Email: nickolai at csail mit edu

32 Vassar Street, Room 32-G994
Cambridge, MA  02139
(617) 253-6005

Nickolai Zeldovich is the Joan and Irwin M. (1957) Jacobs Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2008. His research interests are in building practical secure systems. Recent projects by Prof. Zeldovich and his students and colleagues include the CryptDB encrypted database, the STACK tool for finding undefined behavior bugs in C programs, the FSCQ formally verified file system, the Algorand cryptocurrency, and the Vuvuzela private messaging system. He has been involved with several start-up companies, including MokaFive (desktop virtualization), PreVeil (end-to-end encryption), and Algorand (cryptocurrency). Prof. Zeldovich's work has been recognized by best paper awards at the ACM SOSP conference, a Sloan fellowship (2010), an NSF CAREER award (2011), the MIT EECS Spira teaching award (2013), the MIT Edgerton faculty achievement award (2014), the ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser award (2017), an MIT EECS Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship (2018), and an MIT EECS Jamieson award for excellence in teaching (2024).

Spring 2025:	Sabbatical Leave
Fall 2024:	Sabbatical Leave
Spring 2024:	6.5660: Computer Systems Security
Fall 2023:	6.1600: Foundations of Computer Security
Spring 2023:	6.5660: Computer Systems Security
Fall 2022:	6.1600: Foundations of Computer Security
Spring 2022:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Fall 2021:	6.S060: Foundations of Computer Security
Spring 2021:	Faculty Teaching Relief
IAP 2021:	6.148 (web.lab): Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2020:	6.826: Principles of Computer Systems
Spring 2020:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
IAP 2020:	6.148 (web.lab): Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2019:	6.826: Principles of Computer Systems
Spring 2019:	Professional Leave
Fall 2018:	Professional Leave
Spring 2018:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
IAP 2018:	6.148: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2017:	6.826: Principles of Computer Systems
Spring 2017:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
IAP 2017:	6.148: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2016:	Sabbatical Leave
Spring 2016:	Faculty Teaching Relief
IAP 2016:	6.148: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2015:	Sabbatical Leave
Spring 2015:	6.888: Certified Systems Software
IAP 2015:	6.148: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2014:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2014:	6.824: Distributed Systems
IAP 2014:	6.470: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2013:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2013:	Junior Faculty Research Leave
IAP 2013:	6.470: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2012:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2012:	6.033: Computer Systems Engineering
IAP 2012:	6.470: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2011:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2011:	6.033: Computer Systems Engineering
IAP 2011:	6.470: Web programming competition (faculty sponsor)
Fall 2010:	6.858: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2010:	6.857: Computer and Network Security
IAP 2010:	Introduction to multicore research with Beehive
Fall 2009:	6.893: Computer Systems Security
Spring 2009:	6.033: Computer Systems Engineering
Fall 2008:	6.828: Operating System Engineering

• Dockyard: A Modular Framework for Verifying Liveness of Byzantine Fault Tolerant Systems.
  Derek Leung, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Program Verification in Dafny, Denver, CO, January 2025.
  

• Modular Verification of Secure and Leakage-Free Systems: From Application Specification to Circuit-Level Implementation.
  Anish Athalye, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Frans Kaashoek, Joseph Tassarotti, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Austin, TX, November 2024.
  

• Probability from Possibility: Probabilistic Confidentiality for Storage Systems Under Nondeterminism.
  Atalay Mert İleri, Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Adam Chlipala.
  In Proceedings of the 37th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), Enschede, The Netherlands, July 2024.
  

• Private web search with Tiptoe.
  Alexandra Henzinger, Emma Dauterman, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Koblenz, Germany, October 2023.
  

• Grove: a Separation-Logic Library for Verifying Distributed Systems.
  Upamanyu Sharma, Ralf Jung, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Koblenz, Germany, October 2023.
  

