Michele Orrù

I am an Associate Research Professor (on leave) at CNRS, specializing in cryptographic systems for privacy-preserving authentication.

Research

  • Anonymous credentials. I design methods for users to trust each other anonymously. Recent work includes μCMZ.

  • Zero-knowledge proofs. I work on the design, standardization, and deployment of proof systems and non-interactive arguments, including Gemini and Internet Drafts for Fiat–Shamir and Sigma Protocols.

  • Confidential transactions. In the past, I worked on the security foundations of Mimblewimble, a private cryptocurrency.

Projects

I built some cool privacy technologies.

Publications (scholar, dblp)

Author order is alphabetical for papers following the theoretical-cryptography convention.

  • A Modular Approach for Keyed-Verification Anonymous Credentials [ePrint]
    Michele Orrù, Lindsey Tulloch, Victor Snyder-Graf, Ian Goldberg
    USENIX 2026 (Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium)

  • A Fiat–Shamir Transformation From Duplex Sponges [ePrint]
    Alessandro Chiesa, Michele Orrù
    TCC 2025 (Proceedings of the 23rd Theory of Cryptography Conference)

  • Revisiting keyed-verification anonymous credentials [ePrint]
    Michele Orrù
    ACM CCS 2025 (Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)

  • Beyond the circuit: How to Minimize Foreign Arithmetic in ZKP Circuits [ePrint],
    Michele Orrù, George Kadianakis, Mary Maller, Greg Zaverucha
    IACR Communications in Cryptology (Volume 2, Issue 1)

  • Oblivious issuance of proofs [ePrint],
    Michele Orrù, Stefano Tessaro, Greg Zaverucha, Chenzhi Zhu
    CRYPTO 2024 (Proceedings of the 44th Annual International Cryptology Conference)

  • zk-Bench: A Toolset for Comparative Evaluation and Performance Benchmarking of SNARKs [ePrint],
    Jens Ernstberger, Stefanos Chaliasos, George Kadianakis, Philipp Jovanovic, Arthur Gervais, Benjamin Livshits, Michele Orrù
    SCN 2024 (Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Security in Communication Networks)

  • Non-interactive Mimblewimble transactions, revisited [ePrint],
    Georg Fuchsbauer, Michele Orrù
    ASIACRYPT 2022 (Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security)

  • Gemini: an elastic proof system for diverse environments [ePrint] [Talk] [Code],
    Jonathan Bootle, Alessandro Chiesa, Yuncong Hu, Michele Orrù
    EUROCRYPT 2022 (Proceedings of the 42nd Annual International Conference on Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques)

  • Publicly verifiable anonymous tokens with private metadata bit [ePrint],
    Fabrice Benhamouda, Tancrède Lepoint, Michele Orrù, Mariana Raykova
    Preprint.

  • A proposal for the standardization of ∑-protocols [PDF] [Talk] [Talk at NIST]
    Michele Orrù, Stephan Krenn
    4th ZKProof Workshop

  • On the (in)security of ROS [ePrint] [Talk],
    Best paper award
    Fabrice Benhamouda, Tancrède Lepoint, Julian Loss, Michele Orrù, Mariana Raykova
    EUROCRYPT 2021 (Proceedings of the 41st Annual International Conference on Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques)

  • Efficient Anonymous Tokens with Private Metadata Bit [ePrint] [Talk] [Code],
    Ben Kreuter, Tancrède Lepoint, Michele Orrù, Mariana Raykova
    CRYPTO 2020 (Proceedings of the 40th Annual International Cryptology Conference)

  • Aggregate cash systems: A cryptographic investigation of Mimblewimble [ePrint] [Talk],
    Georg Fuchsbauer, Michele Orrù, Yannick Seurin
    EUROCRYPT 2019 (Proceedings of the 38th Annual International Conference on Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques)

  • Lattice-Based zk-SNARKs from SSPs [ePrint] [Talk] [Code],
    Rosario Gennaro, Michele Minelli, Michele Orrù, Anca Niţulescu
    ACM CCS 2018 (Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)

  • Non-Interactive Zaps of Knowledge [ePrint],
    Best paper award
    Georg Fuchsbauer, Michele Orrù
    ACNS 2018 (Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security)

  • Homomorphic Secret Sharing: Optimizations and Applications [ePrint],
    Elette Boyle, Geoffroy Couteau, Niv Gilboa, Yuval Ishai, Michele Orrù
    ACM CCS 2017 (Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)

  • Actively Secure 1-out-of-N OT Extension with Application to Private Set Intersection [ePrint],
    Michele Orrù, Emmanuela Orsini, Peter Scholl
    CT-RSA 2017 (Proceedings of The Cryptographers’ Track at the RSA Conference 2017)

Selected talks

  • A Fiat–Shamir Transformation From Duplex Sponges 12 Mar 2026 · Beijing, China · Tsinghua University 11 Feb 2026 · Vienna, Austria · TU Wien 2 Dec 2025 · Aarhus, Denmark · TCC 2025 24 Sep 2025 · Amsterdam, Netherlands · CWI 7 Aug 2025 · Stanford, California · Stanford Theory Seminar 20 May 2025 · London, United Kingdom · King’s College 4 May 2025 · Madrid, Spain · EUROCRYPT Permutation-Based Crypto Workshop

  • On the (in)security of ROS 11 Mar 2026 · Beijing, China · Peking University

  • A new software stack for building anonymous credential systems 13 Aug 2026 · Baltimore, USA · USENIX Security 2026 4 Feb 2026 · Stanford, USA · Stanford Security Seminar 21 Jan 2026 · Berkeley, USA · UC Berkeley Sky Security Seminar

  • Des preuves zero-knowledge à l’anonymat en ligne 11 Dec 2025 · Paris, France · College de France

  • Sigma Protocols and Fiat–Shamir 17 Mar 2026 · Shenzhen, China · IETF 125 Crypto Forum 6 Nov 2025 · Montreal, Canada · IETF 124 Crypto Forum 25 Mar 2025 · Sofia, Bulgaria · ZKProofs 7 18 Mar 2025 · remote · IETF 122 CFRG

  • Revisiting Keyed-Verification Credentials 14 Oct 2025 · Taipei, Taiwan · ACM CCS 2025 4 May 2025 · Madrid, Spain · EUROCRYPT Cryptographic Applications Workshop 24 Apr 2025 · Cambridge, USA · MIT CSAIL Security Seminar 12 Dec 2024 · Paris, France · Université de Versailles

Code (github)

I love writing code. Side-quests involve orchestrating old electronic robot toys (I have a bunch of Furbys still that can be used for an art project), proving AES-encrypted messages, and other useless things.

I help maintain arkworks.rs, a library ecosystem for zero-knowledge proof development, and sigma-rs, an anonymous credential stack. I am the author of Spongefish, a library for the Fiat–Shamir transformation, and the OCaml letsencrypt library for unikernels. In the past, I contributed to Python, Debian, and Tor.