08/2025
Conference / Journal:
Authors:
CASA – Cyber Security
in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries
Copyright: CASA, Fabian Riediger
CASA News
Insights into our Cluster of Excellence CASA: Current research results, pioneering cyber security research projects, upcoming events and portraits of our researchers.
CASA in the Media
Current media coverage of our Cluster of Excellence CASA in the press, newspapers, journals, magazines and podcasts.
Publications & Awards
Overview of the publications of our Cluster of Excellence and a selection of awards from our CASA researchers.
Events
Lectures, conferences, summer schools and workshops offer researchers and the interested public the opportunity to actively participate in our research. Our events serve as platforms for exchange and continuous professional development.
CASA Retreat
September 23-25, 2025
CASA Grand Reception
Februar 4, 2026
Computer Science Day
February 11, 2026
Summer School
June 22-25, 2026
Review of Past Events
Since 2019, our Cluster of Excellence CASA has successfully organized and hosted numerous events and sponsored both national and international conferences and events.
CASA: Organization and Structure
The core principles of our cluster include the active involvement of our researchers, the participation of renowned scientists from relevant research areas and intensive collaboration with external partners.
Management
CASA relies on transparent decision-making processes and the participation of CASA researchers and internationally renowned scientists in committees.
Network
CASA benefits from an extensive network of national and international partners from research institutions, companies and start-ups.
Participating Institutions
In addition to Ruhr University Bochum as the main location, other universities and research institutes are also involved in the cluster.
Team
CASA brings together outstanding researchers from various disciplines, including computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics and psychology.
Copyright: CASA, Fabian Riediger
Research Hubs
The Cluster of Excellence CASA combines four main areas of research:
Research Hub A:
Future Cryptography
Cryptography Against Mass Surveillance, Quantum-Resistant Cryptography, Foundations of Privacy
Research Hub B:
Embedded Security
Platform Trojans, Physical-Layer Security, Next-Generation Implementation Security
Research Hub C:
Secure Systems
Building Secure Systems, Security With Untrusted Components, Intelligent Security Systems
Research Hub D:
Usability
Improving the usability of security and privacy mechanisms for developers and end users
Career at CASA
We are constantly looking for national and international talents in the field of cyber security with expertise in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, psychology (ideally with a technical focus) or related disciplines. Become part of our team!
Open PhD and Postdoc Positions (m/f/d)
We are permanently looking for excellent M.Sc. graduates and PhDs.
CASA Jump-Start-Program for Postdocs
We are permanently looking for excellent postdoctoral candidates.
CASA Highlights
From 2019 to the present: An overview of the highlights from the past years at our Cluster of Excellence.
- First planning meeting with RUB
- Draft proposal for "CASA" submitted
- Full proposal CASA is submitted
- Start of the Cluster of Excellence
- CASA regulation adopted
- Start of 6 CASA Fundamental Research Projects
- Best Paper Award: Yarom et al., Time Protection: the Missing OS Abstraction, EuroSy
- Start of the regularly held CASA Distinguished Lectures
- Christof Paar becomes new member of the Leopoldina
- Best Paper Award: NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award & Distinguished Paper Award: Yarom et al., Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution, IEEE S&P
- First 3-day CASA Retreat
- Intel's "Outstanding Researcher Award" for Thorsten Holz
- Numerous CASA members in the final of the NIST standardization process for post-quantum cryptography
- First Mid-Term Reviews of CASA Research Projects
- CASA Online-Retreat for PhDs and Postdocs
- CASA Early Career Researchers at Full Strength: Target of 40 Phds and Postdocs Reached
- Amir Moradi set a record in the history of the CHES conference - co-authoring of 10 accepted papers
- Distinguished Paper Award for Thorsten Holz at RAID for "The Evolution of DNS-based Email Authentication: Measuring Adoption and Finding Flaws"
- The Art-Science residency RE:SEARCHING IT-SECURITY begins
- Minister of Culture and Science Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen visits HGI and CASA as part of her research trip "#Möglichmacher"
- Prof. Eike Kiltz receives ERC Advanced Grant
- Prof. Thorsten Holz and Prof. Konrad Rieck receive ERC Consolidator Grants
- ERC Starting Grant for Prof. Michael Walter
- Closing Event of the Art-Science Residency "RE:SEARCHING IT SECURITY"
- CASA researchers win global NIST standardization process on post-quantum cryptography
- Lucas David receives ERC Starting Grant
- CASA Retreat 2022
- Publication of the first CASA comic book about the research of Research Hub C
- Funding for new Emmy Noether group headed by Dr. Pascal Sasdrich
- Publication of our CASA comic book about the research of Research Hub A
- M. Angela Sasse is a new member of the Leopoldina
- Festive Opening of the CASA-Artwork DIS/PLAY
- Women in Security and Cryptography Workshop 2023
- Honorary doctorate of the Faculty of Computer Science awarded to Tal Rabin
- Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis 2023 for CASA PI Giulio Malavolta
- CASA Summer School 2023 on Software Security
