Dr. Petar Tsankov

Senior Researcher

petar.tsankov@inf.ethz.ch
CAB H81.1
https://www.sri.inf.ethz.ch/people/petar
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About me

I am a senior researcher and lecturer at the Secure, Reliable, and Intelligent Systems Lab at ETH Zurich. My work centers around security and privacy of modern systems (deep learning, smart contracts, programmable networks) and combines techniques from the areas of programming languages, symbolic reasoning, and machine learning. As part of my research, I have co-developed several popular system, including AI2, VerX, Securify, ChainCode Scanner, DeGuard, DEBIN, SPIRE, SyNET, NetComplete, and others. I have co-founded ChainSecurity, an ETH spin-off that became a leader in formal smart contract audits. ChainSecurity was acquired by PwC Switzerland in January 2020.

I obtained my PhD and Master's degree from ETH Zurich in 2016 and 2012, respectively, and my Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech in 2010. My research has received several prestigious awards, including the John Atanasoff Award, awarded by the President of Bulgaria (Photo, Award video: , Bloomberg TV: ) and the Best Undergraduate Researcher in Computer Science at Georgia Tech (Award video: ).

AI Survey

I'm currently studying the challenges in building robust and performant AI models. The goal to is to understand which tasks in the ML pipeline are most challenging to perform and what type of tools would benefit ML teams the most.
For anyone interested to participate in the survey, please visit the following Google form: https://forms.gle/Jm8VFXo4LFXcadyJ7. Thank you!

Publications

2024

COMPL-AI Framework: A Technical Interpretation and LLM Benchmarking Suite for the EU Artificial Intelligence Act
Philipp Guldimann, Alexander Spiridonov, Robin Staab, Nikola Jovanović, Mark Vero, Velko Vechev, Anna Gueorguieva, Mislav Balunović, Nikola Konstantinov, Pavol Bielik, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
arXiv 2024

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2022

Learning to Configure Computer Networks with Neural Algorithmic Reasoning
Luca Beurer-Kellner, Martin Vechev, Laurent Vanbever, Petar Veličković
NeurIPS 2022

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2021

Automated Discovery of Adaptive Attacks on Adversarial Defenses
Chengyuan Yao, Pavol Bielik, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
NeurIPS 2021

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Learning to Explore Paths for Symbolic Execution
Jingxuan He, Gishor Sivanrupan, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2021

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Automated Discovery of Adaptive Attacks on Adversarial Defenses
Chengyuan Yao, Pavol Bielik, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
AutoML@ICML 2021 Oral

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Metha: Network Verifiers Need To Be Correct Too!
Rüdiger Birkner*, Tobias Brodmann*, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Martin Vechev
USENIX NSDI 2021 * Equal contribution

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2020

zkay v0.2: Practical Data Privacy for Smart Contracts
Nick Baumann, Samuel Steffen, Benjamin Bichsel, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
arXiv 2020

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Probabilistic Verification of Network Configurations
Samuel Steffen, Timon Gehr, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Martin Vechev
ACM SIGCOMM 2020 Best Student Paper Award

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VerX: Safety Verification of Smart Contracts
Anton Permenev, Dimitar Dimitrov, Petar Tsankov, Dana Drachsler-Cohen, Martin Vechev
IEEE S&P 2020

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2019

zkay: Specifying and Enforcing Data Privacy in Smart Contracts
Samuel Steffen, Benjamin Bichsel, Mario Gersbach, Noa Melchior, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2019

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Learning to Fuzz from Symbolic Execution with Application to Smart Contracts
Jingxuan He, Mislav Balunović, Nodar Ambroladze, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2019

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2018

Towards Sparse Hierarchical Graph Classifiers
Cătălina Cangea*, Petar Veličković*, Nikola Jovanović, Thomas Kipf, Pietro Liò
Relational Representation Learning Workshop -- NeurIPS 2018 * Equal contribution

