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Sabine Oechsner

@proofnerd.bsky.social

268 followers 218 following 79 posts

cryptography and pretty proofs | PL-curious | everything is MPC | assistant professor @ VU Amsterdam soechsner.de

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Fascinated by this M.C. Escher-esque suitcase on the Charles de Gaulle Airport website

An AI slop picture of suitcases at an airport.

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

👀

Screenshot from the blog post:

Zero-knowledge systems are an incredible technology with many applications, but their use introduces a different set of risks than traditional approaches. They aren’t a magic wand that eliminates trust; instead, they redistribute trust from an original domain, such as the opinions of scientific experts, to trust in programming languages, compilers, proof systems, and cryptography experts. There are many frontiers that are considering the benefits of zero-knowledge, including electronic voting and age verification, but it’s also critical to consider the risks and make plans for what happens when this technology fails.

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

AV team knows the struggle

A flipped over display. The label on the back says "Flip the display for equipment control"

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

New paper with Vitor Pereira and Peter Scholl (@schollster.bsky.social)! We found flaws in a supposedly formally verified security proof of LPZK, leading to attacks on soundness and zk. The culprit: a mismatch between definitions in their code and the original LPZK papers. cic.iacr.org/p/2/3/24

Screenshot from CiC website:

Who Verifies the Verifiers? Lessons Learned from Formally Verified Line-Point Zero-Knowledge

Authors Sabine Oechsner, Vitor Pereira, Peter Scholl

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

test test test

An empty beach volleyball court. The banner on the fence says "Volleybalvelddoek test tekst 120 pt. Volleybalvelddoek test tekst 60 pt."

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Super excited that CSF 2025 invited me as one of their keynote speakers! I got to talk about the tension between theory and practice when studying the security of MPC protocols. (Thanks to @owenarden.bsky.social for the photo!)

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Do you want to advertise your work on PL techniques for software security? Consider submitting to PLAS! plas25.github.io *deadline June 20 AoE* No formal proceedings, so you can present ideas or published work. I really enjoy this type of format because of the focus on discussion and community.

Website screenshot:

20th Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security (PLAS 2025)
Co-located with CCS 2025
October 13, 2025
Taipei, Taiwan

Overview
PLAS explores the use of programming language and program analysis techniques to improve software security across compilers, machine learning models, and smart contracts. It promotes speculative, forward-looking ideas and insightful discussions at the intersection of programming languages and security.

Scope
- Side-channel vulnerability detection and elimination
- Verification techniques applied to adversarial learning and smart contracts
- Software isolation (e.g., SFI, sandboxing)
- Compiler/runtime-based hardening and monitoring
- Program analysis, binary analysis, and fuzzing
- Security enforcement mechanisms
- Cryptographic protocol verification
- Information flow and access control
- Security in web, IoT, and cloud programming languages

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Looking forward to the REAL best papers 😎

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

We wrapped up CAPS 2025 with a round table about the state of computer-aided cryptography tools. If you missed it, you can find all the material from the day on the workshop website caps-workshop.com.

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Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

The list of accepted talks for ProTeCS 2025 is now online. We are looking forward to exciting talks about cryptographic proofs and proof techniques. Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal! protecs-workshop.gitlab.io/accepted

List of ProTeCS accepted talks - Part 1:

- Lazy “Twenty Questions” as a Proof Principle — How a pen-and-paper one-liner becomes an EasyCrypt library (François Dupressoir, University of Bristol)
- Is it better or worse (UC-wise) (Saskia Bayreuther, KASTEL Security Research Labs, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
- Special Soundness of Non-Interactive Polynomial Commitment Schemes (Janno Siim, University of Tartu)
- Towards formally verifying the security reductions of the TLS 1.3 key schedule in SSBee (Amirhosein Rajabi, Aalto University)
- What can the Algebraic Group Model tell us about proof techniques in the Generic Group Model? (Jake Januzelli, Oregon State University)

List of ProTeCS accepted talks - Part 2:

- Privacy Proofs for Anonymous Communication Networks (Christoph Coijanovic, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))
- Expected (polynomial) time in cryptography (Michael Klooß, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
- Commit-and-Prove System for Vectors and Applications to Threshold Signing (Cavit Özbay, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam)
- The Power of Halting in Security Games (Igors Stepanovs)
- The Humble Power of the T-tranformation (Hans Heum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

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