• The K2 Architecture for Trustworthy Hardware Security Modules.
  Anish Athalye, M. Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Joseph Tassarotti.
  In Proceedings of the 2023 Workshop on Kernel Isolation, Safety and Verification (KISV), Koblenz, Germany, October 2023.
  

• Private web search with Tiptoe.
  Alexandra Henzinger, Emma Dauterman, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2023/1438, September 2023.
  

• Grove: a Separation-Logic Library for Verifying Distributed Systems (Extended Version).
  Upamanyu Sharma, Ralf Jung, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  arXiv:2309.03046 [cs.LO], September 2023.
  

• Verifying vMVCC, a high-performance transaction library using multi-version concurrency control.
  Yun-Sheng Chang, Ralf Jung, Upamanyu Sharma, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 17th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Boston, MA, July 2023.
  

• Leakage models are a leaky abstraction: the case for cycle-level verification of constant-time cryptography.
  Anish Athalye, M. Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Joseph Tassarotti.
  In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Programming Languages and Computer Architecture (PLARCH), Orlando, FL, June 2023.
  

• Aardvark: An Asynchronous Authenticated Dictionary with Short Proofs.
  Derek Leung, Yossi Gilad, Sergey Gorbunov, Leonid Reyzin, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Boston, MA, August 2022.
  

• Verifying the DaisyNFS concurrent and crash-safe file system with sequential reasoning.
  Tej Chajed, Joseph Tassarotti, Mark Theng, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, July 2022.
  

• Verifying Hardware Security Modules with Information-Preserving Refinement.
  Anish Athalye, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, July 2022.
  

• Groove: Flexible Metadata-Private Messaging.
  Ludovic Barman, Moshe Kol, David Lazar, Yossi Gilad, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, July 2022.
  

• GoJournal: a verified, concurrent, crash-safe journaling system.
  Tej Chajed, Joseph Tassarotti, Mark Theng, Ralf Jung, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 15th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Virtual conference, July 2021.
  

• rtlv: push-button verification of software on hardware.
  Noah Moroze, Anish Athalye, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Computer Architecture Research with RISC-V (CARRV), Virtual conference, June 2021.
  

• Compact Certificates of Collective Knowledge.
  Silvio Micali, Leonid Reyzin, Georgios Vlachos, Riad S. Wahby, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Virtual conference, May 2021.
  

• Compact Certificates of Collective Knowledge.
  Silvio Micali, Leonid Reyzin, Georgios Vlachos, Riad S. Wahby, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2020/1568, December 2020.
  

• Efficiently Mitigating Transient Execution Attacks using the Unmapped Speculation Contract.
  Jonathan Behrens, Anton Cao, Cel Skeggs, Adam Belay, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 14th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Virtual conference, November 2020.
  

• Notary: A Device for Secure Transaction Approval.
  Anish Athalye, Adam Belay, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  ACM GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications Review, 24(2):34–38, September 2020.
  

• Aardvark: A Concurrent Authenticated Dictionary with Short Proofs.
  Derek Leung, Yossi Gilad, Sergey Gorbunov, Leonid Reyzin, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2020/975, August 2020.
  

• Notary: A Device for Secure Transaction Approval.
  Anish Athalye, Adam Belay, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  USENIX ;login:, 45(1):12–16, March 2020.
  

• Verifying concurrent Go code in Coq with Goose.
  Tej Chajed, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Coq for Programming Languages (CoqPL), New Orleans, LA, January 2020.
  

• Yodel: Strong Metadata Security for Voice Calls.
  David Lazar, Yossi Gilad, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Huntsville, Ontario, Canada, October 2019.
  

• Verifying concurrent, crash-safe systems with Perennial.
  Tej Chajed, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Huntsville, Ontario, Canada, October 2019.
  

• Notary: A Device for Secure Transaction Approval.
  Anish Athalye, Adam Belay, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Huntsville, Ontario, Canada, October 2019.
  

• Argosy: Verifying layered storage systems with recovery refinement.
  Tej Chajed, Joseph Tassarotti, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), Phoenix, AZ, June 2019.
  

