Welcome!
If you are here looking for my professional website - try here. If you want my complete list of publications - try here.
A Little Bit About Myself:
I was born in Ramat Gan, Israel. I have started my academic adventure in the Technion's excellence program who let me do a B.A. in the Computer Science Department. One thing led to another, and after graduating, I've found myself doing Masters degree, which evolved to a Ph.D. I finished my Ph.D. studies at the computer science dept. on February 2006, my dissertation is named "Techniques for Cryptanalysis of Block Ciphers", and its abstract is available online here. Due to technical reasons the dissertation itself is no longer available on-line. As you can already guess, my research is in the field of Cryptology, or more precisely - cryptanalysis of symmetric key primitives.
Besides my working life, I have some social life as well. I have been dancing salsa for the last 14 years. In 2000, I've started instructing salsa, an adventure that led me also to the status of a salsa DJ. Since 2004, I haven't taught officially or played music as a DJ, but I still know some things and have my disks.
I was first introduced to like salsa when I first visited the Red Sea Jazz Festival (in Eilat), where the "Jerusalem Salsa Band" had played some great salsa. My girlfriend back then and myself, tried to imitate the people who moved so gracefully to the beat of the music. It was a disaster, ;-). Later on, I decided I needed to learn how to dance salsa, so I enjoyed the Latin nights that were held back then in the Technion. In those nights I have learned to dance salsa, and after taking five months to understand what the rhythm of the salsa is (and that it is better for the left foot not to be exactly on the way of the right one), I've started to really like the music and the dance.
Another activity I enjoy, is the Haifa Linux Club (Haifux). The club, or more precisely Linux User Group (LUG), was founded by Guy Keren and myself, in August 1999. The club has bi-weekly meetings, where various Linux related subjects are discussed and taught. I even gave there a lecture or two myself. Since my move to Belgium, I have been acting as one of its coordinators from the distance.
I even gave a presentation (in a somewhat non-serious session) at August Penguin 4. You are invited to view it here (sorry, only open-office impress format).
Long time ago, when I had some free time, I participated in many secular groups. Israel is becoming more and more orthodox, and the separation between state and religion (which never was too good) is diminishing. Among the groups I used to be active in the past: Hofesh (Liberty) - (a website dedicated to promoting the secular point of view in Israel), Da'at Emet (a secular point of view on the Jewish codex).
Work, Studies and Such:
So far I have got Ph.D. in computer science, B.A. summa cum laude, published several papers in international conferences and workshops, gave invited talks, invited seminar talks, etc. For a full list I encourage you to take a look at my Curriculum vitae, or my research page.
My Family:
As might be expected, I was born, and thus, I have a mother, Haya. I also have a father, Jacob. I also have two sisters, Ayelet and Shachar, and one brother, Ziv. My father is a software developer and dealer in TBM Ltd..
If you want to some pictures of them click here.
My Trips:
In November 2002, I flew to Australia, as part of my visit to the ASIACRYPT 2002 conference (held in Queenstown, New Zealnd). First, I visited the University of Wollongong, gave a seminar talk there, and visited the lovely city of Sydney. After taking numerous pictures at the zoo and of the famous Opera house, I flew to New Zealand. There, I traveled a bit after the conference ended. In case you saw Lord of the Rings, you should know that New Zealand is amazing. So I took many pictures (7 films in 7 days of traveling). When I came back to Israel, I found out that the camera was out of focus! ALL the pictures of Australia and New Zealand where ruined! Luckily, Elad Barkan has lent me his films, and I have a solid copy of some of my pictures (we traveled most of the time together). I also have pictures from a Rafting we did with Jongsung Kim and Sangwoo Park, two scientists from Korea who also came for the conference. These photos can be found here.
On the 4th of March, 2003, I went to visit my girlfriend Osnat in a place she stayed. There is a nice road to there, but to get to the road I had to pass through Kibutz Shomrat (next to Acre). However, the Kibutz's gates were closed, so I had to go through the fields. This was very nice, as Osnat gave me instructions how to drive through the fields. Taking the wrong turn, I ended up in deep mud, so I rescued myself, and continued to go on, just to get stuck for real in mud (again). I called Osnat, who came to my rescue, and found herself stuck in the first mud puddle of the road. After some time, some of her friends (Genady and Castro) succeeded in rescuing her, and they took their 4WD car and came to rescue me from the mud. However, it was late in the night, so we didn't really see what's going on. So eventually, I left the car in the fields (after taking the valuables from the car).
Day afterwards, three great friends of mine - Dani, Netanel, and Beni came with me to rescue the car. We dug under the car, used jack to pull it out of the mud, put stones under the car, etc. There are great pictures of the rescue operation... here are the pictures.
On the summer vacation of 2003, Osnat, Dani and Miriam (Dani's wife, and a dear friend) and myself went to an 80 days vacation to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba and Mexico (and a bit of New York). It was amazing, as Costa Rica is a lovely place (ever so green), Cuba is amazing (nice people, and we heard there is a great salsa), Guatemala is one of a kind (lovely and unique sites), and Mexico's beaches are heaven rediscovered. You can see some of the pictures from there here.
On the summer of 2006, Osnat and myself went to a trip to Canada and the US. The trip started in the lovely city of Vancouver, from which we continued to the Vancouver island. After returning from the island, we headed towards the Canadian Rockies. The rockies can be described only by one word - breathtaking. If you can still use more words, it means that your breath haven't been taken away completely, which is impossible in that region of the world. We saw wildlife, scenery, and of course, lots and lots of cool and nice people. We flew to Montreal and after two days in the city we headed to Quebec city, taking our time while driving in the most lovely fallsome scenery nature has to offer (Quebec province is locate just next to New England). We came back through Toronto, went to the Niagara, and crossed the border to the US. Then we browsed through New England (again, lovely fallsome, really nice people), and visited Boston (and MIT). You can see a glimpse here.
On February 2007, Osnat and myself went to a short vacation in Puerto Rico. The whole vacation can be summarized as "Wow!". The beaches were lovely, the salsa scene lively, and the company great (at least the company I had, I'm not sure how much Osnat enjoyed hers). For Puerto Rican pictures, click here.