Elie Bursztein

Last updated

Elie Bursztein
Elie-200.Sic59Q5F.jpg
Born1980 (age 4344)
France
Education
Known for
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Anticipation games: Game theory applied to network security  (2008)
Doctoral advisor Jean Goubault-Larrecq
Website elie.net

Elie Bursztein, [r 1] (born 1980) is a French computer scientist and software engineer. He is Google and DeepMind AI cybersecurity technical and research lead.

Contents

Education and early career

Bursztein obtained a computer engineering degree from EPITA in 2004, a master's degree in computer science from Paris Diderot University/ENS in 2005, and a PhD in computer science from École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay in 2008 with a dissertation titled Anticipation games: Game theory applied to network security.

Before joining Google, Bursztein was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University's Security Laboratory, where he collaborated with Dan Boneh and John Mitchell on web security, [p 1] [p 2] game security, [p 3] [p 4] and applied cryptographic research. [p 5] His work at Stanford University included the first cryptanalysis of the inner workings of Microsoft's DPAPI (Data Protection Application Programming Interface), [p 6] the first evaluation of the effectiveness of private browsing, [p 7] [r 2] and many advances to CAPTCHA security [p 8] [p 9] [p 10] and usability. [p 11]

Bursztein has discovered, reported, and helped fix hundreds of vulnerabilities, including securing Twitter's frame-busting code, [r 3] exploiting Microsoft's location service to track the position of mobile devices, [r 4] and exploiting the lack of proper encryption in the Apple App Store to steal user passwords and install unwanted applications. [r 5]

Career at Google

Bursztein joined Google in 2012 as a research scientist. He founded the Anti-Abuse Research Team in 2014 and became the lead of the Security and Anti-Abuse Research teams in 2017. [r 6] In 2023, he became Google and DeepMind AI cybersecurity technical and research lead.

Bursztein's contributions at Google include:

Awards and honors

Best academic papers awards

Industry awards

Philanthropy

In 2023 Elie founded the Etteilla Foundation [r 25] dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich heritage of playing cards and donated his extensive collection of historical playing cards decks and tarots to it.

Trivia

Bursztein is an accomplished magician and he posted magic tricks weekly on Instagram during the 2019 pandemic. [r 26]

In 2014, following his talk on hacking Hearthstone using machine learning, [p 27] he decided not to make his prediction tool open source at Blizzard Entertainment’s request. [r 27]

