About Me

I am a PhD student at School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, with an expected graduation date in August 2024. I am working at the Parallel Systems Architecture Laboratory PARSA with Dr. Mirjana Stojilović. I am the first doctoral CYD fellow collaborating with Dr. Vincent Lenders. I am also one of the recipients of the Google Generation scholarship for the year 2022 in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

I have a bachelor of science in Electronics and Communications Engineering, with a minor in mathematics from the American University in Cairo (AUC). While there, I worked as a research assistant with the SEAD research group under the supervision of Prof. Hassanein Amer.

I was a Summer@EPFL research intern during summer of 2018. In 2019, I joined EPFL as an IC doctoral fellowship student.

I serve on the technical program committee of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA).

You can find my resume here (updated January 2024), and my CV here (updated October 2023).

I am broadly interested in heterogeneous computing systems with a focus on security at the hardware and the electrical levels. My work so far has focused on the possibility of electrical-level fault injection in systems incorporating field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and considering the potential multitenancy consistent with cloud computing paradigms. I have investigated the potential for the malicious use of the programmable logic of FPGAs and demonstrated the first FPGA-to-CPU fault-injection exploit.

Publications

D. G. Mahmoud, B. Shokry, V. Lenders, W. Hu and M. Stojilović X-Attack 2.0: The Risk of Power Wasters and Satisfiability Don’t-Care Hardware Trojans to Shared Cloud FPGAs, IEEE Access, 2024.

D. G. Mahmoud, D. Dervishi, S. Hussein, V. Lenders and M. Stojilović DFAulted: Analyzing and Exploiting CPU Software Faults Caused by FPGA-Driven Undervolting Attacks, IEEE Access, 2022.

D. G. Mahmoud, S. Hussein, V. Lenders and M. Stojilović FPGA-to-CPU Undervolting Attacks, Proceedings of DATE 2022.

D. G. Mahmoud, V. Lenders and M. Stojilović Electrical-Level Attacks on CPUs, FPGAs, and GPUs: Survey and Implications in the Heterogeneous Era, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 2022.

D. G. Mahmoud, Beatrice Shokry, Abdallah Elrefaey, Hassanein Amer and Ihab Adly Runtime Replacement of Machine Learning Modules in FPGA-Based Systems, Proc. of 10th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO), Budva, Montenegro, 2021.

O. Glamočanin, D. G. Mahmoud, F. Regazzoni and M. Stojilović, Shared FPGAs and the Holy Grail: Protections against Side-Channel and Fault Attacks, Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE), Virtual, February 1 – 5, 2021.
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D. G. Mahmoud, W. Hu and M. Stojilović, X-Attack: Remote Activation of Satisfiability Don’t-Care Hardware Trojans on Shared FPGAs, The International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), August 31 - September 4, 2020.
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B. Shokry, D. G. Mahmoud, H. H. Amer, M. Shatta, G. I. Alkady, R. M. Daoud, I. Adly, M. N. Shaker and T. Refaat, Work-in-Progress: Triple Event Upset Tolerant Area-Efficient FPGA-Based System for Space Applications And Nuclear Plants, 2020 16th IEEE International Conference on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS), April 27-29, 2020.
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M. G. Labib, D. G. Mahmoud, G. I. Alkady, I. Adly, H. H. Amer, R. M. Daoud and H. M. ElSayed, Heterogeneous Redundancy for PCB Track Failures: An Automotive Example, 2019 14th International Conference on Computer Engineering and Systems (ICCES), December 17, 2019.
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M. Rumman, D. G. Mahmoud, I. Adly, H. H. Amer, G. I. Alkady and H. ElSayed, Reliable On-Chip Memory for FPGA-Based Systems, 2019 31st International Conference on Microelectronics (ICM), December 15-18, 2019.
[detailed record]

