Pieter Philippaerts
Pieter is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Computer Science of the KU Leuven. His main research interests lie in the field of computer security. In his doctoral thesis, he investigated the security of mobile devices and studied the different approaches that can be taken to secure untrusted mobile code.
Pieter is currently working on the European Secure Change project. He evaluates how static verification tools can be used to ensure and improve software quality.
Before joining the KU Leuven, Pieter worked as a .NET technical consultant at Capgemini and AE. He has a good understanding of the practical and theoretical aspects of software engineering, but he also realizes the importance of high quality and readable code, and a solid architectural design.
Teaching & Education (2011-2012)
KU Leuven Courses:
Pieter organizes exercise sessions and practicums for the following courses:
KU Leuven Master Theses:
Pieter is the advisor of the following master thesis:
- Bescherm je Smartphone tegen hackers (Protect your smartphone against hackers), by Kristof Van Cauwenbergh
- Advances persistent threats, by Arne Swinnen
Pieter was the advisor of the following master theses:
- Formele verificatie van Java Card software met behulp van VeriFast (Formal verification of Java Card software with VeriFast), by Jeroen Bastijns, 2010-2011
- Protection of native applications against data-only buffer overflows, by Steven Van Acker, 2009-2010
- Implementatie en evaluatie van CRAM op de ARM-architectuur (Implementation and evaluation of CRAM on the ARM architecture), by Stijn Muylle, 2009-2010
- Beveiliging tegen het uitbuiten van geheugenfouten d.m.v. een compilerextensie (Protecting against memory error exploits, using a compiler plug-in), by Kenneth Piron, 2009-2010
- Een runtime-monitor voor applicaties op het Android-platform (A runtime monitor for applications on the Android platform), by Sebastiaan Helsen, 2009-2010
- Preventie van dangling pointers in C (Preventing dangling pointers in C), by Bram De Schouwer and Roel Van Reeth, 2008-2009
- Protecting mobile devices against stack-based buffer overflows, by Raoul Strackx, 2008-2009
- Ontwerp en implementatie van een smart card communicatie bibliotheek (Design and implementation of a smart card library), by Cédric Boon, 2007-2008
Departemental Demos:
Pieter gives the following departemental demos:
- Tricking commercial fingerprint readers with fake fingers
- Deploying untrusted software in a trusted environment
- Taking control of applications by exploiting buffer overflows
- Using smartphones as spy devices
Patents
- Method and apparatus for preventing modification of a program execution flow, Pieter Philippaerts, Yves Younan, Frank Piessens, Sven Lachmund, Thomas Walter, Patent no. 2256659 (A1), Filing date 27/05/2009, Publication date 1/12/2010
Key publications:
- Pieter Philippaerts, Yves Younan, Stijn Muylle, Frank Piessens, Sven Lachmund, Thomas Walter, Code Pointer Masking: Hardening applications against code injection attacks, Proceedings of the Detection of Intrusions and Malware and Vulnerability Assessment Conference (DIMVA 2011), pages 194-213, Amsterdam, 7-8 July 2011
- Yves Younan, Pieter Philippaerts, Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen, Sven Lachmund, Thomas Walter, Filter-resistant code injection on ARM, Proceedings of the 16th ACM conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2009), pages 11-20, Chicago, 9-13 November 2009
- Pieter Philippaerts, (supervisors: Frank Piessens, Wouter Joosen), Security of Software on Mobile Devices (Beveiliging van software op mobiele toestellen), Ph.D. Thesis, 20 October 2010
- Pieter Philippaerts, Cédric Boon, Frank Piessens, Report: Extensibility and implementation independence of the .NET cryptographic API, ESSoS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 5429, pages 101-110, Leuven, February 04-06, 2009
- Lieven Desmet, Wouter Joosen, Fabio Massacci, Pieter Philippaerts, Frank Piessens, Ida Siahaan, Dries Vanoverberghe, Security-by-contract on the .NET platform, Information security technical report, volume 13, issue 1, pages 25-32, 15 May 2008
