Systems and security researcher, free software hacker.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia with Margo Seltzer.
Earlier, I did my PhD with Pierre Olivier at the University of Manchester. My PhD thesis received the 2025 EuroSys Roger Needham PhD Award for the best European PhD thesis in computer systems. I was a Microsoft 2022 PhD Research Fellow. I visited/interned at SCI Semiconductor, MSR Cambridge, and NEC Labs Europe between 2020 and 2024.
I am currently on the academic job market. I am looking for an Assistant Professor position to pursue my work on systems and security.
Research
As a systems security researcher, my goal is to make software faster and safer. Some of my core research topics include operating systems, isolation (and more specifically compartmentalization, virtualization, and confidential computing), and specialization.
My research is by nature inter-disciplinary, so I often touch on aspects of networking, embedded systems, architecture, programming languages, software engineering, and formal verification.
Selected Publications
Full list on DBLP or Google Scholar.
2025
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SoK: Software Compartmentalization.
H. Lefeuvre, N. Dautenhahn, D. Chisnall, P. Olivier.
S&P'25 [IEEE] [PDF] -
CHERIoT RTOS: An OS for Fine-Grained Memory-Safe Compartments on Low-Cost Embedded Devices.
S. Amar, T. Chen, D. Chisnall, N. W. Filardo, B. Laurie, H. Lefeuvre, K. Liu, S. W. Moore, R. Norton-Wright, M. Seltzer, Y. Tao, R. N. M. Watson, H. Xia.
SOSP'25 [ACM] [PDF] -
μFork: Supporting POSIX fork Within a Single-Address-Space OS.
J. A. Kressel, H. Lefeuvre, P. Olivier.
SOSP'25 [ACM] [PDF]
2024
- Loupe: Driving the Development of OS Compatibility Layers.
H. Lefeuvre, G. Gain, V-A. Bădoiu, D. Dinca, V-R. Schiller, C. Raiciu, F. Huici, P. Olivier.
ASPLOS'24 [ACM] [PDF]
2023
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Assessing the Impact of Interface Vulnerabilities in Compartmentalized Software.
H. Lefeuvre, V-A. Bădoiu, Y. Chien, F. Huici, N. Dautenhahn, P. Olivier.
NDSS'23 [NDSS] [PDF] -
Towards (Really) Safe and Fast Confidential I/O.
H. Lefeuvre, D. Chisnall, M. Kogias, P. Olivier.
HotOS'23 [ACM] [PDF]
2022
- FlexOS: Towards Flexible OS Isolation.
H. Lefeuvre, V-A. Bădoiu, A. Jung, S. Teodorescu, S. Rauch, F. Huici, C. Raiciu, P. Olivier.
ASPLOS'22 [ACM] [PDF] Distinguished Artifact Award!
2021
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Unikraft: Fast, Specialized Unikernels the Easy Way.
S. Kuenzer, V-A. Bădoiu, H. Lefeuvre, S. Santhanam, A. Jung, G. Gain, C. Soldani, C. Lupu, S. Teodorescu, C. Răducanu, C. Banu, L. Mathy, R. Deaconescu, C. Raiciu, F. Huici.
EuroSys'21 [ACM] [PDF] Best Paper Award! -
FlexOS: Making OS Isolation Flexible.
H. Lefeuvre, V-A. Bădoiu, S. Teodorescu, P. Olivier, T. Mosnoi, R. Deaconescu, F. Huici, C. Raiciu.
HotOS'21 [ACM] [PDF]
Selected Community Service
- Program Committee Member:
- Journal Referee: IEEE T-ASE, IET Electronics Letters
Free Software
Free software is one of my core values. I have been active in various free software communities for over a decade. I contributed to many free-software projects, including the Linux kernel, but most notably:
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The Debian project, where I have been a Debian Developer with uploading rights for about 8 years until 2023, when I retired. Most of my Debian work was related to packaging and security. I contributed extensively to the Debian LTS team, and more occasionally to the security team.
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The Unikraft unikernel framework, where I have been a core maintainer since 2019, now focused on security aspects.
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The CHERIoT real-time operating system, where I have been a contributor since 2024, focused on the network stack.
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The Jami communication platform (GNU project, formerly Ring), where I was a core developer between 2018 and 2019.
Nowadays, my free software contributions are centered on CHERIoT, Unikraft, and my other research projects.
Some links
Projects I work/worked on:
- The CHERIoT RTOS network stack: [GitHub]
- Loupe: [GitHub]
- ConfFuzz/CIVs: [Website] [GitHub]
- FlexOS: [Website] [GitHub] [ASPLOS'22 Artifact]
- Unikraft, the unikernel SDK: [Website] [GitHub] [EuroSys'21 Artifact]
Other research I find exciting. Not mine, but really cool!