• Extracting and optimizing formally verified code for systems programming.
  Eleftherios Ioannidis, Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 11th Annual NASA Formal Methods Symposium (NFM), Houston, TX, May 2019.
  

• Vault: Fast Bootstrapping for the Algorand Cryptocurrency.
  Derek Leung, Adam Suhl, Yossi Gilad, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 2019 Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), San Diego, CA, February 2019.
  

• Verifying concurrent software using movers in CSPEC.
  Tej Chajed, M. Frans Kaashoek, Butler Lampson, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, October 2018.
  

• Proving confidentiality in a file system using DiskSec.
  Atalay İleri, Tej Chajed, Adam Chlipala, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, October 2018.
  (Previous version: 2018-10-08.)
  

• Karaoke: Distributed Private Messaging Immune to Passive Traffic Analysis.
  David Lazar, Yossi Gilad, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Carlsbad, CA, October 2018.
  

• A Revised and Verified Proof of the Scalable Commutativity Rule.
  Lillian Tsai, Eddie Kohler, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  arXiv:1809.09550 [cs.DC], September 2018.
  

• Vault: Fast Bootstrapping for Cryptocurrencies.
  Derek Leung, Adam Suhl, Yossi Gilad, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2018/269, March 2018.
  

• Veil: Private Browsing Semantics Without Browser-side Assistance.
  Frank Wang, James Mickens, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), San Diego, CA, February 2018.
  

• Verifying a high-performance crash-safe file system using a tree specification.
  Haogang Chen, Tej Chajed, Alex Konradi, Stephanie Wang, Atalay İleri, Adam Chlipala, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Shanghai, China, October 2017.
  

• Stadium: A Distributed Metadata-Private Messaging System.
  Nirvan Tyagi, Yossi Gilad, Derek Leung, Matei Zaharia, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Shanghai, China, October 2017.
  

• Scaling a file system to many cores using an operation log.
  Srivatsa S. Bhat, Rasha Eqbal, Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Shanghai, China, October 2017.
  

• Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies.
  Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Shanghai, China, October 2017.
  

• The Scalable Commutativity Rule: Designing Scalable Software for Multicore Processors.
  Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, Eddie Kohler, Robert T. Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Communications of the ACM, 60(8):83–90, August 2017.
  

• Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies.
  Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2017/454, May 2017.
  

• Certifying a file system using Crash Hoare Logic: Correctness in the presence of crashes.
  Tej Chajed, Haogang Chen, Adam Chlipala, M. Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Daniel Ziegler.
  Communications of the ACM, 60(4):75–84, April 2017.
  

• Oort: User-Centric Cloud Storage with Global Queries.
  Tej Chajed, Jon Gjengset, M. Frans Kaashoek, James Mickens, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2016-015, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, December 2016.
  

• Alpenhorn: Bootstrapping Secure Communication Without Leaking Metadata.
  David Lazar and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Savannah, GA, November 2016.
  (Previous version: 2016-10-05.)
  

• Alpenhorn: Bootstrapping Secure Communication Without Leaking Metadata (Extended Technical Report).
  David Lazar and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2016-013, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, October 2016.
  

• Stadium: A Distributed Metadata-Private Messaging System.
  Nirvan Tyagi, Yossi Gilad, Derek Leung, Matei Zaharia, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2016/943, September 2016.
  

• Report on the NSF Workshop on Formal Methods for Security.
  Stephen Chong, Joshua Guttman, Anupam Datta, Andrew Myers, Benjamin Pierce, Patrick Schaumont, Tim Sherwood, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  arXiv:1608.00678 [cs.CR], August 2016.
  

• Sieve: Cryptographically Enforced Access Control for User Data in Untrusted Clouds.
  Frank Wang, James Mickens, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan.
  In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), Santa Clara, CA, March 2016.
  

• A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection.
  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Armando Solar-Lezama.
  Communications of the ACM, 59(3):99–106, March 2016.
  

