Portrait of Srinath Setty

Srinath Setty

Principal Researcher

About

I am a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (opens in new tab) with research interests in systems, security, privacy, and cryptography. My recent and ongoing work is focused on securing data and services in the cloud. Specific topics of my (recent) research include cryptographic proof systems for real-world cloud services to produce proofs of integrity and freshness guarantees, high-speed zero-knowledge proofs and SNARKs, Byzantine consensus, fault-tolerance in cloud services, formal verification of distributed systems and cryptographic libraries, metadata-private communication,  and decentralized identity. I got my Ph.D. in computer science from UT Austin where I was advised by Professor Michael Walfish (opens in new tab). Here (opens in new tab) is a copy of my CV.

At MSR, I have worked with the following excellent students, during their internships and beyond: Sudheesh Singanamalla (2021), Abhiram Kothapalli (2021), Ioanna Tzialla (2020), Yunhao Zhang (2020), Sangeeta Chowdhary (2019), Edo Roth (opens in new tab) (2019), Jonathan Bootle (opens in new tab) (2018), Kirill Nikitin (opens in new tab) (2018), Willy R. Vasquez (2018), Rishabh Poddar (2018), Sebastian Angel (opens in new tab) (2017), Tyler Hunt (opens in new tab)(2017), Bernhard Kragl (opens in new tab)(2017), Kevin Sekniqi (opens in new tab)(2017), Soumya Basu (opens in new tab)(2016), Ashay Rane (opens in new tab)(2016), Hao Chen (2015–16), and Chunzhi Su (opens in new tab)(2015).

Publications

  1. Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Abhiram Kothapalli, Srinath Setty, and Ioanna Tzialla
    CRYPTO 2022 (to appear)

    • Preprint: Cryptology ePrint 2021/370, 2021
  2. Transparency Dictionaries with Succinct Proofs of Correct Operation
    Ioanna Tzialla, Abhiram Kothapalli, Bryan Parno, and Srinath Setty
    NDSS 2022