G. I. Alkady, D. G. Mahmoud, R. M. Daoud, H. H. Amer, M. N. Shaker, H. M. ElSayed, M.y S. ElSoudani, I. Adly and B. Cico, Reliable FPGA-Based Network Architecture for Smart Cities, 2019 31st International Conference on Microelectronics (ICM), December 15-18, 2019.
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M. Hanna, H. T. Abdelhamid, K.s N. Sorour, I. ElAraby, S. Mahfouz, Y. S. Okasha, D. G. Mahmoud, G. I. Alkady, R. M. Daoud, H. H. Amer, H. ElSayed and I. Adly, Smart FPGA-based System for Enhancing Educational Programs, 2019 Novel Intelligent and Leading Emerging Sciences Conference (NILES), October 28-30, 2019.
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A. Gabara, R. M. Daoud, H. H. Amer, D. G. Mahmoud and H. ElSayed, Fault-Tolerant High-Rate Ethernet-Based Networked Control System, 2019 Novel Intelligent and Leading Emerging Sciences Conference (NILES), October 28-30, 2019.
[detailed record]

D. G. Mahmoud, O. A. Elkhouly, M. Azzazy, G. I. Alkady, I. Adly, R. M. Daoud, H. H. Amer, H. ElSayed, M. Guirguis and M. G. Abdelshafi, Intelligent Battery-Aware Energy Management System for Electric Vehicles, 2019 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), September 10-13, 2019.
[detailed record]

D. Mahmoud and M. Stojilović, Timing Violation Induced Faults in Multi-Tenant FPGAs, Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE), Florence, Italy, March 25 – 29, 2019.
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D. G. Mahmoud, G. I. Alkady, H. H. Amer, R. M. Daoud, I. Adly, Y. Essam, H. A. Ismail and K. N. Sorour, Fault secure FPGA-based TMR voter, 2018 7th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO), June 10-14, 2018.
[detailed record]

M. Y. ElSalamouny, G. I. Alkady, I. Adly, R. M. Daoud, H. H. Amer, H. ElSayed, D. G. Mahmoud, H. A. Ismail and H. H. Halawa, Highly available FPGA-based smart band for WBAN, 2017 12th International Conference on Computer Engineering and Systems (ICCES), December 19-20, 2017.
[detailed record]

Book Chapters

D. G. Mahmoud, O. Glamočanin, F. Regazzoni, and M. Stojilović, Practical Implementations of Remote Power Side-Channel and Fault-Injection Attacks on Multitenant FPGAs, Security of FPGA-Accelerated Cloud Computing Environments, Springer, 2024.

D. Mahmoud, Hardware Acceleration, Trends in Data Protection and Encryption Technologies, Springer, 2023.

Education

  • Ph.D. Computer and Communication Sciences, School of Computer and Communication Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland (2019-2024 (expected))
  • B.Sc. in Elcetronics and Communications Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics, School of Sciences and Engineering, The American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt (2014-2019)

Teaching

  • Head Teaching Assistant, Computer Architecture (CS-200), instructor: Prof. Farshad Khun Jush, Fall 2023.
  • Head Teaching Assistant, Computer Architecture I (CS-208), instructor: Dr. Mirjana Stojilović, Fall 2022.
  • Head Teaching Assistant, Information, Calcul, Communication (CS-119), instructor: Dr. Mirjana Stojilović, Spring 2020 - Spring 2022.
  • Teaching Assistant, Computer Architecture I (CS-208), instructor: Dr. Mirjana Stojilović, Fall 2020 - Fall 2021.
  • Teaching Assistant, Digital logic Design Lab (ECNG-2108), instructor: Prof. Ihab Talkhan, Fall 2020.
  • Teaching Assistant, Microcontroller System Design Lab (ECNG-3509), instructor: Dr. Ramez Daoud, Fall 2020.
  • Head Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Digital Logic Design (ECNG-2101), instructor: Prof. Hassanein Amer, Fall 2016 - Spring 2017.

Professional Experience

  • Summer@EPFL Research Intern, Parallel Systems Architecture Laboratory, EPFL, June – August 2018.
  • Maintenance Engineering Intern, Electrical Systems Engineering Company (ESEC), Cairo, July – August 2017.
  • Trainee, Engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industries (ENPPI), July 2017.