VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Joshua Gancher
dblp:193/7166
· DBLP profile ↗
11ranked-venue papers
3as first author
9since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0003-2257-7073ORCID · corroborated
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Security and privacy · 8 · 2 first-author · 6 since 2021Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 3 · 1 first-author · 3 since 2021
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | ILA: Correctness via Type Checking for Fully Homomorphic EncryptionabstractRLWE-based Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) schemes add some small noise to the message during encryption. The noise accumulates with each homomorphic operation. When the noise exceeds a critical value, the FHE circuit produces an incorrect output. This makes developing FHE applications quite subtle, as one must closely track the noise to ensure correctness. However, existing libraries and compilers offer limited support to statically track the noise. Additionally, FHE circuits are also plagued by wraparound errors that are common in finite modulus arithmetic. These two limitations of existing compilers and libraries make FHE applications too difficult to develop with confidence. Tarakaram Gollamudi, Anitha Gollamudi, Joshua Gancher |
CCS | 3 |
| 2025 | Vest: Verified, Secure, High-Performance Parsing and Serialization for Rust
Pratap Singh, Zhengyao Lin, Jay Bosamiya, Joshua Gancher, Milijana Surbatovich, Bryan Parno |
USENIX Security Symposium | 5 |
| 2025 | Towards Practical, End-to-End Formally Verified X.509 Certificate Validators with Verdict
Zhengyao Lin, Michael McLoughlin, Pratap Singh, Rory Brennan-Jones, Paul Hitchcox, Joshua Gancher, Bryan Parno |
USENIX Security Symposium | 6 |
| 2025 | OwlC: Compiling Security Protocols to Verified, Secure, High-Performance Libraries
Pratap Singh, Joshua Gancher, Bryan Parno |
USENIX Security Symposium | 2 |
| 2024 | Secure Synthesis of Distributed Cryptographic ApplicationsabstractDeveloping secure distributed systems is difficult, and even harder when advanced cryptography must be used to achieve security goals. Following prior work, we advocate using secure program partitioning to synthesize cryptographic applications: instead of implementing a system of communicating processes, the programmer implements a centralized, sequential program, which is automatically compiled into a secure distributed version that uses cryptography. While this approach is promising, formal results for the security of such compilers are limited in scope. In particular, no security proof yet simultaneously addresses subtleties essential for robust, efficient applications: multiple cryptographic mechanisms, malicious corruption, and asynchronous communication. In this work, we develop a compiler security proof that handles these subtleties. Our proof relies on a novel unification of simulation-based security, information-flow control, choreographic programming, and sequentialization techniques for concurrent programs. While our proof targets hybrid protocols, which abstract cryptographic mechanisms as idealized functionalities, our approach offers a clear path toward leveraging Universal Composability to obtain end-to-end, modular security results with fully instantiated cryptographic mechanisms. Finally, following prior observations about simulation-based security, we prove that our result guarantees robust hyperproperty preservation, an important criterion for compiler correctness that preserves all source-level security properties in target programs. Cosku Acay, Joshua Gancher, Rolph Recto, Andrew C. Myers |
CSF | 2 |
| 2024 | FlowCert: Translation Validation for Asynchronous Dataflow via Dynamic Fractional PermissionsabstractCoarse-grained reconfigurable arrays (CGRAs) have gained attention in recent years due to their promising power efficiency compared to traditional von Neumann architectures. To program these architectures using ordinary languages such as C, a dataflow compiler must transform the original sequential, imperative program into an equivalent dataflow graph, composed of dataflow operators running in parallel. This transformation is challenging since the asynchronous nature of dataflow graphs allows out-of-order execution of operators, leading to behaviors not present in the original imperative programs. Weaddress this challenge by developing a translation validation technique for dataflow compilers to ensure that the dataflow program has the same behavior as the original imperative program on all possible inputs and schedules of execution. We apply this method to a state-of-the-art dataflow compiler targeting the RipTide CGRAarchitecture. Our tool uncovers 8 compiler bugs where the compiler outputs incorrect dataflow graphs, including a data race that is otherwise hard to discover via testing. After repairing these bugs, our tool verifies the correct compilation of all programs in the RipTide benchmark suite. Zhengyao Lin, Joshua Gancher, Bryan Parno |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 2 |
| 2023 | Owl: Compositional Verification of Security Protocols via an Information-Flow Type SystemabstractComputationally sound protocol verification tools promise to deliver full-strength cryptographic proofs for security protocols. Unfortunately, current tools lack either modularity or automation. We propose a new approach based on a novel use of information flow and refinement types for sound cryptographic proofs. Our framework, Owl, allows type-based modular descriptions of security protocols, wherein disjoint subprotocols can be programmed and automatically proved secure separately.We give a formal security proof for Owl via a core language which supports symmetric and asymmetric primitives, Diffie-Hellman operations, and hashing via random oracles. We also implement a type checker for Owl and a prototype extraction mechanism to Rust, and evaluate both on 14 case studies, including (simplified forms of) SSH key exchange and Kerberos. Joshua Gancher, Sydney Gibson, Pratap Singh, Samvid Dharanikota, Bryan Parno |
