News
In the media: ATHENE researcher talks crisis-proof infrastructures
How crisis-proof are our digital infrastructures? The Hessischer Rundfunk programme “alles wissen” investigates this question. Prof. Matthias Hollick, head of the project EmergenCITY at the TU Darmstadt, says, “I don’t think that there are many catastrophes waiting to happen. On the other hand, we are indeed endangered by catastrophes at any time.” He continues that especially the Covid-19 crisis shows how crises can emerge out of nowhere and require learning proper handling amidst such a crisis.
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New passport law to prevent manipulation through "morphing"
The law on strengthening security in the passport, identity card and foreigners' documents sector, which was approved by the Federal Council a few days ago, is intended to prevent manipulation of passport applications and prevent unauthorised border crossings. With this, the legislator wants to put a stop to so-called "morphing", a technique in which digital technology is used to merge photos of two people into one image. ATHENE researcher Prof. Christoph Busch from the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences contributed his expertise to the draft law.
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ATHENE researcher confirmed for FONAS board until 2022
ATHENE researcher Thea Riebe has been confirmed as board member for FONAS in this year’s general meeting on 14 September 2020, for two more years until 2022. In 2018, Riebe was voted into the board of FONAS for the first time.
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CAST-Förderpreis IT-Sicherheit 2020 goes to ATHENE researcher
Daniel Günther from the TU Darmstadt won the first prize of the CAST-Förderpreis IT-Sicherheit in the category "Best Master Thesis" for his master thesis "Optimizing Private Information Retrieval for Compromised Credential Checking". He prevailed among the four finalists who presented their work to a jury of representatives from industry and research.
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Nationaler Pakt Cybersicherheit: Online Compendium Cybersecurity in Germany
Prof. Mira Mezini, together with Prof. Dr. Günter Krings, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Homeland Affairs, Claudia Nemat, Member of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom, and Klaus Müller, Board Member of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv), presented today the online compendium Cyber Security in Germany to the public.
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AI helps to identify illegal cultural goods
Fraunhofer SIT press release (German):
Eine zentrale Herausforderung bei der Bekämpfung des illegalen Handels mit gestohlenen Kulturgütern besteht darin, dass illegal gehandelte Objekte nur schwer zu erkennen sind. Das von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien geförderte Projekt KIKu – KI für den Kulturgutschutz – hat zum Ziel, die Arbeit der zuständigen Akteure, insbesondere von Zoll und Polizei, zu erleichtern: Hierzu entwickelt das Fraunhofer-Institut für Sichere Informationstechnologie SIT gemeinsam mit der cosee GmbH eine App, die mit Hilfe von Künstlicher Intelligenz automatisiert Hinweise geben kann, ob beispielsweise eine antike Vase oder eine Statue aus einer Raubgrabung stammen könnte oder anders illegal erworben wurde. Das Projekt wurde gestern zahlreichen relevanten Akteuren auf dem Gebiet des Kulturgutschutzes aus Deutschland und der EU vorgestellt, die auf Einladung von Kulturstaatsministerin Monika Grütters zum 7. EU CULTNET-Treffen im Rahmen der deutschen EU-Ratspräsidentschaft zusammengekommen sind.
Data protection-friendly big-data analyses
The analysis of large amounts of data enables numerous improvements - in the fight against climate change as well as in medicine. At the same time, today's big-data analysis possibilities create entirely new risks for people's privacy. If data from different sources is combined in the analysis, it is often possible to combine supposedly anonymous data to create personal profiles, with sometimes unforeseeable consequences for the people concerned. A new study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT therefore shows how big-data technologies can be used without harming the privacy of individuals. The study is aimed at users and developers of big data systems and is available for free download at https://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/reports/
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Best Paper Award for ATHENE researchers at the IEEE VizSec
ATHENE researchers of the Fraunhofer IGD were awarded the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec) for their publication "A Visualization Interface to Improve the Transparency of Collected Personal Data on the Internet". In their paper, the researchers* deal with the problem that Internet users lose track of the data they disclose and store due to the multitude of online services. The prototype they developed, TransparencyVis, supports users in gaining better control over their own data. Via https://transparency-vis.vx.igd.fraunhofer.de/, users can upload exports from Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter simultaneously or individually and explore them interactively.
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ATHENE researchers contribute to new BMBF project CYWARN
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launches its support for consortium project “Strategie- und Technologie-Entwicklung zur medienübergreifenden Erstellung eines Cyber-Lagebilds und akteurspezifischen Kommunikation von Cyber-Warnmeldungen“, CYWARN, from 1 October set to last for 3 years, with 2 million euros. ATHENE researcher Prof Christian Reuter, head of the chair for Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC), will coordinate the joint between partners in research, development and application.
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Best Paper Award for ATHENE researchers at ARES 2020
Oren Halvani, Lukas Graner and Roey Regev of the Fraunhofer SIT received the Best Paper Award at the Workshop Digital Forensics (WSDF2020) during the ARES conference 2020.
In their paper TAVeer – An Interpretable Topic-Agnostic Authorship Verification Method, they introduced an authorship verification process (AV) that reviews and verifies whether a specified person has in fact written an anonymous letter or rather confirms whether a text actually stems from the stated author. This is relevant for cases in suspicion of plagiarism for example.