Vassilis Zikas
YOU ARE BEING REDIRECTED TO MY NEW HOMEPAGE

Vassilis Zikas

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Department of Computer Science
302 Lally Hall, 110 8th Street
Troy, NY 12180
email: vzikas cs.rpi.edu
phone: +1 (518) 276-2609

I am an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to my current appointment I was a senior research associate at the Cryptography and Information Security Group at ETH Zurich in a position supported by a career development (Ambizione) grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. I was also a Research Fellow of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, UC Berkeley. Prior to joining ETH Zurich I was a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA supervised by Rafail Ostrovsky and at University of Maryland supervised by Jonathan Katz. I received my PhD from ETH Zurich.

My research interests include:
  • Cryptography
  • Computer Security
  • Game Theory
  • Distributed Computing
  • Cryptocurrencies
I am looking for motivated PhD students with interest in cryptography, security, and/or fault-tolerant distributed computing. If you are already a student at RPI drop by my office to discuss. Otherwise, if you are interested in working with me please apply through the official RPI process and make sure you include the above areas and my name in your appication.

In the News: Ask The Experts: A Bit about Bitcoin

Professional Activities

Teaching and Advising

  • Courses
    • Cryptography and Network Security II, Spring 2016, 2017
    • Security Topics, Fall 2016
  • PhD Students
    • Avi Weinstock
    • Yun Lu
  • Master's Students
    • Mike Macceletti

Publications (for a complete list see my CV)


