News
Full Paper presented at Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2010:
09.02.2010 -
Thomas Schneider presented the paper on "Embedded SFE: Offloading Server and Network Using Hardware Tokens" at the 14th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC'10) held from January 25 to 28 in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The paper is co-authored by Kimmo Järvinen (Aalto University Helsinki, Finland), Vladimir Kolesnikov (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, USA), Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi and Thomas Schneider (System Security Group). In the paper an extension of Secure Function Evaluation (SFE) protocols in the client-server setting is proposed where the server issues a secure token to the client. The computationally weak token with small constant-size memory is not trusted by the client and hence not a trusted third party. Nevertheless it can be used to drastically reduce the communication complexity of SFE and computation load of the server. The feasibility of the protocol is shown based on an FPGA prototype implementation.
Two Papers presented at Conference on Cryptology and Network Security 2009
20.01.2010 -
Our group presented two publications at the 8th International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS'09) held in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan from December 12 to 14.
Christian Wachsmann presented the paper "Anonymizer-Enabled Security and Privacy for RFID", which is co-authored by Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Ivan Visconti and Christian Wachsmann. This paper extends and improves the current state-of-the-art for privacy-protecting RFID in several ways: First, it introduces a security and privacy model that supports anonymizers, which are separate devices specifically designated to ensure the privacy of RFID tags. Second, it presents an efficient privacy-preserving protocol for low-cost RFID tags that uses anonymizers.
Thomas Schneider presented the paper "Improved Garbled Circuit Building Blocks and Applications to Auctions and Computing Minima", which has been co-authored by Vladimir Kolesnikov, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi and Thomas Schneider. This paper describes improved constructions for secure addition, subtraction, multiplication and comparison functions. These are used to improve the efficiency of secure integer comparison and related problems of auctions, minimum selection, and minimal distance. Precise cost evaluations of the constructions are provided which serve as a baseline for future protocols.
Prof. Dr.Ing. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi awarded with "Karl Heinz Beckurts-Preis 2008"
30.10.2008 -
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, head of the chair for System Security at the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at University of Bochum has been awarded by the Karl Heinz Beckurts-Stiftung for his excellent research about Trusted Computing technology and its transfer to industrial practice. This renowned price honors excellent scientific achievements that gave visible impulses to industrial innovations in Germany and that have been supported by the laureates. The Karl Heinz Beckurts Award is endowed with 30.000 Euro and will be awarded to a maximum of three scientists in Germany. The award ceremony will take place at Munich in December 2008.
The chair for System Security is part of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT-Security. The research focus of the chair lies on the design and development of security architectures (especially operating systems), Trusted Computing in hardware and software, and cryptographic protocols.
Interview with WDR
28.08.2008 -
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi has been interviewed by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). The full interview (German) is available at the WDR website.
MIMOS and Ruhr-University partner to nurture Trusted Computing Technology
11.08.2008 -
MIMOS, a strategic agency under the Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation (MOSTI), today signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Ruhr-University, Bochum (RUB) in Germany to nurture trusted computing technology.
Under the MoA, MIMOS will collaborate with RUB on Trusted Infrastructure projects with the ultimate aim of developing information security technology platforms for commercialisation in Asia Pacific including Malaysia and Europe.
Trusted Infrastructure relates to building trust into communications infrastructure by embedding trusted computing functionalities into its components. MIMOS is spearheading research and development in trusted computing to enable researchers to explore and apply its strength to our daily lives.
The collaboration with RUB will enable the two organisations to combine their research and development strengths, share resources and exchange results of innovations, particularly in information security.
RUB was chosen as MIMOS' partner of choice as it is the largest university-based research centre in Trusted Infrastructure in Europe. The collaboration will see more than 30 researchers from MIMOS and RUB synergising their effort in developing Trusted Computing and Trusted Infrastructure projects.
More information can be found in the official MIMOS press release and the RUB press release.
Conference on Future of Trust in Computing
02.07.2008 -
The conference on the Future of Trust in Computing has been organized by the International School of IT Security and took place in Berlin from June, 30th until July, 2nd. It focused on future trends and technology innovations in defining trust, on discussions about current technologies, and on privacy, policy, and assurance issues.
The conference enjoyed a great acceptance among the audience as it counted about 150 guests also from overseas (e.g., from Asia, Europe, and North America). This can be ascribed to the increasing importance of trusted computing as a promising technology for establishing trust in information and communication technology.
