Luke Valenta

Computer security and applied cryptography researcher

Interests

Computer Security, Applied Cryptography, Privacy, Distributed Systems

Education

University of Pennsylvania

• Ph.D. computer science, advised by Nadia Heninger Sep 2014 - May 2019
• M.S. computer science, GPA 3.93 Sep 2014 - May 2016

University of Maryland

• B.S. computer science, B.S. mathematics, GPA 4.0 Sep 2011 - May 2014

Frostburg State University

• Double major physics and mathematics, GPA 4.0 Sep 2009 - May 2011

Industry Experience

July 2019 - present Systems Engineer - Cryptography, Cloudflare

May 2018 - Jul 2018 Cryptography Engineering Intern, Cloudflare

• Built mitmengine, a tool for detecting HTTPS interception
• Expanded data processing pipeline for cryptographic analysis of TLS messages
• Gathered and processed data on customer geo-blocking behavior (see 403 Forbidden paper)

Jun 2017 - Aug 2017 Ph.D. Intern, Advanced Security Research Group, Cisco Systems

• Built SSH and IKE modules for the Joy network security monitor

Publications

A list is also available on Google Scholar.

• SIGCOMM 2023 Global, Passive Detection of Connection Tampering. Ram Sundara Raman, Louis-Henri Merino, Kevin Bock, Marwan Fayed, Dave Levin, Nick Sullivan, Luke Valenta
• IMC 2022 Respect the ORIGIN! a best-case evaluation of connection coalescing in the wild. Sudheesh Singanamalla, Talha Paracha, Suleman Ahmad, Jonathan Hoyland, Luke Valenta, Yevgen Safronov, Peter Wu, Andrew Galloni, Kurtis Heimerl, Nick Sullivan, Christopher A. Wood, Marwan Fayed
• IMC 2022 Toppling top lists: Evaluating the accuracy of popular website lists. Kimberly Ruth, Deepak Kumar, Brandon Wang, Luke Valenta, Zakir Durumeric
• USENIX Sec 2022 Might I Get Pwned: A Second Generation Compromised Credential Checking Service. Bijeeta Pal, Mazharul Islam, Marina Sanusi Bohuk, Nick Sullivan, Luke Valenta, Tara Whalen, Christopher Wood, Thomas Ristenpart, Rahul Chatterjee
• LatinCrypt 2021 Implementing and Measuring KEMTLS. Sofía Celi, Armando Faz-Hernández, Nick Sullivan, Goutam Tamvada, Luke Valenta, Thom Wiggers, Bas Westerbaan, Christopher A. Wood
• IMC 2018 403 Forbidden: A Global View of CDN Geoblocking. Allison McDonald, Matthew Bernhard, Luke Valenta, Benjamin VanderSloot, Will Scott, Nick Sullivan, J. Alex Halderman, Roya Ensafi
• EuroS&P 2018 In search of CurveSwap: Measuring elliptic curve implementations in the wild. Luke Valenta, Nick Sullivan, Antonio Sanso, Nadia Heninger.
• CCS 2017 May the Fourth Be With You: A Microarchitectural Side Channel Attack on Several Real-World Applications of Curve25519. Daniel Genkin, Luke Valenta, Yuval Yarom.
• PQCrypto 2017 Post-quantum RSA. Daniel J. Bernstein, Nadia Heninger, Paul Lou, Luke Valenta.
• NDSS 2017 Measuring small subgroup attacks against Diffie-Hellman. Luke Valenta, David Adrian, Antonio Sanso, Shaanan Cohney, Joshua Fried, Marcella Hastings, J. Alex Halderman, Nadia Heninger.
• USENIX Sec 2016 DROWN: Breaking TLS using SSLv2. Nimrod Aviram, Sebastian Schinzel, Juraj Somorovsky, Nadia Heninger, Maik Dankel, Jens Steube, Luke Valenta, David Adrian, J. Alex Halderman, Viktor Dukhovni, Emilia Käsper, Shaanan Cohney, Susanne Engels, Christof Paar, Yuval Shavitt. (site)
• FC 2016 Factoring as a Service. Luke Valenta, Shaanan Cohney, Joshua Fried, Satya Boddulari, Nadia Heninger. (site)
• CCS 2015 Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice. David Adrian, Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Zakir Durumeric, Pierrick Gaudry, Matthew Green, J. Alex Halderman, Nadia Heninger, Drew Springall, Emmanuel Thomé, Luke Valenta, Benjamin VanderSloot, Eric Wustrow, Santiago Zanella-Béguelin, and Paul Zimmermann. Best paper award. (site)
• SIGCOMM 2015 Alibi Routing. Dave Levin, Youndo Lee, Luke Valenta, Zhihao Li, Victoria Lai, Cristian Lumezanu, Neil Spring, Bobby Bhattacharjee. (site)
• BITCOIN 2015 Blindcoin: Blinded, Accountable Mixes for Bitcoin. Luke Valenta, Brendan Rowan.

