Badge is hiring! If you like to build cool systems and want to work on privacy enhancing technology, shoot me an email!

My name is Albert Kwon, and I'm currently a software engineer at Badge Inc. We are a startup focused on enabling biometric-based authentication and key management without a centralized biometric database. I'm specifically working on fuzzy extractors that can derive stable private-public key pair from fuzzy inputs, like biometrics. Generally, I'm interested in designing and building systems where cryptography meets practice.

Before Badge, I completed my Ph.D. at MIT advised by my wonderful advisor Srini Devadas. My thesis was focused on scaling anonymous and metadata private communication with cryptographic privacy guarantees to millions of people. Before MIT, I got my Bachelor of Science from University of Pennsylvania in EE and CIS. At UPenn, my undergrad research advisor was Andre DeHon, and my research was on designing computer architecture that can automatically protect against the most common software vulnerabilities.

Email: kwonalbert [at] badgeinc [dot] com
CV (Updated Feb 2019)

portrait

Interests

I'm interested in security and privacy broadly, but I'm especially interested in designing and building systems that use cryptography in an interesting way. Currently, I'm most interested in personal key management, authentication using fuzzy data, and private communication. Previously, I've done research on anonymous communication, cryptocurrency, side-channel attacks, ORAMs, and secure computer architecture.


Conference and Workshop Publications

  1. XRD: Scalable Messaging System with Cryptographic Privacy
    Albert Kwon, David Lu, Srini Devadas
    in NSDI 2020

  2. Var-CNN: A Data-Efficient Website Fingerprinting Attack Based on Deep Learning
    Sanjit Bhat, David Lu, Albert Kwon, Srini Devadas
    in PETS 2019

  3. DynaFlow: An Efficient Website Fingerprinting Defense Based on Dynamically-Adjusting Flows
    David Lu, Sanjit Bhat, Albert Kwon, Srini Devadas
    in WPES 2018

  4. Spacemint: A cryptocurrency based on proofs of space
    Sunoo Park, Albert Kwon, Georg Fuchsbauer, Peter Gazi, Joel Alwen, Krzysztof Pietrzak
    in FC 2018

  5. Atom: Horizontally scaling strong anonymity
    Albert Kwon, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Srinivas Devadas, Bryan Ford
    in SOSP 2017

  6. Riffle: An efficient communication system with strong anonymity
    Albert Kwon, David Lazar, Srinivas Devadas, Bryan Ford
    in PETS 2016

  7. Circuit Fingerprinting Attacks: Passive Deanonymization of Tor Hidden Services
    Albert Kwon, Mashael AlSabah, David Lazar, Marc Dacier, Srinivas Devadas
    in Usenix Security 2015

  8. Constants Count: Practical Improvements to Oblivious RAM
    Ling Ren, Christopher Fletcher, Albert Kwon, Emil Stefanov, Elaine Shi, Marten van Dijk, Srinivas Devadas
    in Usenix Security 2015

  9. PrORAM: Dynamic Prefetcher for Oblivious RAM
    Xiangyao Yu, Syed Kamran Haider, Ling Ren, Christopher Fletcher, Albert Kwon, Marten van Dijk, Srinivas Devadas
    in ISCA 2015

  10. A low-latency, low-area hardware oblivious RAM controller
    Christopher W Fletcher, Ling Ren, Albert Kwon, Marten Van Dijk, Emil Stefanov, Dimitrios Serpanos, Srinivas Devadas
    in FCCM 2015

  11. Freecursive oram: [Nearly] free recursion and integrity verification for position-based oblivious ram
    Christopher W Fletcher, Ling Ren, Albert Kwon, Marten van Dijk, Srinivas Devadas
    in ASPLOS 2015

  12. Low-fat pointers: compact encoding and efficient gate-level implementation of fat pointers for spatial safety and capability-based security
    Albert Kwon, Udit Dhawan, Jonathan M Smith, Thomas F Knight Jr, Andre DeHon
    in CCS 2013


Courses

I enjoy teaching computer science, and have been part of a few classes as a TA. I've helped teach these courses at MIT and UPenn:

  1. 6.858: Computer Systems Security (MIT, Fall 2015)
  2. 6.046: Introduction to Algorithms (MIT, Spring 2015)
  3. CIS320: Introduction to Algorithms (UPenn, Spring 2013)
  4. CIS380: Operating Systems (UPenn, Fall 2012)
  5. CIS240: Introduction to Computing Systems (UPenn, Fall 2011)
  6. CIS192: Python Programming (UPenn, Spring 2011)

Mentoring

I've also had the pleasure of mentoring very smart high school students at MIT as part of the MIT PRIMES program. Most recently, I've mentored two brilliant students Sanjit Bhat and David Lu, who did great research on anonymous communication systems and machine learning that led to two first author publications.


Hobbies

When I'm not working, I spend as much time as I can with my better half. We currently raise two adorable cats, Teru and Hoji, and a white fluffy dog, Bao, together. When I'm not spending time with her or the pets, I'm usually part taking in one of my less productive hobbies, like playing video games and board games, or watching basketball, TV shows, and movies.