PhD Student Earns Prestigious Google Fellowship in Security

Miro Haller (PhD ’28), a PhD student in the University of California San Diego’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and a CNS student, has been awarded a 2024 Google Fellowship in Security, Privacy and Abuse Prevention. He is one of six graduate students worldwide recognized in the category this year.

Haller’s research employs mathematical techniques at the intersection of applied cryptography, system security, and privacy. He leverages attacks to identify the root causes of cryptography failures in practice. From there, he builds or improves systems to address these failures.

“I aim to contribute to improving the security and privacy of deployed systems by putting them to the test and identifying cryptographic vulnerabilities. Furthermore, I challenge the status quo and contribute ideas to improve it,” said Haller.

Haller is a member of CSE’s Security and Cryptography research group and is advised by Associate Professor Nadia Heninger. The group conducts research in areas spanning from the theoretical foundations of cryptography to protocols, algorithms, and systems and network security.

Most recently, Haller contributed to the discovery of the Blast-RADIUS vulnerability in the RADIUS authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) protocol. The research team led by Heninger, Haller, and fellow graduate student Adam Suhl, investigated the Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol and exposed a decade-long security risk for tens of thousands of networked devices.

Authors of the paper “RADIUS/UDP Considered Harmful” include researchers from Cloudfare, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, BastionZero and Microsoft Research. The team presented their findings at the USENIX Security 2024 conference, and more than 90 vendors have been involved in a coordinated disclosure and issued security bulletins.

Haller’s previous achievements include a Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE S&P 2023 for research on encryption and an ETH Medal for outstanding master’s thesis. He was also a research assistant at the Privacy Preserving Systems Lab of ETH Zurich and triple qualified (2016, 2017, 2019) in the European Cyber Security Challenge for the Swiss National Team.

The Google PhD Fellowship Program was created to recognize promising PhD candidates worldwide who seek to influence the future of technology. Recipients receive a monetary award to cover expenses and provide a stipend and are matched with a Google Research Mentor.

By Kimberley Clementi