Preferred Languages

Go, Python, Rust, C

Operating Systems

UNIX, Linux, Android

Awards

• Oct 2016 Finalist, Facebook Internet Defense Prize
• Aug 2016 Pwnie Award - Best Cryptographic Attack, Black Hat
• Oct 2015 Best Paper Award, ACM CCS
• Aug 2015 Pwnie Award - Most Innovative Research, Black Hat
• Sep 2013 Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar
• Sep 2013 John D. Gannon Scholarship
• Sep 2012 - May 2013 University of Maryland Computer Science Departmental Honors
• Sep 2012 Jeffrey C. and Sandra W. Huskamp Computer Science Scholarship
• Sep 2012 Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, College Park Chapter
• Sep 2010 Kappa Mu Epsilon Mathematics Honor Society
• Sep 2011 - May 2014 Dean’s List, University of Maryland
• Sep 2009 - May 2011 Dean’s List, Frostburg State University

Academic Services

• USENIX Sec 2019 28th Usenix Security Symposium, program committee
• FC 2019 Financial Cryptography and Data Security, program committee
• BITCOIN 2018 Workshop on Bitcoin and Blockchain Research, program committee
• BITCOIN 2017 Workshop on Bitcoin and Blockchain Research, program committee
• PETS 2017.4 Privacy Enhancing Technologies, external reviewer

Other Services

• 2017 - 2018 Computer and Information Science Graduate Association, University of Pennsylvania, co-chair
• 2016 - 2017 Graduate Student Engineering Group, University of Pennsylvania, president
• 2015 - 2016 Graduate Student Engineering Group, University of Pennsylvania, vice president
• 2014 - present Security Lab, University of Pennsylvania, sysadmin
• 2014 - present Security Reading Group, University of Pennsylvania, organizer

Conference Talks

• EuroS&P 2018 In search of CurveSwap: Measuring elliptic curve implementations in the wild. (slides)
• CCS 2017 May the Fourth Be With You: A Microarchitectural Side Channel Attack on Several Real-World Applications of Curve25519. (slides) (video)
• NDSS 2017 Measuring small subgroup attacks against Diffie-Hellman. (slides) (video)
• FC 2016 Factoring as a Service. (slides)
• BITCOIN 2015 Blindcoin: Blinded, Accountable Mixes for Bitcoin. (slides)

Other Talks

• Cloudflare Connect 2023 What security leaders need to know about post-quantum cryptography. (slides)
• BlackHat USA 2019 Monsters in the Middleboxes: Building Tools for Detecting HTTPS Interception. (slides)
• BlackHat EU 2018 In search of CurveSwap: Measuring elliptic curve implementations in the wild. (slides)
• Nov 2016 Factoring as a Service. Boston University Security Group.
• Mar 2015 How Bitcoin Works. Net Tuesday Philly Meetup. (slides)

Teaching

• Fall 2017 CIS551: Computer and Network Security, University of Pennsylvania, TA
• Fall 2016 CIS551: Computer and Network Security, University of Pennsylvania, TA
• Spring 2016 CIS331: Computer Security, University of Pennsylvania, TA
• Fall 2015 CIS556: Cryptography, University of Pennsylvania, TA
• Fall 2013 CMSC216: Introduction to Computer Systems, University of Maryland, TA
• Fall 2010 - Spring 2011 MATH237: Calculus II, Frostburg State University, tutor
• Fall 2010 - Spring 2011 MATH236: Calculus I, Frostburg State University, tutor

Relevant Coursework

Computer Networks, Algorithms, Programming Handheld Devices, Network Security, Programming Languages, Cryptography, Computer Architecture, Discrete Structures, Computer Systems, Object Oriented Programming, Machine Learning

Additional Activities

• Nov 2014, Nov 2016 Mr. and Mrs. Penn Bodybuilding Competition, participant
• Sep 2011 - May 2014 UMD Gymkana Troupe (gymnastics), member
• Sep 2013 PennApps Hackathon, participant
• Nov 2012 ACM Mid-Atlantic Regional Programming Contest, ninth place
• Sep 2012 - May 2014 UMD Mobile Applications Developers Club, member