Mathias Payer
Research Scientist at EPFL
Lausanne, Vaud, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMathias Payer is a research scientist and professor leading the HexHive group, with 13 years of experience focused on system and software security, low-level binary rewriting, and memory-corruption defenses. Trained at ETH Zurich (Dr. sc. ETH, 2012) and shaped by a postdoc in Dawn Song’s BitBlaze group, he builds practical defenses that protect applications even when vulnerabilities exist, often via binary translation and software-based fault isolation. He has a hands-on track record of open-source prototype implementations and founded Purdue’s b01lers CTF team, reflecting both deep research and offensive security practice. Based in Lausanne, his work uniquely blends compiler-style code transformations with exploit analysis to enforce integrity for critical data like code pointers. Colleagues know him for turning low-level theory into usable tools and for an unconventional focus on defending live binaries rather than just static code.
13 years of coding experience
Gymnasium LiechtensteinMaster of Science ETH (M.Sc.), Computer Science (System Software), Master of Science ETH (M.Sc.), Computer Science (System Software) at ETH Zurich
Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, German
Stackoverflow
41reputation
5kreached
1answer
1question
Github Skills (80)
printf10
computer-science10
science10
turing-machine10
bsc10
ranking10
brainfuck10
react10
security9
interpreter9
assembly9
reverse-engineering9
llvm-ir9
memory-footprint8
x86-648
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
HexHive/security-group.epfl.ch
Sep 2021 - Nov 2025
Contributions:10 reviews, 31 PRs, 39 pushes in 4 years 2 months
HexHive/FuzzGen
Nov 2019 - Nov 2020
Contributions:2 reviews, 10 commits, 3 PRs in 1 year 1 month
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