Welcome at the Chair of Privacy and Security
We work on all aspects of technical data protection and network and IT security. We are primarily interested in privacy, i.e. the protection of individuals against the misuse of their data.
Over the past decades, digital technologies have developed rapidly. The advent of digital transformation and the interconnectivity of all areas of life opens up a wealth of new possibilities. Autonomous networked vehicles, cloud computing, industry 4.0, virtual reality with haptic feedback, online banking or social networks are just a few keywords that are changing the way and quality of life. However, this development also brings with it a number of challenges that people often do not immediately grasp, but which may well conflict with their interests. Our research group is engaged in the development and analysis of security concepts that protect from all types of potential attackers on such systems. We are also interested in the development of technologies that promote data protection in order to protect privacy in the digital world. Finally, we develop protocols and algorithms to secure the underlying infrastructures for communication and computation.
We are part of the KASTEL Security Research Labs, as well as the excellence cluster CeTI, the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop.
mmWave radar sensors, used for example in autonomous vehicles, are often claimed to be privacy-preserving. Cinthya Tamayo investigated to which extent this claim is actually true in her Master's thesis as part of an ERASMUS stay with us. We find that many personal attributes such as age or sex can be reliably inferred using radars. The paper Inferring Personal Attributes with a Mmwave Radar
(Cinthya Celina Tamayo Gonzalez, Simone Soderi, Julian Todt, Thorsten Strufe, Mauro Conti) which builds on the thesis has been presented at WCNC 2025.
Congratulations!
Link to the paperOn May 17, 2025, the KIT will have its day of the open door together with the Campus day. Our chair will also put up exhibits for display: We will have demonstrators from our Smart-City research, as well as brainwave-based authentication demonstrators. We are looking forward to curios visitors and will be happy to talk about our research in PETs and the importance of privacy in society!
Further informationOur paper Anonymization Techniques for Behavioral Biometric Data: A Survey
(Simon Hanisch, Patricia Arias-Cabarcos, Javier Parra-Arnau, Thorsten Strufe) has been accepted in ACM Computing Surveys. In this paper we classify different anonymization techniques for different kinds of behavioral data (such as voice, gait, hand and face motion). We further find that a lot of existing techniques have been evaluated in a simplistic manner and with weak assumptions for the attacker.
Together with Jaap-Henk Hoepman (Radboud University/Karlstad University), Seda Gürses (TU Delft), Orla Lynskey (University College London) and Jo Pierson (Hasselt University), we are organizing the Sixth Interdisciplinary Summerschool on Privacy (ISP 2025). This year's topic will be the implications of privatizing digital services in the public sector.
The summerschool is aimed at PhD students (or Master's students close to their graduation) from social sciences, law and computer science. The focus is on interactive and interdisciplinary group work.
Registration for the summerschool is now open.
Further informationPrivacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are considered mandatory in many cases where personal data is processed. However, the adoption of PETs does not seem to follow.. Freek Bomhof of TNO will give the next PET-Talk of the FG PET (special interest group on privacy enhancing technologies of the German Informatics Society) on April 30 where he will share some experience from the practical side of things.
Further informationOur Christoph Coijanovic will give a presentation at the Workshop on Proofs and Proof Techniques for Cryptographic Security (ProTeCS) 2025. The presentation is titled Privacy Proofs for Anonymous Communication Networks
, and the workshop is co-located with EuroCrypt in Madrid.
We're looking forward to interesting discussions!
Prof. Strufe is invited to the 109th conference of the data protection authorities (Datenschutzkonferenz) in Berlin. He gives a talk titled How Anonymizations Fail – Erroneous anonymisations, their evaluation und their desired/claimed protection
. He will also join a panel discussion alongside Dr. Marit Hansen and Prof. Fabian Prasser, where they will discuss approaches for anonymisation, pseudonymisation and different methods to analyse private data.
On Monday, our Shima is going to present our paper, titled A Formal Security Definition for Quantum Private Query and Worst-Case Analysis of the GLM Protocol
(Shima Hassanpour, Marcel Tiepelt, Christoph Coijanovic, Jörn Müller-Quade, Thorsten Strufe) at QCNC 2025 in Nara, Japan!
Quantum mechanics are frequently touted to provide security
in communication or computation, but in this paper we show at the example of PIR that the claimed security achieved this way is far inferior to traditional security notions that are achieved by classical cryptographic primitives.