• Vuvuzela: Scalable Private Messaging Resistant to Traffic Analysis.
  Jelle van den Hooff, David Lazar, Matei Zaharia, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Monterey, CA, October 2015.
  

• Using Crash Hoare Logic for Certifying the FSCQ File System. (Best paper award.)
  Haogang Chen, Daniel Ziegler, Tej Chajed, Adam Chlipala, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Monterey, CA, October 2015.
  

• Guidelines for Using the CryptDB System Securely.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2015/979, October 2015.
  

• How to Compute With Data You Can't See.
  Raluca Ada Popa and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  IEEE Spectrum, 52(8):42–47, August 2015.
  

• Specifying Crash Safety for Storage Systems.
  Haogang Chen, Daniel Ziegler, Adam Chlipala, M. Frans Kaashoek, Eddie Kohler, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland, May 2015.
  

• Amber: Decoupling User Data from Web Applications.
  Tej Chajed, Jon Gjengset, Jelle van den Hooff, M. Frans Kaashoek, James Mickens, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland, May 2015.
  

• Hare: a file system for non-cache-coherent multicores.
  Charles Gruenwald III, Filippo Sironi, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 10th ACM EuroSys Conference, Bordeaux, France, April 2015.
  

• A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection.
  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Armando Solar-Lezama.
  ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 33(1):1:1–29, March 2015.
  

• Nail: A Practical Tool for Parsing and Generating Data Formats.
  Julian Bangert and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  USENIX ;login:, 40(1):24–30, February 2015.
  

• The Scalable Commutativity Rule: Designing Scalable Software for Multicore Processors.
  Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, Robert T. Morris, and Eddie Kohler.
  ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 32(4):10:1–47, January 2015.
  

• VerSum: Verifiable Computations over Large Public Logs.
  Jelle van den Hooff, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Scottsdale, AZ, November 2014.
  

• Nail: A practical tool for parsing and generating data formats.
  Julian Bangert and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Broomfield, CO, October 2014.
  

• Jitk: A Trustworthy In-Kernel Interpreter Infrastructure.
  Xi Wang, David Lazar, Nickolai Zeldovich, Adam Chlipala, and Zachary Tatlock.
  In Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Broomfield, CO, October 2014.
  

• Identifying information disclosure in web applications with retroactive auditing.
  Haogang Chen, Taesoo Kim, Xi Wang, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Broomfield, CO, October 2014.
  

• OpLog: a library for scaling update-heavy data structures.
  Silas Boyd-Wickizer, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2014-019, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, September 2014.
  

• Building Web Applications on Top of Encrypted Data Using Mylar.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Emily Stark, Jonas Helfer, Steven Valdez, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  USENIX ;login:, 29(4):22–27, August 2014.
  

• Why does cryptographic software fail? A case study and open problems.
  David Lazar, Haogang Chen, Xi Wang, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 5th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Beijing, China, June 2014.
  

• Nail: A practical interface generator for data formats.
  Julian Bangert and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Language-Theoretic Security (LangSec), San Jose, CA, May 2014.
  

• Building web applications on top of encrypted data using Mylar.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Emily Stark, Jonas Helfer, Steven Valdez, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  In Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), Seattle, WA, April 2014.
  (Previous version: 2014-02-26.)
  

• Pika: A Network Service for Multikernel Operating Systems.
  Nathan Z. Beckmann, Charles Gruenwald III, Christopher R. Johnson, Harshad Kasture, Filippo Sironi, Anant Agarwal, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2014-002, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, January 2014.
  

• Towards Optimization-Safe Systems: Analyzing the Impact of Undefined Behavior. (Best paper award.)
  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Armando Solar-Lezama.
  In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Farmington, PA, November 2013.
  

• Asynchronous intrusion recovery for interconnected web services.
  Ramesh Chandra, Taesoo Kim, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Farmington, PA, November 2013.
  

