Bio
Alessandra Scafuro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NCSU. She received her PhD from University of Salerno, Italy, in 2013. Prior to joining the NC State faculty, she was a post-doc at UCLA, and held a join post-doc position at Boston University and Northeastern University. Her research interests are in the theoretical foundations as well as practical applications of Cryptography. Presently she studies the problem of designing protocols for secure computation. The goal of secure computation is to allow several parties to compute a function of their joint inputs, in such a way that all participants learn the output of the function but yet, they do not learn the inputs of the other parties. This problem is relevant in scenarios where multiple parties are interested in evaluating function on sensitive data that must remain private, for example, running tests on medical records. While from a theoretical point of view this problem has been extensively studied, the challenge today is to design protocols that are efficient and usable in real world applications.
Publications
- David Adei, Chris Orsini, Alessandra Scafuro, and Tanner Verber, How to Recover a Cryptographic Secret From the Cloud, in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Nov. 2025.
- Alessandra Scafuro and Tanner Verber, A New Paradigm for Server-Aided MPC, IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 1, no. 4, Dec. 2024.
- Varun Madathil, Alessandra Scafuro, and Tanner Verber, Round-Optimal Compiler for Semi-Honest to Malicious Oblivious Transfer via CIH, IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 1, no. 4, Dec. 2024.
- David Adei, Varun Madathil, Sathvik Prasad, Bradley Reaves, and Alessandra Scafuro, Jäger: Automated Telephone Call Traceback, in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Oct. 2024.
- Alessandra Scafuro, Black-Box Anonymous Commit-and-Prove, in Proceedings of Security and Cryptography for Networks: 13th International Conference, Sep. 2022.
- Varun Madathil, Alessandra Scafuro, Kemafor Anyanwu, Sen Qiao, Akash Pateria, and Binil Starly, Preserving Buyer-Privacy in Decentralized Supply Chain Marketplaces, in Proceedings of Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology: ESORICS 2022 International Workshops, Sep. 2022.
- Varun Madathil, Alessandra Scafuro, István András Seres, Omer Shlomovits, and Denis Varlakov, Private Signaling, in Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium, Aug. 2022.
- Vanesa Daza, Abida Haque, Alessandra Scafuro, Alexandros Zacharakis, and Arantxa Zapico, Mutual Accountability Layer: Accountable Anonymity Within Accountable Trust, in Proceedings of the Cyber Security, Cryptology, and Machine Learning: 6th International Symposium, Jun. 2022.
- Varun Madathil, Chris Orsini, Alessandra Scafuro, and Daniele Venturi, From Privacy-Only to Simulatable OT: Black-Box, Round-Optimal, Information-Theoretic, in Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2022), Jun. 2022.
- Alessandra Scafuro and Bihan Zhang, One-time Traceable Ring Signatures, in Proceedings of the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS), Oct. 2021.
- Abida Haque, Varun Madathil, Bradley Reaves, and Alessandra Scafuro, Anonymous Device Authorization for Cellular Networks, in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), Jun. 2021.
- Ivan Visconti Alessandra Scafuro Luisa Siniscalchi, Publicly Verifiable Zero Knowledge from (Collapsing) Blockchains, in Proceedings of the IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public Key Cryptography (PKC), May 2021.
- Markulf Kohlweiss, Varun Madathil, Kartik Nayak, and Alessandra Scafuro, On the Anonymity Guarantees of Anonymous Proof-of-Stake Protocols, in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), May 2021.
- Abida Haque and Alessandra Scafuro, Threshold Ring Signatures: New Definitions and Post-quantum Security, in Proceedings of the IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC), Jun. 2020, pp. 423–452.
[PDF] - Foteini Baldimtsi, Varun Madathil, Alessandra Scafuro, and Linfeng Zhou, Anonymous Lottery In The Proof-of-Stake Setting, in Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF), Jun. 2020, pp. 318–333.
[PDF] - Shafi Goldwasser, Rafail Ostrovsky, Alessandra Scafuro, and Adam Sealfon, Population Stability: Regulating Size in the Presence of an Adversary, in ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Jul. 2019.
- Alessandra Scafuro, Break-glass Encryption, in Proceedings of International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC), Apr. 2019.
- Alessandra Scafuro, Luisa Siniscalchi, and Ivan Visconti, Publicly Verifiable Proofs from Blockchains, in Proceedings of International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC), Apr. 2019.
- Payman Mohassel, Mike Rosulek, and Alessandra Scafuro, Sublinear Zero-Knowledge Arguments for RAM Programs, in Proceedings of the 36th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (Eurocrypt 2017), Paris, France, May 2017.
[PDF] - Ethan Heilman, Foteini Baldimtsi, Leen Alshenibr, Alessandra Scafuro, and Sharon Goldberg, TumbleBit: An Untrusted Tumbler for Bitcoin-Compatible Anonymous Payments, in Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2017, San Diego, CA, Feb. 2017.
[PDF] - Mihir Bellare, Georg Fuchsbauer, and Alessandra Scafuro, NIZKs with an Untrusted CRS: Security in the Face of Parameter Subversion, in Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptology and Information Security (Asiacrypt 2016), Hanoi, Vietnam, Dec. 2016.
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Last updated: September 3, 2026