Hello!

I am a research engineer at Intel Corporation, where I work on platform security technologies, software at the hardware/software interface (firmware, OS kernel, drivers), and CPU architecture/ISA extensions.

I received my M.S (2015) and PhD (2018) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and B.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Addis Ababa University (2011).

Blog Posts

Mitigating Spectre Attacks on Software Sandboxes (Using Intel Memory Protection Keys)

Academic Publications

Reducing the Overhead of Authenticated Memory Encryption Using Delta Encoding and ECC Memory [PDF]

Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Todd Austin
Design Automation Conference 2018 (DAC-2018)

Cold Boot Attacks are Still Hot: Security Analysis of Memory Scramblers in Modern Processors [PDF]

Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Misiker Tadesse Aga, Reetuparna Das, Todd Austin
High Performance Computer Architecture 2017 (HPCA-2017)

Exploring Specialized Near-Memory Processing for Data Intensive Operations [PDF]

Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Tao Yang, Reetuparna Das, Todd Austin
Design, Automation and Test in Europe 2016 (DATE-2016)

ANVIL: Software-Based Protection Against Next-Generation Rowhammer Attacks [PDF]

Zelalem Aweke, Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Rui Qiao, Mathew Hicks, Reetuparna Das, Mark Seaborn, Yossef Oren, Todd Austin
Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS-2016)

Improving ECE Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries Using the Mobile Studio Technology and Pedagogy [PDF]

Yacob Astatke, Craig J. Scott, Jumoke Oluwakemi Ladeji-Osias, Kenneth A Connor, Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Albert Edward Sweets Jr., Farzad Moazzami
120th American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference (ASEE-2013)

SNIFFER: A High-Accuracy Malware Detector for Enterprise-Based Systems [PDF]

Evan Chavis, Harrison Davis, Yijun Hou, Matthew Hicks, Salessawi Ferede Yitbarek, Todd Austin, Valeria Bertacco
2nd International Verification and Security Workshop (IVSW-2017)

Other Projects

Runtime Profiler for Near-Memory Scheduling [PDF]

Due to the thermal constraints of 3D stacked systems, it is not feasible to integrate aggressive out-of-order cores into 3D stacked memories. In this work, we present a low-overhead runtime profiler that analyzes running programs to identify regions of an application that would benefit from low-power, in-order cores placed in the 3D package - instead of running on an aggressive out-of-order core.

ComPWNED [Code]

A very compact (~550MB) bloom filter representation of ~320 million passwords that have been breached and exposed online. You can integrate this with your application and inform users their passwords are weak upon sign up or login.

A Synthesizable Out-of-Order RISC Core (Course Project) [PDF]