• The Scalable Commutativity Rule: Designing Scalable Software for Multicore Processors. (Best paper award.)
  Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, Robert T. Morris, and Eddie Kohler.
  In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Farmington, PA, November 2013.
  

• Authenticated Storage Using Small Trusted Hardware.
  Hsin-Jung Yang, Victor Costan, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Srinivas Devadas.
  In Proceedings of the ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop, Berlin, Germany, November 2013.
  

• Systematic Analysis of Defenses Against Return-Oriented Programming.
  Richard Skowyra, Kelly Casteel, Hamed Okhravi, Nickolai Zeldovich, and William Streilein.
  In Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses, Saint Lucia, October 2013.
  

• Processing Analytical Queries over Encrypted Data.
  Stephen Tu, M. Frans Kaashoek, Samuel Madden, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), Riva del Garda, Italy, August 2013.
  

• How to Run Turing Machines on Encrypted Data.
  Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Kalai, Raluca Ada Popa, Vinod Vaikuntanathan, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO), Santa Barbara, CA, August 2013.
  

• Multi-Key Searchable Encryption.
  Raluca Ada Popa and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2013/508, August 2013.
  

• Security bugs in embedded interpreters.
  Haogang Chen, Cody Cutler, Taesoo Kim, Yandong Mao, Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 4th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Singapore, July 2013.
  

• Optimizing unit test execution in large software programs using dependency analysis.
  Taesoo Kim, Ramesh Chandra, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 4th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Singapore, July 2013.
  

• Reusable Garbled Circuits and Succinct Functional Encryption.
  Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Kalai, Raluca Ada Popa, Vinod Vaikuntanathan, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 45th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), Palo Alto, CA, June 2013.
  

• Practical and effective sandboxing for non-root users.
  Taesoo Kim and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 2013 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, San Jose, CA, June 2013.
  

• An Ideal-Security Protocol for Order-Preserving Encoding.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Frank H. Li, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 34th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, San Francisco, CA, May 2013.
  

• How to Run Turing Machines on Encrypted Data.
  Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Kalai, Raluca Ada Popa, Vinod Vaikuntanathan, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2013/229, April 2013.
  

• RadixVM: Scalable address spaces for multithreaded applications.
  Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 8th ACM EuroSys Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, April 2013.
  (Previous version: 2013-03-04.)
  

• An Ideal-Security Protocol for Order-Preserving Encoding.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Frank H. Li, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2013/129, March 2013.
  

• Succinct Functional Encryption and Applications: Reusable Garbled Circuits and Beyond.
  Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Kalai, Raluca Ada Popa, Vinod Vaikuntanathan, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2012/733, December 2012.
  

• Improving Integer Security for Systems with Kint.
  Xi Wang, Haogang Chen, Zhihao Jia, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Hollywood, CA, October 2012.
  (Previous versions: 2012-09-11, 2012-09-17.)
  

• Efficient patch-based auditing for web application vulnerabilities.
  Taesoo Kim, Ramesh Chandra, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Hollywood, CA, October 2012.
  

• CryptDB: Processing Queries on an Encrypted Database.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Catherine M. S. Redfield, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  Communications of the ACM, 55(9):103–111, September 2012.
  

• Recovering from intrusions in distributed systems with Dare.
  Taesoo Kim, Ramesh Chandra, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Seoul, South Korea, July 2012.
  

• Undefined Behavior: What Happened to My Code?
  Xi Wang, Haogang Chen, Alvin Cheung, Zhihao Jia, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Seoul, South Korea, July 2012.
  (Previous version: 2012-07-12.)
  

• Non-scalable locks are dangerous.
  Silas Boyd-Wickizer, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the Linux Symposium, Ottawa, Canada, July 2012.
  

• Improving network connection locality on multicore systems.
  Aleksey Pesterev, Jacob Strauss, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Robert T. Morris.
  In Proceedings of the 7th ACM EuroSys Conference, Bern, Switzerland, April 2012.
  

• Cryptographic Treatment of CryptDB's Adjustable Join.
  Raluca Ada Popa and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2012-006, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, March 2012.
  

