Ruhr-Uni-Bochum
Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries

Copyright: INDEED Photography, Simon Bierwald

Icon System Security

Key achievements

  1. build systems in a secure and efficient way
  2. design novel and complete mitigation chains
  3. utilize machine learning to detect unknown attacks

For more insights check out our science comic.

Secure Systems


The secure systems area is driven by the following Principal Investigators (PIs): Marcel Böhme, Kevin Borgolte, Lucas Davi, Asja Fischer, Tim Güneysu, Cătălin Hrițcu, Ghassan Karame, Eike Kiltz, Katharina Kohls, Veelasha Moonsamy, Konrad Rieck, Jörg Schwenk, Yuval Yarom and Bilal Zafar. Vladislav Mladenov and Christian Mainka are also involved as Associated PIs.

In this Research Area, we build secure systems through changes to the system’s underlying execution platform and secure programming paradigms. Moreover, we design mitigation chains that enable a gradual adaptation of security concepts. We also utilize machine learning (ML) techniques that enable us to detect unknown attacks.

Building Secure Systems

In this research focus, we will investigate how programming paradigms and changes to the system’s underlying execution platform can be used to build secure systems.

Security With Untrusted Components

We will design new security testing methods to identify vulnerabilities, devising novel methods to retrofit security properties so that existing systems can tolerate runtime attacks and even cope with the presence of untrusted components.

Intelligent Security Systems

CASA will develop security systems that rest on methods of machine learning. In response, CASA will be able to accelerate the construction of novel defenses based on large-scale data analysis. By utilizing machine learning techniques, we will be able to learn about novel attack tactics and adapt our defenses to new threats.