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General Information
| Full Name | Kemal Derya |
| kderya@wpi.edu | |
| Location | Worcester, MA, USA |
| Languages | English, Turkish |
Education
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2022 - Present Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA - Working on AI safety, microarchitectural attacks, and hardware security
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2020 - 2022 M.S. in Electronics Engineering
Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey - GPA: 3.85/4.00
- Worked on post-quantum cryptography and digital hardware design
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2014 - 2019 B.S. in Electronics Engineering
Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey - GPA: 3.67/4.00 (with Tuition Fee Scholarship)
Professional Experience
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2025 - Present Systems Engineering Intern
Analog Devices Inc., Boston, MA - Added automated scripts to ensure ASPICE System Engineering compliance in the team's system projects
- Developed scripts to ensure system requirements and specifications conform to the team's guidelines
- Built CI/CD pipeline on Github to automate ASPICE compliance checks and publish the incompatible requirements at each system level
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2022 Digital Design Engineer
PAVOTEK, Istanbul, Turkey - Developed state-of-the-art digital systems essential for defense applications
- Utilized expertise in FPGA design methodologies and digital signal processing
- Devised GSM protocol and produced Verilog code leveraging MATLAB Simulink
- Created reliable, high-performance digital hardware solutions on Zynq board
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2018 Summer Intern
ABB Robotics, Istanbul, Turkey - Contributed to the design and prototyping of robotic components, enhancing product development
- Developed a framework that controls industrial robots through voice commands
Skills
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Programming
- C, C++, Python, Verilog
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Technical
- AI Safety, PyTorch, TensorFlow
- Hardware Security, Computer Architecture
- Digital Hardware Design, FPGA, ASIC
Projects
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2025 Exploiting LLM Vulnerabilities Through Fixed-Point Variables
- Found a vulnerability on LLMs where carefully crafted queries produce non-halting responses
- Made assessments on different GPT, LLama, and Gemini language models
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2025 Finding Leakage by Leveraging Reinforcement Learning
- Developed reinforcement learning algorithms to automate attack synthesis for identifying microarchitectural data leakage vulnerabilities on Intel architectures
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2025 Skipping Instruction Sequence using Rowhammer Exploit
- Introduced a Rowhammer gadget that breaks the instruction code to bypass a critical code piece
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2024 Extracting Secret Keys using Rowhammer DRAM Profiling
- Executed Rowhammer attacks to profile DRAM modules and extracted private keys used in TLS handshakes
- Issued CVE-2024-5288 on wolfSSL library
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2022 Accelerating Lattice-based PQC schemes
- Designed and implemented NTT-based polynomial multiplier hardware on FPGA
- Enhanced design reconfigurability for application to various PQC schemes
Publications & Pre-prints
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2025 Non-Halting Queries: Exploiting Fixed Points in LLMs
G. Hammouri, K. Derya and B. Sunar - 2025 IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML), Copenhagen, Denmark
- pp. 1-22, doi: 10.1109/SaTML64287.2025.00009
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2025 μRL: Discovering Transient Execution Vulnerabilities Using Reinforcement Learning
Tol, M.C., Derya, K. and Sunar, B. - arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14307
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2024 Fault+probe: A generic rowhammer-based bit recovery attack
Derya, K., Tol, M.C. and Sunar, B. - arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.06943
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2024 LeapFrog: The Rowhammer Instruction Skip Attack
Adiletta, A., Tol, M.C., Derya, K., Sunar, B. and Islam, S. - arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.07878
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2022 CoHA-NTT: A Configurable Hardware Accelerator for NTT-based Polynomial Multiplication
Kemal Derya, Ahmet Can Mert, Erdinç Öztürk, Erkay Savaş - Microprocessors and Microsystems, Volume 89, 104451
- ISSN 0141-9331, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micpro.2022.104451
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2022 Accelerating lattice-based cryptosystems
Derya, K. - Master Thesis
Teaching Experience
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Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- ECE 3829 - Advanced Digital System Design With FPGAs
- ECE 2049 - Embedded Computing In Engineering Design
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Sabanci University
- CS 303 - Logic and Digital System Design
- EE 308 - Microprocessor Based System Design
Research Interests
- Primary: Microarchitectural Security, AI Safety
- Secondary: Side-Channel Analysis, Fault Injection, Post-Quantum Cryptography