• Concurrent address spaces using RCU balanced trees.
  Austin T. Clements, M. Frans Kaashoek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), London, United Kingdom, March 2012.
  

• CPHash: A Cache-Partitioned Hash Table.
  Zviad Metreveli, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, New Orleans, LA, February 2012.
  

• Language Support for Efficient Computation over Encrypted Data.
  Meelap Shah, Emily Stark, Raluca Ada Popa, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Off the Beaten Track Workshop: Underrepresented Problems for Programming Language Researchers, Philadelphia, PA, January 2012.
  

• A Trigger-Based Middleware Cache for ORMs.
  Priya Gupta, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Samuel Madden.
  In Proceedings of the 12th International Middleware Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, December 2011.
  

• CPHash: A Cache-Partitioned Hash Table.
  Zviad Metreveli, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2011-051, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, November 2011.
  

• Making Information Flow Explicit in HiStar.
  Nickolai Zeldovich, Silas Boyd-Wickizer, Eddie Kohler, and David Mazières.
  Communications of the ACM, 54(11):93–101, November 2011.
  

• CryptDB: Protecting Confidentiality with Encrypted Query Processing.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Catherine M. S. Redfield, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Cascais, Portugal, October 2011.
  

• Software fault isolation with API integrity and multi-principal modules.
  Yandong Mao, Haogang Chen, Dong Zhou, Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Cascais, Portugal, October 2011.
  

• Intrusion Recovery for Database-backed Web Applications.
  Ramesh Chandra, Taesoo Kim, Meelap Shah, Neha Narula, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Cascais, Portugal, October 2011.
  

• Secure In-Band Wireless Pairing.
  Shyamnath Gollakota, Nabeel Ahmed, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Dina Katabi.
  In Proceedings of the 20th USENIX Security Symposium, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
  

• Experiences in Cyber Security Education: the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Capture-the-Flag Exercise.
  Joseph Werther, Michael Zhivich, Tim Leek, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
  

• Retroactive auditing.
  Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 2nd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Shanghai, China, July 2011.
  

• Linux kernel vulnerabilities: State-of-the-art defenses and open problems.
  Haogang Chen, Yandong Mao, Xi Wang, Dong Zhou, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 2nd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems, Shanghai, China, July 2011.
  

• A Software Approach to Unifying Multicore Caches.
  Silas Boyd-Wickizer, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2011-032, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, June 2011.
  

• Energy Management in Mobile Devices with the Cinder Operating System.
  Arjun Roy, Stephen M. Rumble, Ryan Stutsman, Philip Levis, David Mazières, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 6th ACM EuroSys Conference, Salzburg, Austria, April 2011.
  

• CryptDB: A Practical Encrypted Relational DBMS.
  Raluca Ada Popa, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Hari Balakrishnan.
  Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2011-005, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, January 2011.
  

• Relational Cloud: A Database-as-a-Service for the Cloud.
  Carlo Curino, Evan P. C. Jones, Raluca Ada Popa, Nirmesh Malviya, Eugene Wu, Sam Madden, Hari Balakrishnan, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR), Pacific Grove, CA, January 2011.
  

• Intrusion Recovery Using Selective Re-execution.
  Taesoo Kim, Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Vancouver, Canada, October 2010.
  

• An Analysis of Linux Scalability to Many Cores.
  Silas Boyd-Wickizer, Austin T. Clements, Yandong Mao, Aleksey Pesterev, M. Frans Kaashoek, Robert Morris, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Vancouver, Canada, October 2010.
  

• Making Linux Protection Mechanisms Egalitarian with UserFS.
  Taesoo Kim and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, DC, August 2010.
  

• Tolerating Malicious Device Drivers in Linux.
  Silas Boyd-Wickizer and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Boston, MA, June 2010.
  

• Separating Web Applications from User Data Storage with BStore. (Best paper award.)
  Ramesh Chandra, Priya Gupta, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the USENIX Conference on Web Application Development, Boston, MA, June 2010.
  