Christian Badertscher, Juan Garay, Ueli Maurer, Daniel Tschudi, and Vassilis Zikas
But Why does it Work? A Rational Protocol Design Treatment of Bitcoin
Manuscript, 2017.
Ran Gelles, Anat Paskin-Cherniavsky, and Vassilis Zikas
Secure Two-Party Computation over Unreliable Channels
Manuscript, 2017.
Christian Badertscher, Daniel Tschudi, Ueli Maurer, and Vassilis Zikas
Bitcoin as a Transaction Ledger: A Composable Treatment
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2017 (to appear).
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Juan Garay, Yuval Ishai, Rafail Ostrovsky, and Vassilis Zikas
The Price of Low Communication in Secure Multi-Party Computation
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2017 (to appear).
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Ran Cohen, Sandro Coretti, Juan Garay, and Vassilis Zikas
Round-Preserving Parallel Composition of Probabilistic-Termination Protocols
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming — ICALP 2017 (to appear).
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Sandro Coretti, Juan Garay, Martin Hirt, and Vassilis Zikas
Constant-Round Asynchronous Multi-Party Computation
Advances in Cryptology — ASIACRYPT 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 10032, pp 998–1021, 2016.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Martin Hirt, Ueli Maurer, Daniel Tschudi, and Vassilis Zikas
Network-Hiding Communication and Applications to Multi-Party Protocols
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 9816, pp 335–365, 2016.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Ran Cohen, Sandro Coretti, Juan Garay, and Vassilis Zikas
Probabilistic Termination and Composability of Cryptographic Protocols
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 9816, pp 240–269, 2016.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Aggelos Kiayias, Hong-Sheng Zhou, and Vassilis Zikas
Fair and Robust Multi-Party Computation using a Global Transaction Ledger
Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 9666, pp 281–290, 2016.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Richard J. Lipton, Rafail Ostrovsky, and Vassilis Zikas
Provably Secure Virus Detection: Using The Observer Effect Against Malware
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming — ICALP 2016, Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, pp. 32:1–32:14, 2016.
Juan Garay, Bjoern Tackmann, and Vassilis Zikas
Fair Distributed Computation of Reactive Functions
International Symposium on Distributed Computing — DISC 2015, pp 497–512, 2015.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Joël Alwen, Rafail Ostrovsky, Hong-Sheng Zhou, and Vassilis Zikas
Incoercible Multi-Party Computation and Universally Composable Receipt-Free Voting
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2015, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 9216, pp 763–780, 2015.
Juan Garay, Jonathan Katz, Bjoern Tackmann, and Vassilis Zikas
How Fair is Your Protocol? A Utility-based Approach to Protocol Optimality
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing — PODC 2015, pp 281–290, 2015.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Nishanth Chandran, Wutichai Chongchitmate, Juan A. Garay, Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, and Vassilis Zikas
The Hidden Communication Graph Model: Achieving Communication Locality and Optimal Resilience in the Presence of Adaptive Faults
Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science — ITCS 2015, pp 153–162, 2015.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Yuval Ishai, Rafail Ostrovsky, and Vassilis Zikas
Secure Multi-Party Computation with Identifiable Abort
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 8617, pp 369–386, 2014.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Seung Geol Choi, Jonathan Katz, Alex J. Malozemoff, and Vassilis Zikas
Efficient Three-Party Computation from Cut-and-Choose
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 8617, pp 513–530, 2014.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Jonathan Katz, Aggelos Kiayias, Hong-Sheng Zhou, and Vassilis Zikas
Distributing the Setup in Universally Composable Secure Multi-Party Computation
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing – PODC 2014, pp 20–29, 2014.
Juan Garay, Jonathan Katz, Ueli Maurer, Bjoern Tackmann, and Vassilis Zikas
Rational Protocol Design: Cryptography Against Incentive-Driven Adversaries
IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science — FOCS 2013, pp 648–657, 2013.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Jonathan Katz, Ueli Maurer, Bjoern Tackmann, and Vassilis Zikas
Universally Composable Synchronous Computation
Theory of Cryptography Conference — TCC 2013, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 7785, pp 477–498, 2013.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Jonathan Katz, Serge Fehr, Fang Song, Hong-Sheng Zhou, and Vassilis Zikas
Feasibility and Completeness of Cryptographic Tasks in the Quantum World
Theory of Cryptography Conference — TCC 2013, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 7785, pp 281-296, 2013.
An extended abstract of this work was also presented at ICITS 2012, workshop track.
Joël Alwen, Jonathan Katz, Ueli Maurer, and Vassilis Zikas
Collusion-Preserving Computation
Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO 2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol 7417, pp 124-143, 2012.
A preliminary full version is available here: [ PDF ]
Adam Groce, Jonathan Katz, Aishwarya Thiruvengadam, and Vassilis Zikas
Byzantine Agreement with a Rational Adversary
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming — ICALP 2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 7392, pp. 561–572, 2012.
Available files: [ PDF ]
Martin Hirt and Vassilis Zikas
Player-Centric Byzantine Agreement
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming — ICALP 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 6755, pp. 281–292, 2011.
Available files: [ PDF ]
Martin Hirt and Vassilis Zikas
Adaptively Secure Broadcast
Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT 2010, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 6110, pp. 466–485, 2010.
Available files: [ PDF ]
Vassilis Zikas, Sarah Hauser, and Ueli Maurer
Realistic Failures in Secure Multi-party Computation
Theory of Cryptography Conference — TCC 2009, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 5444, pp. 274-293, 2009.
Available files: [ PDF ]
Martin Hirt, Ueli Maurer, and Vassilis Zikas
MPC vs. SFE: Unconditional and Computational Security
Advances in Cryptology — ASIACRYPT 2008, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 5350, pp. 1–18, 2008.
Available files: [ PDF ]
Zuzana Beerliova-Trubiniova, Matthias Fitzi, Martin Hirt, Ueli Maurer, and Vassilis Zikas
MPC vs. SFE: Perfect Security in a Unified Corruption Model
Theory of Cryptography Conference — TCC 2008, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 4948, pp. 231–250, 2008.
Available files: [ PDF ]


Books

Secure Multi-Party Computation (invited chapter)
Editors: Manoj Prabhakaran and Amit Sahai
Cryptology and Information Security Series, vol.10, IOS Press, Amsterdam, ISBN 978-1-61499-168-7, 2012.
Generalized Corruption Models in Secure Multi-Party Computation (PhD thesis)
ETH Series in Information Security and Cryptography, Hartung-Gorre Verlag, ISBN 3-86628-338-5, 2010.