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Securify: Practical Security Analysis of Smart Contracts
Petar Tsankov, Andrei Dan, Dana Drachsler-Cohen, Arthur Gervais, Florian Bünzli, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2018

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DEBIN: Predicting Debug Information in Stripped Binaries
Jingxuan He, Pesho Ivanov, Petar Tsankov, Veselin Raychev, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2018

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DP-Finder: Finding Differential Privacy Violations by Sampling and Optimization
Benjamin Bichsel, Timon Gehr, Dana Drachsler-Cohen, Petar Tsankov, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2018

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NetHide: Secure and Practical Network Topology Obfuscation
Roland Meier, Petar Tsankov, Vincent Lenders, Laurent Vanbever, Martin Vechev
USENIX SECURITY 2018

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Inferring Crypto API Rules from Code Changes
Rumen Paletov, Petar Tsankov, Veselin Raychev, Martin Vechev
PLDI 2018

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Bayonet: Probabilistic Inference for Networks
Timon Gehr, Sasa Misailovic, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Pascal Wiesmann, Martin Vechev
PLDI 2018

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AI2: Safety and Robustness Certification of Neural Networks with Abstract Interpretation
Timon Gehr, Matthew Mirman, Dana Drachsler-Cohen, Petar Tsankov, Swarat Chaudhuri, Martin Vechev
IEEE S&P 2018

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NetComplete: Practical Network-Wide Configuration Synthesis with Autocompletion
Ahmed El-Hassany, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Martin Vechev
NSDI 2018

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2017

Test Execution Checkpointing for Web Applications
Marco Guarnieri, Petar Tsankov, Tristan Buchs, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
ACM ISSTA 2017

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Synthesis of Probabilistic Privacy Enforcement
Martin Kucera, Petar Tsankov, Timon Gehr, Marco Guarnieri, Martin Vechev
ACM CCS 2017

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Network-wide Configuration Synthesis
Ahmed El-Hassany, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Martin Vechev
CAV 2017

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2016

Functionality-Aware Security Enforcement
Petar Tsankov, Marco Pistoia, Omer Tripp, Martin Vechev, Pietro Ferrara
ACM ACSAC 2016

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Access Control Synthesis for Physical Spaces
Petar Tsankov, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
IEEE CSF 2016

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2014

Fail-Secure Access Control
Petar Tsankov, Srdjan Marinovic, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
ACM CCS 2014

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Decentralized Composite Access Control
Petar Tsankov, Srdjan Marinovic, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
ETAPS POST 2014

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2013

Semi-Valid Input Coverage for Fuzz Testing
Petar Tsankov, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
ACM ISSTA 2013

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2012

SecFuzz: Fuzz Testing Security Protocols
Petar Tsankov, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
IEEE/ACM AST 2012

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2011

Constructing Midpoints for Two-Party Asynchronous Protocols
Petar Tsankov, Mohammad Torabi Dashti, David Basin
OPODIS 2011

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Execution Hijacking: Improving Dynamic Analysis By Flying Off Course
Petar Tsankov, Wei Jin, Alessandro Orso, Saurabh Sinha
IEEE ICST 2011

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Selected Talks

Certifying functional correctness of Ethereum smart contracts
Ethereum Community Conference EthCC, Paris, France, 2019

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Securify: Practical Security Analysis of Smart Contracts
The Summer Research Institute (SuRI), EPFL, Switzerland 2018

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TECHNOLOGY PANEL: Already a Next Level of Blockchain?
Blockchain Summit, Zug, Switzerland 2018

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DeGuard: Statistical Deobfuscation for Android
Android Security Symposium, Vienna, Austria 2017

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Internships

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, New York, USA
May - Aug 2014
Topic: Functionality-aware Security Enforcement
Patent 1: Self-repair and distributed-repair of applications
Patent 2: Providing efficient information tracking with dynamically selected precision
Patent 3: Value based information tracking for security enforcement

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Grants

Ethereum Foundation Grants Wave 3
Topic: Extensible audit platform for smart contracts

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