• Energy Management in Mobile Devices with the Cinder Operating System.
  Arjun Roy, Stephen M. Rumble, Ryan Stutsman, Philip Levis, David Mazières, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Technical Report CSTR 2010-02, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, June 2010.
  

• Locating cache performance bottlenecks using data profiling.
  Aleksey Pesterev, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Robert T. Morris.
  In Proceedings of the 5th ACM EuroSys Conference, Paris, France, April 2010.
  

• Apprehending Joule Thieves with Cinder.
  Stephen M. Rumble, Ryan Stutsman, Philip Levis, David Mazières, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 40(1):106–111, January 2010.
  

• Improving Application Security with Data Flow Assertions.
  Alexander Yip, Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Big Sky, MT, October 2009.
  

• Apprehending Joule Thieves with Cinder.
  Stephen M. Rumble, Ryan Stutsman, Philip Levis, David Mazières, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications on Mobile Handhelds, Barcelona, Spain, August 2009.
  

• Delegating Network Security Through More Information.
  Jad Naous, Ryan Stutsman, David Mazières, Nick McKeown, and Nickolai Zeldovich.
  In Proceedings of the Workshop on Research on Enterprise Networking, Barcelona, Spain, August 2009.
  

• Nemesis: Preventing Authentication and Access Control Vulnerabilities in Web Applications.
  Michael Dalton, Nickolai Zeldovich, and Christos Kozyrakis.
  In Proceedings of the 18th USENIX Security Symposium, Montreal, Canada, August 2009.
  

• Hardware Enforcement of Application Security Policies Using Tagged Memory.
  Nickolai Zeldovich, Hari Kannan, Michael Dalton, and Christos Kozyrakis.
  In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), San Diego, CA, December 2008.
  

• Securing Distributed Systems with Information Flow Control.
  Nickolai Zeldovich, Silas Boyd-Wickizer, and David Mazières.
  In Proceedings of the 5th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), San Francisco, CA, April 2008.
  

• Securing Untrustworthy Software Using Information Flow Control.
  Nickolai Zeldovich.
  Ph.D. Thesis, Stanford University, Department of Computer Science, October 2007.
  

• Making Information Flow Explicit in HiStar.
  Nickolai Zeldovich, Silas Boyd-Wickizer, Eddie Kohler, and David Mazières.
  In Proceedings of the 7th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Seattle, WA, November 2006.
  

• The Collective: A Cache-Based System Management Architecture.
  Ramesh Chandra, Nickolai Zeldovich, Constantine Sapuntzakis, and Monica S. Lam.
  In Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), Boston, MA, May 2005.
  

• Interactive Performance Measurement with VNCplay.
  Nickolai Zeldovich and Ramesh Chandra.
  In Proceedings of the 2005 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, FREENIX track, Anaheim, CA, April 2005.
  

• Virtual Appliances for Deploying and Maintaining Software.
  Constantine Sapuntzakis, David Brumley, Ramesh Chandra, Nickolai Zeldovich, Jim Chow, Monica S. Lam, and Mendel Rosenblum.
  In Proceedings of the 17th USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference (LISA), San Diego, CA, October 2003.
  

• Multiprocessor Support for Event-Driven Programs.
  Nickolai Zeldovich, Alexander Yip, Frank Dabek, Robert T. Morris, David Mazières, and M. Frans Kaashoek.
  In Proceedings of the 2003 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, San Antonio, TX, June 2003.
  

• Event-driven Programming for Robust Software.
  Frank Dabek, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, David Mazières, and Robert Morris.
  In Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop, Saint-Emilion, France, September 2002.
  

• Concurrency Control for Multi-Processor Event-Driven Systems.
  Nickolai Zeldovich.
  M.Eng. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, June 2002.
  

My research has been supported by Amazon AWS, Google, Quanta Computer, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NSF, DARPA, and Northrop Grumman.

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