News

Award Ceremony CAST IT Security Award 2021

The CAST IT Security Award was presented for the 21st time a few days ago. Reviewers from CAST e.V. had looked through all the submissions in advance and assessed their quality. On this basis, a total of eight authors were nominated for the finalist workshop. Pia Bauspieß from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences won among the Master's theses. Her thesis was written in the Biometric and Internet-Security Research Group at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, led by ATHENE researcher Prof. Christoph Busch.

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Three contributions by ATHENE researchers in the new Data Protection and Data Security

ATHENE data protection experts Dr Annika Selzer and Sarah Diel (LL.M.), both from Fraunhofer SIT, are (co-)authors of three articles published in the December issue of the journal "Datenschutz und Datensicherheit (DuD)". The scientists deal with data protection-compliant data protection metrics in an employment relationship as well as with potentials of anonymous data processing in a smart city environment.

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What are the risks of mobile apps?

With its platform, the start-up project Queryella enables in-depth checks of mobile apps for security vulnerabilities and data protection violations and contributes to the protection of users and companies. The promising project has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since the beginning of July 2021 with €0.8 million as part of the StartUpSecure initiative and is supported by the StartUpSecure I ATHENE start-up incubator.

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Post by ATHENE researchers on the APNIC blog: DNS-over-TCP is considered vulnerable

In their latest post on the APNIC blog, ATHENE-researchers discuss recent recommendations to use TCP instead of UDP for sending DNS packets. In order to be able to traverse a network more easily, large packets are often divided into smaller packets by means of so-called IP fragmentation. TCP with Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) was recently proposed as an alternative to this IP fragmentation. In this context, the recommendation was made to use TCP instead of UDP for sending DNS packets. This is based on the assumption that TCP is resistant to IP fragmentation attacks.

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KIKu project launched - ATHENE researchers develop app to support cultural and investigative authorities

A central challenge in combating the illegal trade in stolen cultural property is that illegally traded objects are difficult to identify. The KIKu project - AI for the Protection of Cultural Property - funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, aims to facilitate the work of the responsible actors, especially customs and police: To this end, researchers at Fraunhofer SIT are working with cosee GmbH to develop an app that uses artificial intelligence to provide automated information on whether, for example, an antique vase or statue could come from a looted dig or was illegally acquired in some other way.

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Elisa Bertino becomes new member of the ATHENE Advisory Board

We are very pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Elisa Bertino, Purdue University, USA, will join the ATHENE Advisory Board. Together with other internationally recognized and highly qualified cybersecurity experts from business, industry and research, she will advise ATHENE on its scientific and research strategy direction.

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ATHENE researchers facilitate exchange on migration and agility of PQC procedures

Prof. Andreas Heinemann and Prof. Alexander Wiesmaier from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da) are working on post-quantum cryptography in the ATHENE project "Agile and Easy-to-Use Integration of PQC Schemes" and on how existing IT architectures can be converted to quantum computer-resistant encryption methods. Because when the powerful quantum computer arrives, the internet as we know it today would no longer be secure. Currently used, so-called public-key encryption methods would then no longer be valid. The two h_da professors are working with their teams to be prepared for this time. In order to be able to use the knowledge of as many scientists as possible for their research, they have set up the freely accessible community website https://fbi.h-da.de/cma.

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ATHENE is cooperation partner of FrauMachtDigital

BPW Germany e.V. - one of the largest and oldest professional networks for employed and self-employed women - advocates, among other things, equal participation of women in digitization and more visibility of female role models in the digital space. The FrauMachtDigital campaign launched by the network aims to break down gender stereotypes in STEM subjects and professions, give women widespread access to digital education opportunities, and promote digital skills among girls and women. ATHENE is one of the campaign's cooperation partners.

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Successful submissions on top conference ACM CCS 2021

Researchers from Fraunhofer SIT and TU Darmstadt involved in ATHENE placed 6 papers and 3 posters at the prestigious ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2021. The A* ranked ACM CCS is the flagship annual conference of the Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The conference brings together information security researchers, practitioners, developers, and users from all over the world to explore cutting-edge ideas and results.

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Best Research Paper Award for ATHENE researchers

The paper "Analyzing and Securing SOME/IP Automotive Services with Formal and Practical Methods", written by ATHENE researchers Timm Lauser, Dustin Kern and Prof. Christoph Krauß, all of Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, and Daniel Zelle, Fraunhofer SIT, was awarded with the Best Research Paper Award at the "International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security", ARES for short.

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