Michael Schwarz

Dr. Michael Schwarz is a tenured faculty member at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, Germany, where he leads the RootSec research group. Since 2020 he has been investigating microarchitectural side-channel attacks, system security, CPU security, transient-execution vulnerabilities, and corresponding defense mechanisms. He previously served as a post-doctoral researcher (2019–2020) and PhD student (2016–2019) at Graz University of Technology, after earning two master’s degrees in computer science and software engineering with a security focus.

Education

• PhD, Graz University of Technology, 2019 — “Software-based Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses in Restricted Environments” (Advisor: Daniel Gruss)
• MSc, Computer Science, Graz University of Technology
• MSc, Software Engineering, Graz University of Technology

Research Interests

Dr. Schwarz’s work centers on microarchitectural side-channel attacks and system security, spanning:

• CPU security and transient-execution vulnerabilities (Meltdown, Spectre, Fallout, LVI, ZombieLoad, ÆPIC Leak, CacheWarp)
• Detection, mitigation, and formal guarantees against microarchitectural leakage
• Hardware–software co-design for secure operating systems and trusted execution environments
• Reverse engineering of CPU internals, cache architectures, and prefetchers
• Browser and web-platform security, including sandbox bypasses and fingerprinting
• Compiler security and constant-time programming enforcement

Scientific Awards & Recognition

• 2022 Busy Beaver Award for “Foundations of Cybersecurity II”
• 2021 Busy Beaver Award for “Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses”
• 2020 EuroSys Roger Needham PhD Award
• 2019 IEEE S&P Distinguished Paper Award (Spectre)
• 2019 NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Honorable Mention (Meltdown)
• 2019 Open Exploit Award (Meltdown & Spectre)
• 2018 CSAW Best Paper Award (Meltdown)
• 2018 Pwnie Awards: Best Privilege Escalation Bug & Most Innovative Research
• 2023 USENIX Security Noteworthy Reviewer Award
• 2023 WOOT Best Paper Award (CustomProcessingUnit)
• 2022 Pwnie Award for Best Desktop Bug (ÆPIC)
• 2022 AI 2000 Security & Privacy Honorable Mention
• 2021 CCSW Best Paper Award & CSAW Best Paper 3rd Place

Advising & Collaborations

Dr. Schwarz currently mentors numerous PhD students and post-docs within the RootSec group. His collaborations extend across CISPA, Graz University of Technology, and an international network visible through extensive multi-author publications at top-tier venues including USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, ESORICS, DIMVA, ASPLOS, WWW, FC, and specialized microarchitecture security conferences.

Labs & Teams

He heads the RootSec Research Group at CISPA, whose core mission is to uncover, analyze, and mitigate microarchitectural and system-level security threats. The group maintains close links with industry partners, open-source communities, and policy makers to ensure that research findings are rapidly translated into practical defenses deployed in modern operating systems and processors.