Hi! I am a PhD student at Saarland University working for the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security under the supervision of Dr. Michael Schwarz. My main focus is on transient execution attacks and microachitectural side channels on Arm processors, especially the Apple M1.
CV
PhD Student
CISPA / Saarland University
2023 – today
PhD Preparation
Saarbrücken Graduate School of CS
2021 – 2023
Cybersecurity B.Sc.
Saarland University
2018 – 2021
Publications
2026
InstrSem: Automatically and Generically Inferring Semantics of (Undocumented) CPU Instructions
USENIX Security
Baltimore, Maryland, USA, August 12-14, 2026
2025
RISCover: Automatic Discovery of User-exploitable Architectural Security Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source RISC-V CPUs
Fabian Thomas,
Eric García Arribas, Lorenz Hetterich, Daniel Weber, Lukas Gerlach, Ruiyi Zhang, Michael Schwarz
CCS
Taipei, Taiwan, October 13-17, 2025
Rapid Reversing of Non-Linear CPU Cache Slice Functions: Unlocking Physical Address Leakage
Mikka Rainer, Lorenz Hetterich, Fabian Thomas, Tristan Hornetz, Leon Trampert, Lukas Gerlach, Michael Schwarz
S&P
San Francisco, California, USA, May 12-15, 2025
Peripheral Instinct: How External Devices Breach Browser Sandboxes
WWW
Sydney, Australia, April 8 - May 2, 2025
ShadowLoad: Injecting State into Hardware Prefetchers
Lorenz Hetterich, Fabian Thomas, Lukas Gerlach, Ruiyi Zhang,
Nils Bernsdorf, Eduard Ebert, Michael Schwarz
ASPLOS
Rotterdam, Netherlands, March 30 - April 13, 2025
2024
CacheWarp: Software-based Fault Injection using Selective State Reset
Ruiyi Zhang, Lukas Gerlach, Daniel Weber, Lorenz Hetterich,
Youheng Lü,
Andreas Kogler, Michael Schwarz
USENIX Security
Philadelphia, PA, USA, August 14-16, 2024
Switchpoline: A Software Mitigation for Spectre-BTB and Spectre-BHB on ARMv8
Markus Bauer, Lorenz Hetterich,
Christian Rossow, Michael Schwarz
ASIACCS
Singapore, July 1-5, 2024
2023
FetchBench: Systematic Identification and Characterization of Proprietary Prefetchers
Till Schlüter,
Amit Choudhari, Lorenz Hetterich, Leon Trampert,
Hamed Nemati,
Ahmad Ibrahim, Michael Schwarz,
Christian Rossow,
Nils Ole Tippenhauer
CCS
Copenhagen, Denmark, November 26-30, 2023
2022
Branch Different - Spectre Attacks on Apple Silicon
DIMVA
Cagliari, Italy, June 29 - July 1, 2022
BibTeX Citation
@misc{hetterich2026instrsem,
title={InstrSem: Automatically and Generically Inferring Semantics of (Undocumented) CPU Instructions},
howpublished={USENIX Security},
author={Lorenz Hetterich and Fabian Thomas and Tristan Hornetz and Michael Schwarz},
year={2026}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{thomas2025riscover,
title={RISCover: Automatic Discovery of User-exploitable Architectural Security Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source RISC-V CPUs},
howpublished={CCS},
author={Fabian Thomas and Eric García Arribas and Lorenz Hetterich and Daniel Weber and Lukas Gerlach and Ruiyi Zhang and Michael Schwarz},
year={2025}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{rainer2025rapid,
title={Rapid Reversing of Non-Linear CPU Cache Slice Functions: Unlocking Physical Address Leakage},
howpublished={S\&P},
author={Mikka Rainer and Lorenz Hetterich and Fabian Thomas and Tristan Hornetz and Leon Trampert and Lukas Gerlach and Michael Schwarz},
year={2025}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{trampert2025peripheralinstinct,
title={Peripheral Instinct: How External Devices Breach Browser Sandboxes},
howpublished={WWW},
author={Leon Trampert and Lorenz Hetterich and Lukas Gerlach and Mona Schappert and Christian Rossow and Michael Schwarz},
year={2025}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{hetterich2025shadowload,
title={ShadowLoad: Injecting State into Hardware Prefetchers},
howpublished={ASPLOS},
author={Lorenz Hetterich and Fabian Thomas and Lukas Gerlach and Ruiyi Zhang and Nils Bernsdorf and Eduard Ebert and Michael Schwarz},
year={2025}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{zhang2024cachewarp,
title={CacheWarp: Software-based Fault Injection using Selective State Reset},
howpublished={USENIX Security},
author={Ruiyi Zhang and Lukas Gerlach and Daniel Weber and Lorenz Hetterich and Youheng Lü and Andreas Kogler and Michael Schwarz},
year={2024}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{bauer2024switchpoline,
title={Switchpoline: A Software Mitigation for Spectre-BTB and Spectre-BHB on ARMv8},
howpublished={ASIACCS},
author={Markus Bauer and Lorenz Hetterich and Christian Rossow and Michael Schwarz},
year={2024}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{schlueter2023fetchbench,
title={FetchBench: Systematic Identification and Characterization of Proprietary Prefetchers},
howpublished={CCS},
author={Till Schlüter and Amit Choudhari and Lorenz Hetterich and Leon Trampert and Hamed Nemati and Ahmad Ibrahim and Michael Schwarz and Christian Rossow and Nils Ole Tippenhauer},
year={2023}
}BibTeX Citation
@misc{hetterich2022applespectre,
title={Branch Different - Spectre Attacks on Apple Silicon},
howpublished={DIMVA},
author={Lorenz Hetterich and Michael Schwarz},
year={2022}
}Talks
2024
Arbitrary Data Manipulation and Leakage with CPU Zero-Day Bugs on RISC-V
Black Hat USA
Las Vegas, USA, August 7, 2024
BibTeX Citation
@misc{thomas2024arbitrary,
title={Arbitrary Data Manipulation and Leakage with CPU Zero-Day Bugs on RISC-V},
howpublished={Black Hat USA},
author={Fabian Thomas and Lorenz Hetterich},
year={2024}
}