A picture of me.

Dan O'Keeffe

I am an Associate Professor in the Centre for Programming Languages and Systems (CPLS) and the Systems and Software Security Lab (S3Lab) at the Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL). My research interests lie broadly in the areas of distributed systems, security, programming languages, databases, and networking.

Prior to joining RHUL I was a post-doctoral researcher in the Large-Scale Distributed Systems (LSDS) group at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London. I completed my PhD under Prof. Jean Bacon as a member of the OPERA group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Between my PhD and post-doc I also spent several years as a software engineer in the financial services industry building high-frequency trading platforms.

The best way to get in touch with me is via email at Daniel dot OKeeffe at rhul dot ac dot uk.

Research

As part of the Redonda project I am currently exploring how recent advances in networking, storage and secure computing hardware can be exploited in blockchain protocols. In the past I have also explored performance and security trade-offs in proof-of-stake blockchains as part of the Revoke project. Previously, I investigated techniques for improving user control and visibility over sensitive data in cloud platforms as part of the SeReCa , SecureCloud and CloudSafetyNet projects.

In addition to systems security, I have a strong interest in scalable data management. Ongoing work in this space is exploring how non-volatile memory (NVM) can improve performance of modern in-memory datastores. In the past I have also worked on stream processing systems as part of the ITA-DSM project, which transplanted popular "Big Data" stream processing platforms to edge computing environments.

Current Projects

Redonda

The Redonda project aims to design a next-generation replication protocol for blockchain, tapping into recent advances in networking, secure computing and distributed systems. Redonda is funded by the Horizon Europe/UKRI CHIST-ERA initiative.

Past Projects

Revoke

How can we adapt consensus protocols to mitigate the risk of ransomware attacks on proof-of-stake validators?

SecureCloud

Aims to remove technical impediments to dependable cloud computing for critical infrastructure applications such as smart grids and health care.

ITA-DSM

Explores data stream processing in non-traditional environments like mesh and mobile ad-hoc networks.

SeReCa

Exploited secure hardware extensions in modern commodity CPUs (e.g. Intel SGX) to protect cloud services and applications from malicious cloud providers.

CloudSafetyNet

Investigated how to monitor information flow in cloud systems to reduce the likelihood of unwanted data disclosure.

Recent Publications

  • RustMC: Automated Verification of Real-World Concurrent Rust, O. Pearce, J. Lange and D. O'Keeffe, FORTE 2026 (tool paper, to appear)
  • An Empirical Study of C to Rust Translation using Local Large-Language Models, N. Rutherford and D. O'Keeffe, ICSE LLM4Code Workshop 2026 (to appear)
  • CloudFlow: Identifying Security-sensitive Data Flows in Serverless Applications, G. Raffa, J. Blasco, D. O'Keeffe, and S. Dash, USENIX Security 2025
  • Fast Durably Linearizable Data Structures for Free, S. Egorov, G. Chockler, B. Dongol, and D. O'Keeffe, PODC ApPLIED Workshop 2025
  • Links Between Package Popularity, Criticality, and Security in Software Ecosystems, A. Butler, D. O'Keeffe and S. Dash, SANER MSR4PS Workshop 2025
  • Revoke: Mitigating Ransomware Attacks against Ethereum Validators, A. Bhudia, D. O'Keeffe, and D. Hurley-Smith, ESORICS 2024
  • Mangosteen: Fast Transparent Durability for Linearizable Applications using NVM, S. Egorov, G. Chockler, B. Dongol, D. O'Keeffe, and S. Keshavarzi, USENIX ATC 2024
  • Towards Inter-service Data Flow Analysis of Serverless Applications, G. Raffa, J. Blasco Alis, D. O'Keeffe, and S. Dash, SANER 2024 (ERA Track - Best Paper Award)
  • AWSomePy: A Dataset and Characterization of Serverless Applications, G. Raffa, J. Blasco Alis, D. O'Keeffe, and S. Dash, Eurosys SESAME Workshop 2023.
  • Hack the Heap - Heap Layout Manipulation made easy, J. Gennissen, D. O'Keeffe, WOOT 2022.
  • Spons & Shields: Practical Isolation for Trusted Execution, V.A. Sartakov, D. O'Keeffe, D. Eyers, L. Villanova, and P. Pietzuch, VEE 2021.
  • PAIGE: Towards a Hybrid-Edge Design for Privacy-Preserving Intelligent Personal Assistants, Y.Liang, D. O'Keeffe, and N. Sastry, EuroSys EdgeSys Workshop 2020.
  • Facilitating plausible deniability for cloud providers regarding tenants activities using trusted execution, D. O'Keeffe, A. Vranaki, D. Eyers, and T. Pasquier, IC2E 2020 (short paper).
  • Frontier: Resilient Edge Processing for the Internet of Things, D. O'Keeffe, T. Salonidis, and P. Pietzuch, VLDB 2018.
  • LibSEAL: Revealing Service Integrity Violations Using Trusted Execution, P-L. Aublin, F. Kelbert, D. O'Keeffe, D. Muthukumaran, C. Priebe, J. Lind, R. Krahn, C. Fetzer, D. Eyers and P. Pietzuch, EuroSys 2018.
  • Glamdring: Automatic Application Partitioning for Intel SGX, J.Lind, C. Priebe, D. Muthukumuran, D. O'Keeffe, P-L. Aublin, F. Kelbert, T. Reiher, D. Goltzche, D. Eyers, R. Kapitza, C. Fetzer and P. Pietzuch, USENIX ATC 2017.
  • SCONE: Secure Linux Containers with Intel SGX, S.Arnautov, B. Trach, F. Gregor, T. Knauth, A. Martin, C. Priebe, J.Lind, D. Muthukumuran, D. O'Keeffe, M. Stillwell, D. Goltzche, D. Eyers, R. Kapitza, P. Pietzuch, and C. Fetzer, USENIX OSDI 2016.
  • FlowWatcher: Defending against Data Disclosure Vulnerabilities in Web Applications, D. Muthukumuran, D. O'Keeffe, C. Priebe, D. Eyers, B. Shand, and P. Pietzuch, ACM CCS 2015.
  • Network-Aware Stream Query Processing in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, D. O'Keeffe, T. Salonidis and P. Pietzuch, IEEE MILCOM 2015.
  • CloudSafetyNet: Detecting data leakage between Cloud tenants, C. Priebe, D. Muthukumuran, D. O'Keeffe, D. Eyers, B. Shand, R. Kapitza, and P. Pietzuch, ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW), 2014.
  • Adaptive Stream Query Planning for Hybrid Coalition Networks, D. O'Keeffe, T. Salonidis, and P. Pietzuch, 8th Annual Conference of the ITA (ACITA), 2014.
  • Adaptive Stream Processing for Hybrid Coalition Networks: Challenges and Initial Solutions, J. Kurose, D. O'Keeffe, P. Pietzuch, T. Salonidis, A. Seetharam, and D. Towsley, 7th Annual Conference of the ITA (ACITA), 2013.