I am a PhD candidate in the Systems Research Group at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. I am working on enabling secure and efficient hardware-enforced confidential computing on the edge-cloud, under the supervision of Anil Madhavapeddy and Jon Crowcroft. I am interested in operating systems, security, virtualization, and trustworthy computing. My research is centered around building systems to provide applications with strong isolation and fine-grained compartmentalisation mechanisms. I am currently building a lightweight SW/HW stack for enabling an efficient HW-enforced shielded execution that supports system-wide privilege separation.

Experience

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (2018-present)
PhD student, Systems Research Group

Microsoft Research Intern, Cambridge, UK (Summer 2020)
Confidential Computing Team

Microsoft Research Intern, Redmond, WA (Summer 2019)
Azure Sphere Team

Microsoft Research Intern, Redmond, WA (Summer 2017)
Project Sopris Team

Indiana University , Bloomington, IN (2015-2017)
Research Assistant

Publications

  • Sirius: Enabling System-Wide Isolation for Trusted Execution Environments.
    Z. Tarkhani, A. Madhavapeddy. arXiv:2009.01869
  • μTiles: Efficient Intra-Process Privilege Enforcement of Memory Regions.
    Z. Tarkhani, A. Madhavapeddy. arXiv:2004.04846
  • Snape: The Dark Art of Handling Heterogeneous Enclaves.
    Z. Tarkhani, A. Madhavapeddy, R. Mortier. The 2nd International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking
  • Enabling Hardware-enforced Private Computing on the Edge-Cloud
    Z. Tarkhani. Cambridge University Computer Laboratory Report
  • Trustworthy and Portable Emulation Platform for Digital Preservation.
    Z. Tarkhani, G. Brown, S. Myers. 14th International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES), 2017

    • Talks

    Snape: The Dark Art of Handling Heterogeneous Enclaves
    Edgesys19 (March 25, 2019)

    Towards Tiny Trustworthy Enclaves for Unikernels
    UK Systems Research workshop (March 21—23, 2018)

    How can TrustZone help ​with protecting microservices?
    Systems Research Group, Cambridge (Jun 12, 2018)

    Teaching

  • Supervising Concurrent and Distributed Systems Course
  • Supervising Operating Systems Course
  • Supervising Security Course
  • Supervising Programming in C and C++ Course

    • Services

  • ACM EuroSys '19 - Shadow PC Member

    • Education

    Ph.D., Computer Science (2018-present)
    University of Cambridge, Cambridge
    Advisors: Anil Madhavapeddy and Jon Crowcroft

    M.S., Computer Science (2017)
    Indiana University, Bloomington
    Advisors: Geoffrey Brown and Steven Myers

    B.Sc., Computer Hardware Engineering (2015)
    Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran
    Advisor: Hamid.R.Zarandi

    Other

  • I love reading good books, playing guitar, walking while listening to audio books or good music (especially Spanish Flamenco music), and I do love amazingly beautiful Cambridge.
  • Seeing children suffering from cancer is one of the saddest things ever, maybe even our small support help them in their fight a little bit (e.g., MAHAK ).