News
ATHENE researchers discover fundamental design flaws in DNSSEC
Led by Prof. Haya Schulmann of Goethe University Frankfurt, a team of ATHENE researchers has uncovered a critical flaw in the design of DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), which is a vulnerability in all Domain Name System (DNS) implementations. DNS is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet. Without a fix, the design flaw could have devastating consequences for virtually all DNS implementations using DNSSEC and public DNS providers such as Google and Cloudflare.
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Accepted papers on the CHI 2024
Three papers written by ATHENE researchers were accepted at the A*-ranked ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI for short. The annual conference is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.
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ATHENE researchers find insecure keys in healthcare email system
Medical practices send important documents such as electronic certificates of incapacity for work or treatment and cost plans to health insurance companies via the telematics infrastructure mail system. The e-health team at Fraunhofer SIT has now discovered that the encryption for the mail system was set up incorrectly at several health insurance companies - a total of eight health insurance companies used the same keys and were therefore theoretically able to decrypt the mails of other health insurance companies. The researchers are presenting their findings at this year's Chaos Communication Congress (37c3) organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC).
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ATHENE researchers carry out security check of hospital IT
The Bundesamt für Sichere Informationstechnologie (BSI) has commissioned ATHENE researchers from Fraunhofer SIT to conduct a study on the security of hospital information systems and data exchange formats. In order to be able to examine the hospital information systems (KIS) already used in everyday clinical practice more closely, HIS manufacturers and clinics are being sought who would like to have their KIS evaluated by means of penetration tests at no cost. After the test, the results will be made available together with a test certificate. More information about the project can be found here: www.sit.fraunhofer.de/sikis.
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Study published on the lack of legal certainty for big data and AI
How can big data and AI applications be used profitably without violating data protection and IT security? Our data protection experts addressed this question in the recently published legal study "Systematic Privacy in real-life Data Processing Systems". They examined current regulations from the legal areas of data protection, IT security law and copyright law in relation to big data and also looked at the draft EU regulation on artificial intelligence (KI-VO-E).
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Congratulations to Dr. rer. nat. Jasmin Haunschild
Jasmin Haunschild, an ATHENE scientist, completed the final part of her doctoral thesis at the Department of Computer Science at the TU Darmstadt. Her thesis titled "Enhancing Citizens' Role in Public Safety: Interaction, Perception and Design of Mobile Warning Apps" was written as part of the ATHENE research area Secure Urban infrastructures (SecUrban). Her thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter and co-supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Fiedrich. The thesis was reviewed and recommended for acceptance by the Department of Computer Science. The oral examination was chaired by Prof. Dr. Marco Zimmerling, with Prof. Dr. Jan Gugenheimer and Prof. Dr. Joachmin Vogt also involved as examiners.
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ATHENE researcher develops an AI assistant for researchers
The Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing (UKP) Lab led by ATHENE researcher Prof. Iryna Gurevych at TU Darmstadt has received the Amazon University Collaboration Award. As part of the funding, the research team will collaborate with AI researchers from Amazon Alexa in Berlin. Together, they are developing a "virtual research assistant" that helps researchers quickly and reliably close their own knowledge gaps by answering their questions.
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Congratulations to ATHENE researcher Thomas Reinhold on the successful defense of his doctoral thesis
We are pleased to announce that ATHENE researcher Thomas Reinhold has successfully completed his dissertation at the Department of Computer Science at TU Darmstadt, on his path to obtaining a "Dr. rer. nat." degree. His dissertation, "Towards a Peaceful Development of Cyberspace - Challenges and Technical Measures for the De-escalation of State-led Cyberconflicts and Arms Control of Cyberweapons," was written as part of the ATHENE research area, Secure Urban Infrastructure (SecUrban). The research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter, the coordinator of the research area and Head of the Department of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) at TU Darmstadt.
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AI against money laundering
In a new research project, researchers at Fraunhofer SIT are developing a solution for the automated detection of illegal financial flows - including testable minimum requirements for the use of artificial intelligence in sensitive areas.
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Accepted papers on ACM SIGMOD 2023
Three papers involving ATHENE researchers were accepted at the A*-ranked 2023 ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference. The annual conference is a leading international forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore innovative ideas and results and to share techniques, tools, and experiences. The conference offers a comprehensive technical program with presentations from research and industry, tutorials, demos and workshops.
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