The audience represented a broad mixture (including users, regulators, and industry) and thus, panel discussions and talks offered different views on the topic. The schedule allowed for informal networking, which gave the participants the possibility to discuss their ideas and thoughts. Both industry and governmental delegates presented their activities in the area of trusted computing. In addition, EU Commissioner David Cornwell gave an overview of related EU activities.
The talks also provided insights to practical projects. For instance, one talk presented a research project pertaining to trusted network access control that combines Turaya with TNC@FHH.
E-health, which enjoys great public attention, was given a great significance within the conference due to the personal and sensitive character of patient data that requires a high degree of protection.
Regarding the current status quo, still a lot of research has to be done but both industry and academics are already making great efforts in order to ensure further progress.
Workshop on Security Hardware in Theory and Practice
20.06.2008 -
The Workshop on Security Hardware in Theory and Practice took place at Schloss Dagstuhl from June, 18 to June, 20th. The workshop aimed at discussing and investigating problems, challenges, and some recent scientific and technological developments in the area of security hardware and related technologies as well as specific aspects of software security (whitebox, cryptovirology) that are of great interest from the system security perspective, and can be deployed to solve various real world security problems.
Visit to Japan with German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
01.06.2008 -
In occasion of the 30th anniversary of the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, DAAD), more than 300 alumni as well as representatives from science, industry, and politics met from March, 30 to June, 1 in Tokyo.
At the DAAD meeting, a new working group for “IT-Security” has been established, which has been organized and moderated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Horst-Görtz Institute for IT-Security (HGI), Ruhr-University Bochum. Prof. Sadeghi accompanied state secretary Dr. Michael Stückradt of the Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research and Technology on his journey to Japan. The primary goal of the journey was to strengthen research cooperations between Japan and Germany.
In the workgroup on IT-Security renowned Japanese scientists gave talks on different areas of IT security: Prof. Shigeo Tsujii, president of the Institute of Information Security, talked about the composition of technical and legal methods to find optimal solutions and assessment of aspects of security, privacy, and usability in the information society. Dr. Tatsuaki Okamoto, NTT Laboratories, gave a talk on the latest research results of NTT Research Lab in the area of quantum computing. Dr. Kazue Sako, NEC Research Labs, focused on the use of cryptographic techniques for anonymous authentication, which can be used to protect privacy in networked and distributed communication systems that more and more frequently store personal information for different commercial purposes.
Talk by Giovanni Di Crescenzo
11.04.2008 -
Giovanni Di Crescenzo (Telcordia Research, USA) gave the talk "Perfectly Secure Password Protocols in the Bounded Retrieval Model".
Talk by Jesse Walker
10.04.2008 -
Jesse Walker (Intel Corporation, USA) gave the talk "Distributed Trust Models in Community Networks".
Conference TRUST 2008
03.04.2008 -
The conference Trust 2008 took place in Villach, Austria, from March, 11th to March, 13th. Prof. Sadeghi was scientific chair of this conference that aimed to bring together scientific stakeholders in the field of trusted computing from all over the world. TRUST was organized for the first time and has been visited by more than 140 researchers.
The System Security Group organized a research track that was held on two days in parallel to the TRUST 2008 conference. Topics like Trusted Channels, Trusted Virtual Domains, Runtime Monitoring and Policy Issues were discussed with international research partners, i.e., IBM Research Zurich, HP Labs Bristol, and Politecnico di Torino. The goal of the research track was to foster research and to create publications.
Talk by Ivan Visconti
21.02.2008 -
Ivan Visconti (University of Salerno, Italy) gave the talk "Co-Sound Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Public Keys".
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi won the Innovation Award of Ruhr-University Bochum
15.11.2007 -
For more information visit the university's news website.
New Lectures
15.10.2007 -
Additional to the lecture "System Security", in this winter term our group offers two completely new lectures for students:
- Trusted Computing
- Aspects of Modern Cryptography
European Trusted Infrastructure Summer School (ETISS) 2007
05.10.2007 -
The 2nd European Trusted Infrastructure Summer School (ETISS) 2007 took place at Ruhr-University Bochum from September, 29th to October, 5th. It has been organized by the System Security Group and has been visited by more than 100 researchers from Europe and oversees. For more information visit the ETISS 2007 website.