Hojoon Lee
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
I am an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, where I lead the Systems Security Lab. Before joining SKKU in September 2019, I spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at CISPA, advised by Prof. Michael Backes. I received my Ph.D. from KAIST in 2018, advised by Prof. Brent Byunghoon Kang, and my B.S. from The University of Texas at Austin. My research retrofits security into computing systems against today’s advanced threats: I look for where existing defenses fail and design new principles for defense that fit real hardware and real software.
Research interests
- Operating System Security
- Trusted Execution Environments
- Program Analysis
- Software Fault Isolation
- Secure Computation in the Cloud
Professional Appointments
Sungkyunkwan UniversitySep 2024 – present
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Sungkyunkwan UniversitySep 2019 – Aug 2024
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information SecuritySep 2018 – Sep 2019
Postdoctoral Researcher (Advised by Prof. Michael Backes)
Education
KAISTSep 2013 – Feb 2018
Ph.D. in Information Security (Advisor: Prof. Brent Byunghoon Kang)
Dissertation: A Study on Design, Implementation, and Optimizations of External Hardware-based Kernel Integrity Monitor
KAISTSep 2011 – Aug 2013
M.S. in Information Security
The University of Texas at AustinSep 2006 – Dec 2010
B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Awards and Honors
ACM CCS Distinguished Paper Award2024
ACM CCS Distinguished Paper Award2023
Microsoft Research Asia PhD Fellowship2015
Backwoon Scholarship2013
Publications
OBLIVIAC: A Principled Virtual Architecture for Oblivious Computation
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2027 IEEE S&P (to appear)
RunaSan: A Rust-Native Sanitizer for Precise and Context-Sensitive Sanitization
ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference 2026 ATC (to appear)
Hardening Programs with Data Value Space Randomization of Semantically Arbitrary Values
ACM SIGOPS Annual Technical Conference 2026 ATC (to appear)
eMPAC: Unlocking Full Potential of Pointer Authentication in Microcontrollers with Fat Pointers
PIM-ORAM: Towards Oblivious RAM Primitives in Commodity Processing-In-Memory
IncognitOS: A Practical Unikernel Design for Full-System Obfuscation in Confidential Virtual Machines
uMMU: Securing Data Confidentiality with Unobservable Memory Subsystem
(In)visible Privacy Indicator: Security Analysis of Privacy Indicator on Android Devices
RustSan: Retrofitting AddressSanitizer for Efficient Sanitization of Rust
GENESIS: A Generalizable, Efficient, and Secure Intra-kernel Privilege Separation
Capacity: Cryptographically-Enforced In-process Capabilities for Modern ARM Architectures
Towards Scalable and Configurable Simulation for Disaggregated Architecture
DID We Miss Anything?: Towards Privacy-Preserving Decentralized ID Architecture
SE-PIM: In-Memory Acceleration of Data-Intensive Confidential Computing
Harnessing the x86 Intermediate Rings for Intra-Process Isolation
Confidential Machine Learning Computation in Untrusted Environments: A Systems Security Perspective
IEEE Access 2021
paper
A Comprehensive Analysis of Today's Malware and Its Distribution Network: Common Adversary Strategies and Implications
IEEE Access 2021
paper
EmuID: Detecting Presence of Emulation through Microarchitectural Characteristic on ARM
Elsevier Computers & Security 2021
paper
On the Analysis of Byte-Granularity Heap Randomization
Lord of the x86 Rings: A Portable User Mode Privilege Separation Architecture on x86
A Dynamic Per-context Verification of Kernel Address Integrity from External Monitors
KI-Mon ARM: A Hardware-assisted Event-triggered Monitoring Platform for Mutable Kernel Object
Detecting and Preventing Kernel Rootkit Attacks with Bus Snooping
ATRA: Address Translation Redirection Attack Against Hardware-based External Monitors
KI-Mon: A Hardware-assisted Event-triggered Monitoring Platform for Mutable Kernel Object
Vigilare: Toward Snoop-based Kernel Integrity Monitor
Teaching
SWE2001
System Program S21, F21, S22, F22, F23, S24
SWE3009
Internet Services and Information Security S21, S22, S23, S24
SWE3025
Introduction to Information Security S20
ESW4010
Special Topics in Systems Security F21, F22, S23
SWE3028
Capstone Design Project F20, F23
GEDT019
Basis and Practice in Programming F20
Grants
Study on Automated Logical Vulnerability Analysis via Security Policy Oracle Inference2026 – 2029
Principal Investigator · National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Basic Research Laboratory (기초연구실)
Oblivious Computation Framework for Confidential Computing in CloudFeb 2022 – Feb 2026
Principal Investigator · National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Outstanding Early-Career Researcher (우수신진연구)
Research and Development of Efficient Fuzzing Techniques for RustAug 2023 – Aug 2024
Principal Investigator · Samsung Mobile eXperience (MX) Business, Samsung Electronics
Research of Platform Security for Disaggregated Cloud ArchitectureApr 2020 – Apr 2023
Institutional Principal Investigator · IITP, Global Leading Technology Development Project for Information Security
Security Coprocessor Designs for Processing-In-MemoryFeb 2020 – Feb 2022
Principal Investigator · National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Outstanding Early-Career Researcher (우수신진연구)
Emulator-based Android Kernel Device Driver Vulnerability AnalysisApr 2022 – Oct 2022
Principal Investigator · National Security Research Institute (NSRI)
Security Analysis of Memory Protection Methods on AARCH64Apr 2022 – Oct 2022
Principal Investigator · National Security Research Institute (NSRI)