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 improves system security by advancing exploit techniques that reveal the true severity of software vulnerabilities. By developing principled methods to assess exploitability, I enable defenders to prioritize remediation where it matters most. My work spans kernel exploitation, side-channel–assisted attacks, and data-oriented programming.

Research Interests
System Security Kernel Exploitation Vulnerability Assessment OS Security

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), 2026
    To appear
  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
    HITB Amsterdam 2023
    Amsterdam, Netherlands
  2. BlackHat
    Perfect Spray: A Journey From Finding a New Type of Logical Flaw at Linux Kernel To Developing a New Heap Exploitation Technique
    BlackHat Europe 2022
    London, UK
  3. BlackHat
    Exploiting Kernel Races through Taming Thread Interleaving
    BlackHat USA 2020
    Las Vegas, USA