Jana Hofmann

I’m a tenure-track faculty at Max-Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP), where I lead the group for Foundations of Information Security and Trust. I investigate how to establish trust in information systems by giving strong security and privacy guarantees, for both hardware and software. My work focuses on detecting, specifying, and preventing information leakage through microarchitectural side channels. I develop specification languages and models, proof techniques, and testing approaches for black-box systems.

Previously, I was a researcher at Azure Research, Microsoft, where I worked on detection mechanisms and defenses for microarchitectural side-channels. I obtained my PhD from Saarland University (while working at CISPA) in 2022, where I was advised by Bernd Finkbeiner. My thesis was awarded with Saarland University’s Dr.-Eduard-Martin prize for the best computer science dissertation of the year. A 10-page summary of my thesis (with a focus on logics) can be found here.

open positions

I am hiring! I welcome applications for PhD and postdoc positions. Write me an email if you are interested in systems security and/or formal methods! Please include your CV and your university transcripts. I also offer Bachelor’s and Master’s theses.

news

Apr 12, 2026	I am a Co-PC chair of FCS@CSF@FLoC’26, the workshop on Foundations of Computer Security. Consider submitting past or ongoing work (either short or long papers).
Mar 15, 2026	I’m very happy to welcome Darius and Brian, who joined the group as Ph.D. researchers!
Oct 01, 2025	I am a Co-PC chair of PLAS@CCS’25, the Programming Languages and Analysis for Security workshop at CCS. Join us at CCS’25 in Taipei!
Jul 15, 2025	After a long embargo, our paper Enter, Exit, Page Fault, Leak: Testing Isolation Boundaries for Microarchitectural Leaks is available now. The paper describes Transient Scheduler Attacks that can leak data across security boundaries.

older news

recent publications

S&P

Enter, Exit, Page Fault, Leak: Testing Isolation Boundaries for Microarchitectural Leaks

Oleksii Oleksenko, Flavien Solt, Cédric Fournet, Jana Hofmann, Boris Köpf, and 1 more author

CoRR, 2025

Accepted at S&P 2025, appears at S&P 2026 due to embargo

DOI Bib

@article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-2507-06039,
  author = {Oleksenko, Oleksii and Solt, Flavien and Fournet, C{\'{e}}dric and Hofmann, Jana and K{\"{o}}pf, Boris and Volos, Stavros},
  title = {Enter, Exit, Page Fault, Leak: Testing Isolation Boundaries for Microarchitectural
                    Leaks},
  journal = {CoRR},
  volume = {abs/2507.06039},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.06039},
  doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2507.06039},
  eprinttype = {arXiv},
  timestamp = {Tue, 12 Aug 2025 21:29:32 +0200},
  biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/corr/abs-2507-06039.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
  note = {Accepted at S\&P 2025, appears at S\&P 2026 due to embargo},
}

CCS

Principled Microarchitectural Isolation on Cloud CPUs

Stavros Volos, Cédric Fournet, Jana Hofmann, Boris Köpf, and Oleksii Oleksenko

In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2024

Distinguished Paper Award DOI Bib

Received distinguished paper award at CCS’24

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ccs/VolosFHKO24,
  author = {Volos, Stavros and Fournet, C{\'{e}}dric and Hofmann, Jana and K{\"{o}}pf, Boris and Oleksenko, Oleksii},
  editor = {Luo, Bo and Liao, Xiaojing and Xu, Jun and Kirda, Engin and Lie, David},
  title = {Principled Microarchitectural Isolation on Cloud CPUs},
  booktitle = {{ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and
                    Communications Security},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1145/3658644.3690183},
}

CCS

Gaussian Elimination of Side-Channels: Linear Algebra for Memory Coloring

Jana Hofmann, Cédric Fournet, Boris Köpf, and Stavros Volos

In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2024

DOI Bib

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ccs/HofmannFKV24,
  author = {Hofmann, Jana and Fournet, C{\'{e}}dric and K{\"{o}}pf, Boris and Volos, Stavros},
  editor = {Luo, Bo and Liao, Xiaojing and Xu, Jun and Kirda, Engin and Lie, David},
  title = {Gaussian Elimination of Side-Channels: Linear Algebra for Memory Coloring},
  booktitle = {{ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and
                    Communications Security},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1145/3658644.3690263},
}

more publications