Jürgen Cito

Jürgen Cito is an Associate Professor in the Department of Software Engineering at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien, where he leads research in probabilistic programming, security, and configuration management. His work is supported by major grants from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), European Commission, and Meta Platforms, Inc., with active projects spanning 2022-2027.

His research focuses on the intersection of software engineering and machine learning, particularly in static analysis of probabilistic programs, AI-driven penetration testing, and infrastructure security. Key contributions include identifying secret exposure in configuration files, grammar inference for ad hoc parsers, and performance prediction from source code, often combining empirical studies with tool development.

Analysis of his 15 most recent publications (2020-2024) reveals three dominant trends: (1) Security vulnerabilities in configuration management systems, especially secret leakage in dotfiles; (2) Application of large language models to offensive security testing; and (3) Machine learning techniques for performance prediction and AutoML optimization in software contexts.

Cito has supervised 22 Master's students on cutting-edge topics including AI security, infrastructure as code, and program analysis. His current research portfolio includes:

• Types4Strings (FWF, 2024-2027): Type systems for string processing
• Cloud Open Source Research Mobility Network (EU, 2023-2026): Open-source cloud infrastructure
• Software Assistants for Probabilistic Programming (Meta, 2022-2026): AI tools for probabilistic code

He is embedded in TU Wien's Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (E194), collaborating on cross-institutional projects focused on software security and developer tooling, with particular emphasis on empirical validation of security practices and configuration management systems.