations, and hardware-software co-designs for security. He leads several funded projects, including 'Hardening confidential computing through vertically integrated system design,' 'Security Arms Race at the Hardware-Software Boundary,' 'A Principled Approach to Cross-Layer Software and Hardware Security,' and 'Designing Secure Hardware for Software-Exploitable Attacks.' His contributions extend to teaching software security and systems security in the Master of Cybersecurity program at KU Leuven.

Piessens has an extensive publication record with high impact in the field, evidenced by over 20,895 citations on Google Scholar. Key publications include 'Cookieless Monster: Exploring the Ecosystem of Web-Based Device Fingerprinting' (2013, 707 citations), 'Key Reinstallation Attacks: Forcing Nonce Reuse in WPA2' (2017, 690 citations), 'A Systematic Evaluation of Transient Execution Attacks and Defenses' (2019, 663 citations), 'VeriFast: A Powerful, Sound, Predictable, Fast Verifier for C and Java' (2011, 616 citations), 'Plundervolt: Software-Based Fault Injection Attacks Against Intel SGX' (2020, 580 citations), 'FPDetective: Dusting the Web for Fingerprinters' (2013, 533 citations), 'Fallout: Leaking Data on Meltdown-Resistant CPUs' (2019, 440 citations), 'LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution through Microarchitectural Load Value Injection' (2020, 426 citations), 'You Are What You Include: Large-Scale Evaluation of Remote JavaScript Inclusions' (2012, 419 citations), and 'Telling Your Secrets Without Page Faults: Stealthy Page Table-Based Attacks on Enclaved Execution' (2017, 417 citations). His work has received accolades, such as the ACSAC 2023 Cybersecurity Artifacts Impact Award for the SGX-Step framework. Piessens is also invited as a keynote speaker, for instance at the IEEE Secure Development Conference 2024.