Selected publications

  1. H. Bojinov; E. Bursztein; D. Boneh (2009). XCS: cross channel scripting and its impact on web applications. CCS'09 - SIGSAC conference on Computer and communications security. ACM. pp. 420–431.
  2. G. Rydstedt; E. Bursztein; D. Boneh; C. Jackson (2010). Busting Frame Busting: a Study of Clickjacking Vulnerabilities on Popular sites. 3rd Web 2.0 Security and Privacy workshop. IEEE.
  3. 1 2 E. Bursztein; M. Hamburg; J. Lagarenne; D. Boneh (2011). OpenConflict: Preventing Real Time Map Hacks in Online Games. S&P'11 - Symposium on Security and Privacy. IEEE.
  4. E. Bursztein; J. Lagarenne (2010). Kartograph. DEF CON 18. Defcon.
  5. Bursztein, Elie; Picod, Jean Michel (2010). Recovering Windows secrets and EFS certificates offline. WoOT 2010. Usenix.
  6. J. M. Picod; E. Bursztein (2010). Reversing DPAPI and Stealing Windows Secrets Offline. Blackhat.
  7. Aggarwal, Gaurav; Bursztein, Elie; Collin, Jackson; Boneh, Dan (2010). An Analysis of Private Browsing Modes in Modern Browsers. 19th Usenix Security Symposium. Usenix.
  8. E. Bursztein; R. Beauxis; H.Paskov; D. Perito; C. Fabry; J. C. Mitchell (2011). The failure of noise-based non-continuous audio captchas. S&P'11 - Symposium on Security and Privacy. IEEE. pp. 19–31. doi:10.1109/SP.2011.14.
  9. E. Bursztein; M. Martin; J. C. Mitchell (2011). Text-based captcha strengths and weaknesses. CCS. ACM.
  10. E. Bursztein; J. Aigrain; A. Mosciki; J. C. Mitchell (2014). The end is nigh: generic solving of text-based CAPTCHAs. WoOT'14 - Workshop On Offensive Technology. Usenix.
  11. E. Bursztein; S. Bethard; C. Fabry; D. Jurafsky; J. C. Mitchell (2010). How Good are Humans at Solving CAPTCHAs? A Large Scale Evaluation. Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2010. IEEE. pp. 399–413. doi:10.1109/SP.2010.31.
  12. 1 2 Ghinea, Diana; Kaczmarczyck, Fabian; Pullman, Jennifer; Kolbl, Julien; Misoczki, Rafael; Jean-Michel, Picod; Luca, Invernizzi; Elie, Bursztein (2023). Hybrid Post-Quantum Signatures in Hardware Security Keys. International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security 2023. Springer.
  13. Bursztein, Elie (2020). Malicious Documents Emerging Trends: A Gmail Perspective. RSA 2020. RSA.
  14. 1 2 Thomas, Kurt; Jennifer, Pullman; Kevin, Yeo; Raghunathan, Ananth; Gage Kelley, Patrick; Invernizzi, Luca; Benko, Borbala; Pietraszek, Tadek; Patel, Sarvar; Boneh, Dan; Bursztein, Elie (2019). Protecting accounts from credential stuffing with password breach alerting. Usenix Security'19. Usenix.
  15. Bursztein, Elie; Bright, Travis; DeLaune, Michelle; Eliff, David; Hsu, Nick; Olson, Lindsey; Shehan, John; Thakur, Madhukar; Thomas, Kurt (2019). Rethinking the detection of child sexual abuse imagery on the Internet. Proceedings of the International Conference on World Wide Web. WWW.
  16. 1 2 Stevens, Marc; Bursztein, Elie; Karpman, Pierre; Albertini, Ange; Markov, Yarik (2017). The first collision for full SHA-1. Crypto'17. IACR.
  17. 1 2 J Bonneau; E Bursztein; I Caron; R Jackson; M Williamson (2015). Secrets, lies, and account recovery: Lessons from the use of personal knowledge questions at Google. WWW'15 - International Conference on World Wide Web. World Wide Web.
  18. E. Bursztein; A. Moscicki; C. Fabry; S. Bethard; J. C. Mitchell; D. Jurafsky (2014). Easy does it: More usable captchas. CHI'14 - SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. pp. 2637–2646. doi:10.1145/2556288.2557322.
  19. E. Bursztein; B. Benko; D. Margolis; T. Pietraszek; A. Archer; A. Aquino; A. Pitsillidis; S. Savage (2014). Handcrafted Fraud and Extortion: Manual Account Hijacking in the Wild. IMC '14 - Conference on Internet Measurement Conference. ACM. pp. 347–358. doi:10.1145/2663716.2663749.
  20. K. Thomas; D. Iatskiv; E. Bursztein; T. Pietraszek; C. Grier; D. McCoy (2014). Dialing Back Abuse on Phone Verified Accounts. CCS '14 - SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM. pp. 465–476. doi:10.1145/2660267.2660321.
  21. Consolvo, Sunny; Gage Kelley, Patrick; Matthews, Tara; Thomas, Kurt; Dunn, Lee; Bursztein, Elie (2021). "Why wouldn't someone think of democracy as a target?": Security practices & challenges of people involved with U.S. political campaigns. Usenix Security 2021. Usenix.
  22. Sambasivan, Nithya; Batool, Amna; Ahmed, Nova; Matthews, Tara; Thomas, Kurt; Sanely Gaytán-Lugo, Laura; Nemer, David; Bursztein, Elie; Elizabeth, Churchill; Consolvo, Sunny (2019). They Don't Leave Us Alone Anywhere We Go - Gender and Digital Abuse in South Asia. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.
  23. K. Thomas; E. Bursztein; C. Grier; G. Ho; N. Jagpal; A. Kapravelos; D. McCoy; A. Nappa; V. Paxson; P. Pearce; N. Provos; M. A. Rajab (2015). Ad injection at scale: Assessing deceptive advertisement modifications. S&P'15 - Symposium on Security and Privacy. IEEE.
  24. E. Bursztein (2008). Probabilistic Protocol Identification for Hard to Classify Protocol. Information Security Theory and Practices. Smart Devices, Convergence and Next Generation Networks. Springer. pp. 49–63. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-79966-5_4 .
  25. Z. Durumeric; D. Adrian; A. Mirian; J. Kasten; E. Bursztein; N. Lidzborski; K. Thomas; V. Eranti; M. Bailey; J. A. Halderman (2015). Neither snow nor rain nor mitm... an empirical analysis of email delivery security. Internet Measurement Conference. ACM.
  26. E. Bursztein; B. Gourdin; D. Boneh (2009). Bad memories. Blackhat USA 2010. Blackhat.
  27. E. Bursztein; C. Bursztein (2014). I am a legend: hacking hearthstone with machine learning. DEF CON 22. DEF CON.

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References

  1. Elie Bursztein. "Elie Bursztein's personal site" . Retrieved 4 April 2021.
  2. Ward, Mark (6 August 2010). "Private browsing modes leak data". BBC News. London.
  3. "Twitter Security Contributors List". Archived from the original on 18 February 2011.
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  24. Grossman, Jeremiah. "Top Ten Web Hacking Techniques of 2010 (Official)".
  25. Etteilla Foundation. "Etteilla Foundation: the leading nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich cultural heritage of playing cards" . Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  26. Elie Busztein. "Elie Bursztein magic tricks on Instagram". Instagram. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  27. Bursztein, Elie. "I am a legend: Hacking Hearthstone with machine-learning Defcon talk wrap-up".