News

TrustCerts is winner of the ATHENE Startup Award UP22@it-sa

The winner of this year's ATHENE Startup Award UP22@it-sa has been determined: The startup TrustCerts was able to prevail against nine other startups in yesterday's pitch and may take home the coveted trophy. The team convinced both the jury and the audience with their business idea of signing, creating and managing documents and proofs in a forgery-proof way, while ensuring neutral verifiability with blockchain technology.

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Our researchers present their papers at USENIX 2022

A total of 10 papers in which ATHENE researchers have participated have been accepted at this year's USENIX Security Symposium. Starting today, our researchers will present their papers at this year's hybrid symposium, which is one of the four most important conferences in the field of security.

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Article by ATHENE researchers published in the journal ACM Computing Surveys

The paper "A Survey on Data Augmentation for Text Classification", written as part of the CYWARN, emergenCITY and ATHENE projects by researchers at the Chair of Science and Technology for Security and Peace (PEASEC) at TU Darmstadt, has been published in the journal ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR).

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Client Side Scanning and Deep Perceptual Hashing Vulnerabilities

ATHENE scientists at TU Darmstadt have identified significant vulnerabilities and manipulation possibilities in client-side scanning and deep perceptual hashing. The process came into focus when Apple introduced "NeuralHash" in 2021, a new approach to detecting child abuse imagery, but withdrew the introduction after massive criticism. The research results of the scientists now prove the dangers of client-side scanning methods for users.

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Fragile protection of our communications via submarine cables

ATHENE researchers study states' vulnerability to submarine cable failures
Today, we take it for granted that we can call up a website, stream a movie or be active in social networks within seconds. Many people are often unaware that the data transfer takes place via thousands of kilometers of cable laid at the bottom of the ocean. Today, around 98 percent of inter­national Internet traffic is handled via undersea communication cables. Coastal and island states are highly dependent on this physical infrastructure to provide Internet connections. However, although an annual average of about 100 submarine cable failures of human or natural origin occur, there is currently no global analysis that assesses the vulnerability of individual states to failures on a global scale.
ATHENE scientists Jonas Franken, Thomas Reinhold and Prof. Christian Reuter from the Chair of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) at TU Darmstadt have tackled this issue.

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