- Distinguished Paper Award & 2nd Place of the Internet Defense Prize: Holz et al, "Fuzztruction: Using Fault Injection-based Fuzzing to Leverage Implicit Domain Knowledge", USENIX Security
- Distinguished Artifact Award: Schwenk et al., “We Really Need to Talk About Session Tickets: A Large-Scale Analysis of Cryptographic Dangers with TLS Session Tickets”, USENIX Security
- Poster Award: Marky et al., “...It's very unacceptable for someone to peek into your privacy.' Chronicles of Shoulder Surfing: Exploring Deep into a Longitudinal Diary Study.", SOUPS - Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
- Science Talk series CyBARsecurity starts
- M. Angela Sasse receives Test of Time Award at USEC (NDSS)
- Konrad Rieck receives Test of Time Award at IEEE S&P
- CASA PI Cătălin Hrițcu Appointed APL Professor at Ruhr University Bochum
- ERC Starting Grant for Lorenzo Grassi
- CASA Retreat 2024
- Start of the regulars' table: Women in IT Security - ITS better toGather
- 10. German IT Security Award for Yuval Yarom
- Two Distinguished Paper Awards for Flavio Toffalini (NDSS)
Early 2016
2016
July 2016
April 2017
September 2017
February 2018
September 2018
January 2019
January 2019
March 2019
End of March 2019
May 2019
September 2019
October 2019
November 2019
January 2020
June 2020
July 2020
August 2020
October 2020
November 2020
March 2021
June 2021
August 2021
September 2021
October 2021
November 2021
January 2022
March 2022
April 2022
June 2022
July 2022
August 2022
September 2022
November 2022
January 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023
November 2023
December 2023
February 2024
March 2024
May 2024
June 2024
July 2024
August 2024
September 2024
October 2024
November 2024
December 2024
February 2025
May 2025
- First idea for an EXC application by the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security
- DFG publishes call for proposals for Clusters of Excellence within the Excellence Strategy
- CASA is invited to submit full proposal
- Funding decision: CASA becomes Cluster of Excellence
- CASA Initial Research Projects begin
- Grand opening of the Cluster of Excellence
- Best Paper Award for Amir Moradi at CHES for "Glitch-Resistant Masking Revisited"
- First place in CSAW competition for Jörg Schwenk
- Test of Time Award: Cha et al., "Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy", International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
- Best Paper Award for Amir Moradi at USENIX for "The Unpatchable Silicon: A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs"
- Best Paper Award for Gregor Leander at the CRYPTO for "Improved Differential-Linear Attacks with Applications to ARX Ciphers"
- First Strategy Meeting With the CASA Advisory Board
- Admission of Angela Sasse to the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts
- Organization of the first international "Women in Security and Cryptography" Workshop
- CASA Retreat 2021
- Best Paper Award for Jörg Schwenk at the ACM CCS for "XSinator.com: From a Formal Model to the Automatic Evaluation of Cross-Site Leaks in Web Browsers"
- The paper "Faster Addition and Doubling on Elliptic Curves" by CASA PI Tanja Lange et. al. is awarded the IACR Test-of-Time Award 2022
- CASA Summer School on Blockchain Security
- Amir Moradi contributed 8 papers to CHES.
- Distinguished Paper Awards for Konrad Rieck and Thorsten Holz (USENIX) and Alena Naiakshina (SOUPS).
- 2nd Place des Intel Hardware Security Academic Award Program: Holz et al., “Nyx: Greybox Hypervisor Fuzzing using Fast Snapshots and Affine Types”
- Test of Time Award: Cha et al., "I Tube, You Tube, Everybody Tubes: Analyzing the World's Largest User Generated Content Video System", ACM SIGCOMM
- Team around CASA PI Amir Moradi wins 1st place of the 9th German IT Security Award
- ERC Advanced Grant for Gregor Leander
- CASA meets Industry
- Ceremony on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the HGI and the foundation of the Faculty of Computer Science at RUB
- Distinguished Paper Awards for Yuval Yarom (PLDI) und für Endres Puschner, Thorben Moos, Steffen Becker, Amir Moradi and Christof Paar (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy)
- Distinguished Paper Award: Schwabe et al., “Typing High-Speed Cryptography against Spectre v1”, IEEE S&P
- Publication of our CASA comic book about the research of Research Hub B
- Best Paper Award: Sasse et al., “As Usual, I Needed Assistance of a Seeing Person: Experiences and Challenges of People with Disabilities and Authentication Methods”, STAST - International Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security
- Giulio Malavolta receives ERC Starting Grant
- CASA Retreat 2023 in Bad Driburg
- Eike Kiltz receives the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2024
- Asja Fischer becomes new Lamarr Fellow
- Best Paper Award for Lukas Stennes, Shahram Rasoolzadeh and Gregor Leander (FSE 2024)
- Publication of our CASA comic about the research of Research Hub D
- CASA PI Meeyoung Cha wins Hong Jin-Ki Creator Award
- NRW Minister President Wüst Visits Bochum: A Global Leader in IT Security
- Post-quantum cryptography methods are now standardized for global use
- Two Distinguished Paper Awards for CASA and HGI researchers at USENIX 2024
- Renewal Proposal for Cluster of Excellence CASA submitted
- Christof Paar receives Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize
- Summer School on Cryptography (in cooperation with crypt@b-it)
- Two Distinguished Paper Awards for Yuval Yarom (CCS 2024)
- ERC Consolidator Grant für Marcel Böhme
- Distinguished Paper Award for Yuval Yarom (IEEE S&P)
- May 22: The German Research Foundation (DFG) announces the continued funding of the Cluster of Excellence CASA for the period from 2026 to 2032
