Yoochan Lee

Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy

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I am on the academic job market for the 2026-2027 cycle, seeking tenure-track faculty positions. Please feel free to reach out!

I’m a Postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, with a Ph.D. from Seoul National University.

My research is in systems security, with a focus on the Linux kernel. I uncover the building blocks that systems unintentionally provide to attackers and develop defenses that eliminate them. My goal is to make vulnerabilities unexploitable in practice.

Research Interests
Systems Security Kernel Exploitation Vulnerability Assessment Kernel Defenses

News

Mar 2026 Heap Localization is accepted to IEEE S&P 2026!
Dec 2025 DirtyFree is accepted to NDSS 2026!
Nov 2025 I joined Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy as a postdoctoral researcher.

Selected publications

  1. Heap Localization: Cache Side-Channel based Linux Kernel Heap Exploit Techniques
    Yoochan Lee, Sihyun Roh, Hyuk Kwon, Byoungyoung Lee, and Thorsten Holz
    In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), May 2026
  2. DirtyFree: Simplified Data-Oriented Programming in the Linux Kernel
    Yoochan Lee, Hyuk Kwon, and Thorsten Holz
    In Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), Feb 2026
  3. Pspray: Timing Side-Channel based Linux Kernel Heap Exploitation Technique
    Yoochan Lee, Jinhan Kwak, Junesoo Kang, Yuseok Jeon, and Byoungyoung Lee
    In USENIX Security Symposium, Aug 2023
  4. ExpRace: Exploiting Kernel Races through Raising Interrupts
    Yoochan Lee, Changwoo Min, and Byoungyoung Lee
    In USENIX Security Symposium, Aug 2021

Talks

Industry

  1. HITB
    Privilege Escalation Exploit using DOP in x86-64 macOS
    Presenter: Yoochan Lee
    HITB Amsterdam 2023
  2. BlackHat
    Perfect Spray: A Journey From Finding a New Type of Logical Flaw at Linux Kernel To Developing a New Heap Exploitation Technique
    Presenter: Yoochan Lee
    BlackHat Europe 2022
  3. BlackHat
    Exploiting Kernel Races through Taming Thread Interleaving
    Presenter: Yoochan Lee
    BlackHat USA 2020