Sabine Oechsner

@proofnerd.bsky.social

254 Followers 208 Following

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

An AI slop picture of suitcases at an airport.
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.
A flipped over display. The label on the back says "Flip the display for equipment control"
Screenshot from CiC website: Who Verifies the Verifiers? Lessons Learned from Formally Verified Line-Point Zero-Knowledge Authors Sabine Oechsner, Vitor Pereira, Peter Scholl
An empty beach volleyball court. The banner on the fence says "Volleybalvelddoek test tekst 120 pt. Volleybalvelddoek test tekst 60 pt."
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.
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)