The research vision of the Security and Privacy Group at COMSYS is the analysis, design, and evaluation of secure and privacy-preserving communication systems.

To realize this vision, we most notably craft novel security and privacy architectures, paradigms, and mechanisms as well as improve upon existing approaches to security and privacy. We consider all types of systems and networks, e.g. ranging from highly resource-constrained IoT networks to distributed (peer-to-peer) applications and networks and large-scale Cloud deployments.

Our used and developed technologies range from soft privacy solutions such as semantic annotations and behavioral nudges to applied cryptography for strong and provable security and privacy guarantees.

The close cooperation with the other research groups at COMSYS allows us to work closely with domain experts from various types of communication systems.

Currently, we pursue this research vision by tackling the following research topics:

1. Security and Privacy in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
   • Enabling privacy-sensitive dataflows between different (mistrusting) stakeholders
   • Protocol design with existing building blocks (e.g., Bloom filter, HE, PSI, OT, ...) to offer novel use cases
   • Detecting, analyzing, and restricting network flows in the IIoT to improve the network security
   • Secure integration of legacy industrial devices into communication over the Internet
2. Network Security for the IP-based Internet of Things
   • Secure end-to-end communication of highly resource-constrained devices
   • Delegation of security tasks to less resource-constrained gateways
3. Privacy Enhancing Techniques (PETs)
   • Studying and improving popular anonymization networks (e.g., Website Fingerprinting in Tor)
   • Quantitative modeling of privacy protection and risk (e.g., Differential Privacy)
   • Privacy in distributed scenarios (e.g., Participatory Sensing)
   • Reconciling PETs and user perception of privacy (e.g., empirical user studies)
   • Application of Secure Two-Party and Multi-Party Computation
4. Blockchain Technology
   • Analysis of the applicability and usability of blockchain systems
   • Improving existing blockchain systems (e.g., Bitcoin security and privacy, scalability)
   • Resolving trust issues in real-world use cases using public or private blockchains
   • Novel privacy-enhancing technologies backed by blockchains
5. Security and Privacy in Cloud-based Systems
   • Alternatives to traditional cloud computing
   • Awareness of the usage of cloud services
   • Cloud operations that respect data handling requirements
   • Scalable and secure infrastructures for cloud operations
   • Secure and privacy-preserving outsourcing of sensitive data to the cloud

The Security and Privacy Group typically has thesis topics available for motivated and talented students. An excerpt of available theses can be seen from inside the RWTH University network. If you have specific interests, you may contact any group member individually.