-HGI News- HGI team wins 1st place in the 9th German IT Security Award

Fri Nov 11 11:26:52 CET 2022

Bochum, November 11, 2022

HGI team wins 1st place in the 9th German IT Security Award

David Knichel, Amir Moradi, Nicolai Müller, and Pascal Sasdrich convinced
the jury with their concept and win 100,000 euros in prize money.

Yesterday, Thursday, 10.11.2022, the winners of the 9th German IT Security
Award were selected in Bochum. The first prize of 100,000 euros was awarded
to the concept "Simply Secure: A Toolbox for Automated Generation and
Evaluation of Protected Hardware" by HGI scientists David Knichel, Amir
Moradi, Nicolai Müller, and Pascal Sasdrich. Second place went to the team
"Morphing Attack Detection (MAD)" by Christoph Busch, Christian Rathgeb,
Ulrich Scherhag, Daniel Fischer, Siri Lorenz, and Juan Tapia. They were
awarded 40,000 euros for their work. The concept "Carbyne Stack - An Open
Source Secure Multiparty Computation Cloud Platform" by Sven Trieflinger,
Sebastian Becker, Vadim Raskin, Volker Suschke, Vincent Rieder, Jared
Weinfurtner and Hanna Modica won 20,000 euros for the third place. The
German IT Security Award was founded in 2006 by the Horst Görtz Foundation
and is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of ITS. 

"The award winners have developed convincing and innovative solutions for an
important IT security problem of high quality. Furthermore, they have
submitted a convincing plan to make these innovations available to the
market, thus to the real world," said Prof. Michael Waidner (ATHENE),
chairman of the jury, as a reason for the decision for the award winners.
The award, designed by artist Reinhard Doubrawa, was handed over at the Ruhr
University Bochum's Convention Center. "We are really surprised," said award
winner Prof. Amir Moradi happily after receiving the award. "Especially for
the PhDs, who are still at the beginning of their research careers, it is a
great success. I am very proud of the whole team." 

Simple security for hardware circuits

With their concept, the winners want to improve the security of hardware
circuits. Security-critical Hardware is used in almost every device in our
everyday digital lives. For example, the EC card is built with a chip based
on cryptographic hardware. Criminals can gain access to sensitive data on
the card by using a so-called side-channel attack, which allows them to
obtain information on cryptographic keys to break them. "Designing
side-channel-resistant circuits requires a lot of expertise, time, and
money," Waidner explained in his laudation. "As a result, most circuits are
designed without side-channel resistance. The award winners developed a set
of tools that can be used to efficiently analyze and verify circuits for
their security against side-channel attacks on the one hand, and to make
them resistant to side-channel attacks in a fully automated way on the other
hand," Waidner said. The team provides these tools via GitHub
<https://github.com/Chair-for-Security-Engineering>  for research and
teaching purposes and aims to support developers in companies in designing
secure hardware circuits easily in the future.

Detection method for morphing attacks

The "Morphing Attack Detection (MAD)" concept of the 2nd place winning team
focuses on so-called morphing attacks. These are increasingly used by
criminals to manipulate passports as documents for identification control:
With a morphed image, they can obtain a passport - and have thus created a
false identity. In automated facial recognition, as used at airports, these
morph passports are frequently undetectable. "Morphing Attack Detection
(MAD)" is a detection technique that uses a combination of features from
textures, noise patterns, or geometries in a photo image to identify these
morph passes.

The project, "Carbyne Stack - An Open Source Secure Multiparty Computation
Cloud Platform," builds on cloud-native technologies that enable end-to-end
encryption of data through secure multiparty computation. Companies can use
the service to securely outsource computation with sensitive data. A total
of 54 concepts from scientists and IT security experts from all over Germany
were submitted for the award. The ten finalists presented their concepts in
a poster session during the event before the jury finally announced the
winners.

Minister of the Interior Faeser wants to strengthen cybersecurity research

The patron of the event, Nancy Faeser, Federal Minister of the Interior and
for Home Affairs, addressed the guests in a video message. "The threat
situation in cyberspace is growing every day," the minister urged in her
speech. A multifaceted view on IT security is needed, especially in the
context of hybrid threats, she said. Scientists would contribute by building
bridges between innovation and research, as well as industry and start-ups.

In her message, Faeser was clear about the German government's political
strategy: "We must and want to strengthen cybersecurity research. We want to
strengthen digital sovereignty further and secure it in the future through
good and close cooperation between applications and research." In this
sense, the Federal Minister of the Interior warmly congratulated the
winners. 

“IT security is only as good as those who use it”, says Horst Görtz

The German IT Security Award aims to foster IT security concepts and
solutions "made in Germany" in particular, contributing to strengthening the
innovative power of the German economy. "I would like to see a clever idea
for IT security in Germany that enables companies to stay ahead of the
hackers," said Horst Görtz, who attended the award ceremony in person. He is
convinced that IT security in Germany is highly developed. "But IT security
is only as good as those who use it," he added. 

Preceding the award ceremony, Bitkom organized the 2nd Cybersecurity
Innovation Conference in cooperation with Fraunhofer SIT, ATHENE, Digital
Hub and Ruhr University Bochum, Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, and
Cube 5. At the digital conference in the morning, the participants were able
to follow exciting panels around topics of IT security online. Among others,
Dr. Markus Richter, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior
and for Home Affairs and Federal Government Commissioner for Information
Technology (CIO Bund) held keynotes. During the afternoon program, which was
broadcast live from Bochum, Axel Deininger (Secunet), Prof. Angela Sasse
(HGI), Thomas Caspers (BSI) and General Setzer (CISO BW) discussed the topic
of "Innovation in and for Germany as a cyber security location". 

After the award ceremony, numerous guests, speakers, and award winners took
the opportunity to end the day together in a relaxed atmosphere over dinner.

Kind regards

Christina Scholten

RUHR-UNIVERSITÄT BOCHUM

Horst Görtz Institut for IT Security/ Cluster of Excellence CASA 

Marketing and Public Relations

MC EG 78, Postfach MC 3

Universitätsstr. 150

44780 Bochum, Germany

Tel: +49-(0)234-32-29274

E-Mail:  <mailto:christina.scholten at rub.de> christina.scholten at rub.de

 <http://www.hgi.rub.de/> www.hgi.rub.de 

 <http://www.casa.rub.de/> www.casa.rub.de

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