SP | 1 |
| 2023 | A Core Calculus for Equational Proofs of Cryptographic ProtocolsabstractMany proofs of interactive cryptographic protocols (e.g., as in Universal Composability) operate by proving the protocol at hand to be observationally equivalent to an idealized specification. While pervasive, formal tool support for observational equivalence of cryptographic protocols is still a nascent area of research. Current mechanization efforts tend to either focus on diff-equivalence, which establishes observational equivalence between protocols with identical control structures, or require an explicit witness for the observational equivalence in the form of a bisimulation relation. Our goal is to simplify proofs for cryptographic protocols by introducing a core calculus, IPDL, for cryptographic observational equivalences. Via IPDL, we aim to address a number of theoretical issues for cryptographic proofs in a simple manner, including probabilistic behaviors, distributed message-passing, and resource-bounded adversaries and simulators. We demonstrate IPDL on a number of case studies, including a distributed coin toss protocol, Oblivious Transfer, and the GMW multi-party computation protocol. All proofs of case studies are mechanized via an embedding of IPDL into the Coq proof assistant. Joshua Gancher, Kristina Sojakova, Xiong Fan, Elaine Shi, J. Gregory Morrisett |
Proc. ACM Program. Lang. | 1 |
| 2021 | Viaduct: an extensible, optimizing compiler for secure distributed programsabstractModern distributed systems involve interactions between principals with limited trust, so cryptographic mechanisms are needed to protect confidentiality and integrity. At the same time, most developers lack the training to securely employ cryptography. We present Viaduct, a compiler that transforms high-level programs into secure, efficient distributed realizations. Viaduct's source language allows developers to declaratively specify security policies by annotating their programs with information flow labels. The compiler uses these labels to synthesize distributed programs that use cryptography efficiently while still defending the source-level security policy. The Viaduct approach is general, and can be easily extended with new security mechanisms. Cosku Acay, Rolph Recto, Joshua Gancher, Andrew C. Myers, Elaine Shi |
PLDI | 3 |
| 2018 | Symbolic Proofs for Lattice-Based CryptographyabstractSymbolic methods have been used extensively for proving security of cryptographic protocols in the Dolev-Yao model, and more recently for proving security of cryptographic primitives and constructions in the computational model. However, existing methods for proving security of cryptographic constructions in the computational model often require significant expertise and interaction, or are fairly limited in scope and expressivity. This paper introduces a symbolic approach for proving security of cryptographic constructions based on the Learning With Errors assumption (Regev, STOC 2005). Such constructions are instances of lattice-based cryptography and are extremely important due to their potential role in post-quantum cryptography. Following (Barthe, Grégoire and Schmidt, CCS 2015), our approach combines a computational logic and deducibility problems---a standard tool for representing the adversary's knowledge, the Dolev-Yao model. The computational logic is used to capture (indistinguishability-based) security notions and drive the security proofs whereas deducibility problems are used as side-conditions to control that rules of the logic are applied correctly. We then use AutoLWE, an implementation of the logic, to deliver very short or even automatic proofs of several emblematic constructions, including CPA-PKE (Gentry et al., STOC 2008), (Hierarchical) Identity-Based Encryption (Agrawal et al. Eurocrypt 2010), Inner Product Encryption (Agrawal et al. Asiacrypt 2011), CCA-PKE (Micciancio et al., Eurocrypt 2012). The main technical novelty beyond AutoLWE is a set of (semi-)decision procedures for deducibility problems, using extensions of Gröbner basis computations for subalgebras in the (non-)commutative setting (instead of ideals in the commutative setting). Our procedures cover the theory of matrices, which is required for lattice-based assumption, as well as the theory of non-commutative rings, fields, and Diffie-Hellman exponentiation, in its standard, bilinear and multilinear forms. Additionally, AutoLWE supports oracle-relative assumptions, which are used specifically to apply (advanced forms of) the Leftover Hash Lemma, an information-theoretical tool widely used in lattice-based proofs. Gilles Barthe, Xiong Fan, Joshua Gancher, Benjamin Grégoire, Charlie Jacomme, Elaine Shi |
CCS | 3 |
| 2017 | Externally Verifiable Oblivious RAMabstractAbstract We present the idea of externally verifiable oblivious RAM (ORAM). Our goal is to allow a client and server carrying out an ORAM protocol to have disputes adjudicated by a third party, allowing for the enforcement of penalties against an unreliable or malicious server. We give a security definition that guarantees protection not only against a malicious server but also against a client making false accusations. We then give modifications of the Path ORAM [15] and Ring ORAM [9] protocols that meet this security definition. These protocols both have the same asymptotic runtimes as the semi-honest original versions and require the external verifier to be involved only when the client or server deviates from the protocol. Finally, we implement externally verified ORAM, along with an automated cryptocurrency contract to use as the external verifier. Joshua Gancher, Adam Groce, Alex Ledger |
Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol. | 1 |