Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner

Research Scientist @ Intel Labs, Adjunct Lecturer @ TU Munich

About

I’m interested in analyzing, designing, building and evaluating secure software and hardware systems. In particular, in techniques protecting data confidentiality and integrity of sensitive data at rest, in-flight or in-memory.

Interests

System Security
Operating Systems
Distributed Systems

Education & Experience

Adjunct Lecturer, since July, 2022

TU Munich
Research Scientist, since April, 2019

Intel Labs
PhD in Computer Science, February, 2019

Max Planck Institute for Software Systems & Saarland University
B.Sc. in Applied Computer Science, September, 2009

Cooperative University State University Baden-Wuertemberg

News

[Sep 24] Pegasus was accepted at EuroSys’25
[Aug 24] HFI is selected into IEEE Micro Top Picks 2023
[Aug 24] HFI is awarded honorable mention of the Intel Hardware Security Academic Award (IHSAA)
[Aug 24] Endokernel published at USENIX Security’24
[May 24] Accepted to serve as associate editor of ACM TOPS
[Dec 23] Endoprocess published at NSPW’23
[Nov 23] Accepted to serve on EuroSys’25 PC

Projects

Memory-Safe Hardware and Software Architecture

Optimize local microservice executions using memory-safe languages and hardware optimizations

Research Artifacts and Evaluation

Building and evaluating reproducible and reusable research artifacts.

Protecting Persistent Data

Enforcing security policies at the storage layer to reduce attack surface of existing solutions.

Secure In-Process Memory Isolation and Efficient Cloud Deployments

Providing in-process isolation for sensitive data and state to increase the security and robustness of applications and its use to provide efficient cloud deployments

Shielding Applications in an untrusted Cloud

Lift and shift unmodified applications into Intel SGX enclaves to shield them in an untrusted cloud.

Selected Publications

More Publications

Pegasus: Transparent and Unified Kernel-Bypass Networking for Fast Local and Remote Communication

Dinglan Peng, Congyu Liu, Tapti Palit, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Mona Vij, Pedro Fonseca

ACM EuroSys, 2025.

Fortify Your Foundations: Practical Privacy and Security for Foundation Model Deployments In The Cloud

Marcin Chrapek, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Marcin Spoczynski, Scott Constable, Mona Vij, Torsten Hoefler

arXiv, 2024.

PDF

Endokernel: A Thread Safe Monitor for Lightweight Subprocess Isolation

Fangfei Yang, Bumjin Im, Weijie Huang, Kelly Kaoudis, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Chia-Che Tsai, Nathan Dautenhahn

USENIX Security, 2024.

Hardware-Assisted Fault Isolation: Going Beyond the Limits of Software-Based Sandboxing

Shravan Narayan, Tal Garfinkel, Mohammadkazem Taram, Joey Rudek, Daniel Moghimi, Evan Johnson, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Michael LeMay, Ravi Sahita, Dean Tullsen, Deian Stefan

IEEE Micro Top Picks, 2024.

PDF

Trusted Heterogeneous Disaggregated Architectures

Atsushi Koshiba, Felix Gust, Julian Pritzi, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Nuno Santos, Pramod Bhatotia

ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys), 2023.

PDF

Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFI

Shravan Narayan, Tal Garfinkel, Mohammadkazem Taram, Joey Rudek, Daniel Moghimi, Evan Johnson, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Michael LeMay, Ravi Sahita, Dean Tullsen, Deian Stefan

ASPLOS, Distinguished Paper Award, 2023.

PDF

uSwitch: Fast Kernel Context Isolation with Implicit Context Switches

Dinglan Peng, Congyu Liu, Tapti Palit, Pedro Fonseca, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Mona Vij

IEEE S&P, 2023.

PDF

ERIM: Secure, Efficient In-Process Isolation with Memory Protection Keys

Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Eslam Elnikety, Nuno O. Duarte, Michael Sammler, Peter Druschel, Deepak Garg

USENIX Security, Distinguished Paper Award and Internet Defense Prize, 2019.

PDF Code Slides Video

Thoth : Comprehensive Policy Compliance in Data Retrieval Systems

Eslam Elnikety, Aastha Mehta, Anjo Vahldiek-oberwagner, Deepak Garg, Peter Druschel

Usenix Security, 2016.

PDF

Guardat: Enforcing data policies at the storage layer

Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Eslam Elnikety, Aastha Mehta, Deepak Garg, Peter Druschel, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Johannes Gehrke, Ansley Post

ACM EuroSys, 2015.

PDF Poster Slides Video

Service

Program Committee

Usenix Security: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 & Research Ethics Committee Member, 2025
EuroSys: 2025
ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability: 2023 2024
Middleware Doctoral Workshop: 2020
Intel Software Professionals Conference - Security Track: 2020
EuroSys ShadowPC: 2020
SOCC Posters: 2020

Artifact Evaluation

Steering Committee

Journal

ACM TOPS Associate Editor [2024 - ]
DTRAP External Reviewer: 2021

Organization

Registration for EuroSys’21

Awards

HFI selected into IEEE Micro Top Picks 2024
HFI wins honorable mention at Intel Hardware Security Academic Award (IHSAA)
Distinguished Paper Award at ASPLOS 2023 for HFI
Selected as DARPA Riser 2022, Topic: “The Rise of Memory-Safe Languages: Building a Fast, Elastic, Secure Software & Hardware Architecture”
Intel High-5 Patent Award 2021
Intel Labs 2021 Gordy Award Honorable Mention in “Excelence in Risk Taking” for our continued work on the Graphene Library OS (in collaboration with Dmitrii Kuvaiskii, Mona Vij, Sudha Krishnakumar, Isaku Yamahata)
Facebook and USENIX Internet Defense Prize 2019 for ERIM
Distinguished Paper Award at USENIX Security 2019 for ERIM