    • Full version: Cryptology ePrint 2021/1263
  3. Brakedown: Linear-time and post-quantum SNARKs for R1CS
    Alexander Golovnev, Jonathan Lee, Srinath Setty, Justin Thaler, and Riad S. Wahby
    Cryptology ePrint 2021/1043, 2021
  4. FastVer: Making Data Integrity a Commodity
    Arvind Arasu, Badrish Chandramouli, Johannes Gehrke, Esha Ghosh, Donald Kossmann, Jonathan Protzenko, Ravi Ramamurthy, Tahina Ramananandro, Aseem Rastogi, Srinath Setty, Nikhil Swamy, Alexander van Renen, and Min Xu
    ACM SIGMOD 2021
  5. Linear-time zero-knowledge SNARKs for R1CS (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Jonathan Lee, Srinath Setty, Justin Thaler, and Riad Wahby
    Cryptology ePrint 2021/030, 2021
  6. Byzantine ordered consensus without Byzantine oligarchy (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Yunhao Zhang, Srinath Setty, Qi Chen, Lidong Zhou, and Lorenzo Alvisi
    USENIX OSDI 2020.
    Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award
  7. Quarks: Quadruple-efficient transparent zkSNARKs (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty and Jonathan Lee
    Cryptology ePrint 2020/1275, 2020
  8. Spartan: Efficient and general-purpose zkSNARKs without trusted setup
    Srinath Setty
    IACR CRYPTO 2020. Full version: Cryptology ePrint 2019/550, 2019 (PDF (opens in new tab))
  9. Visor: Privacy-Preserving Video Analytics as a Cloud Service (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Rishabh Poddar, Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Srinath Setty, Stavros Volos, and Raluca Ada Popa
    USENIX Security 2020
    CSAW 2020 Applied Research Competition Award (Runner-up)
  10. Verifiable state machines: Proofs that untrusted services operate correctly (PDF (opens in new tab), ePrint (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Sebastian Angel, and Jonathan Lee
    ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review,  Volume 54, Number 1, August 2020
  11. Replicated state machines without replicated execution (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Jonathan Lee, Kirill Nikitin, and Srinath Setty
    IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2020
  12. Veritas: Shared Verifiable Databases and Tables in the Cloud
    Lindsey Allen et al.
    CIDR 2019
  13. Proving the correct execution of concurrent services in zero-knowledge (PDF (opens in new tab), Extended version (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Sebastian Angel, Trinabh Gupta, and Jonathan Lee
    USENIX OSDI 2018
  14. PIR with compressed queries and amortized query processing (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Sebastian Angel, Hao Chen, Kim Laine, and Srinath Setty
    IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2018
  15. Enabling secure and resource-efficient blockchain networks with VOLT (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Soumya Basu, Lidong Zhou, Michael L. Roberts, and Ramarathnam Venkatesan
    Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2017-38, August 2017
  16. Vale: Verifying high-performance cryptographic assembly code (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Barry Bond, Chris Hawblitzel, Manos Kapritsos, K. Rustan M. Leino, Jacob R. Lorch, Bryan Parno, Ashay Rane, Srinath Setty, and Laure Thompson
    USENIX Security 2017
    USENIX Distinguished paper award
  17. IronFleet: Proving safety and liveness of practical distributed systems (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Chris Hawblitzel, Jon Howell, Manos Kapritsos, Jacob R. Lorch, Bryan Parno, Michael L. Roberts, Srinath Setty, and Brian Zill
    CACM Research Highlights 60(7), July 2017.
  18. Realizing the fault-tolerance promise of cloud storage using locks with intent (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Chunzhi Su, Jacob R. Lorch, Lidong Zhou, Hao Chen, Parveen Patel, and Jinglei Ren
    USENIX OSDI 2016
  19. Unobservable communication over fully untrusted infrastructure (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Sebastian Angel and Srinath Setty
    USENIX OSDI 2016
  20. Scalable and private media consumption with Popcorn (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Trinabh Gupta, Natacha Crooks, Whitney Mulhern, Srinath Setty, Lorenzo Alvisi, and Michael Walfish
    USENIX NSDI 2016
  21. IronFleet: Proving Practical Distributed Systems Correct (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Chris Hawblitzel, Jon Howell, Manos Kapritsos, Jacob R. Lorch, Bryan Parno, Michael L. Roberts, Srinath Setty, and Brian Zill
    ACM SOSP 2015
  22. Efficient RAM and control flow in verifiable outsourced computation (PDF (opens in new tab), Full version (opens in new tab))
    Riad S. Wahby, Srinath Setty, Zuocheng Ren, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    NDSS 2015
  23. Toward practical argument systems for verifiable computation (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, December 2014
    University of Texas Bert Kay Best Dissertation Award
  24. Verifying computations with state (PDF (opens in new tab), Full version (opens in new tab), Talk (opens in new tab))
    Benjamin Braun, Ariel J. Feldman, Zuocheng Ren, Srinath Setty, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    ACM SOSP 2013
  25. A hybrid architecture for interactive verifiable computation (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Victor Vu, Srinath Setty, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2013
  26. Resolving the conflict between generality and plausibility in verified computation (PDF (opens in new tab), Full version (opens in new tab), Talk (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Benjamin Braun, Victor Vu, Andrew J. Blumberg, Bryan Parno, and Michael Walfish
    ACM EuroSys 2013
  27. Taking proof-based verified computation a few steps closer to practicality (PDF (opens in new tab), Full version (opens in new tab), Talk (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Victor Vu, Nikhil Panpalia, Benjamin Braun, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    USENIX Security 2012
  28. Making argument systems for outsourced computation practical (sometimes) (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Richard McPherson, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    NDSS 2012
  29. Depot: Cloud Storage with Minimal Trust (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Prince Mahajan, Srinath Setty, Sangmin Lee, Allen Clement, Lorenzo Alvisi, Mike Dahlin, and Michael Walfish
    ACM TOCS Volume 29, Number 4, Article 12, December 2011
  30. Toward practical and unconditional verification of remote computations (PDF (opens in new tab), Talk (opens in new tab))
    Srinath Setty, Andrew J. Blumberg, and Michael Walfish
    USENIX HotOS 2011
  31. Repair from a chair: Computer repair as an untrusted cloud service (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Lon Ingram, Ivaylo Popov, Srinath Setty, and Michael Walfish
    USENIX HotOS 2011
  32. Depot: Cloud Storage with Minimal Trust (PDF (opens in new tab), Full version (opens in new tab))
    Prince Mahajan, Srinath Setty, Sangmin Lee, Allen Clement, Lorenzo Alvisi, Mike Dahlin, and Michael Walfish
    USENIX OSDI 2010
  33. Airavat: Security and Privacy for MapReduce (PDF (opens in new tab))
    Indrajit Roy, Srinath Setty, Ann Kilzer, Vitaly Shmatikov, and Emmett Witchel
    USENIX NSDI 2010