News

2023-10-17 Proficiency evaluation

• Simon Jeanteur: Yet Another Tool for Computationally Sound Verification of Cryptographic Protocols
• Anagha Athavale: Verification Testing for Machine Learning
• Lisa-Marie Geiginger: Robust Machine Learning Methods for the Detection of Anomalies in Network Traffic

2023-09-27 Proficiency evaluation

• Johannes Schoisswohl: Theory Reasoning in Saturation Theorem Proving
• Giulia Scaffino: Cross-Blockchain Lightweight Protocols
• Andreas Weninger: Novel Applications of the Symmetric-key Forkcipher Primitives

2023-09-20 Talk

SecInt PhD student Eleonora Nesterini presented a joint work with Ezio Bartocci, Cristinel Mateis, and Dejan Ničković titled “Mining Hyperproperties using Temporal Logics” at ESWEEK at the EMSOFT conference. The talk introduced the first learning technique for generic temporal hyperproperties and the first mining method that allows the user to embed a flexible amount of prior knowledge into the learning process.

2023-09-15

Data, AI and Cybersecurity - a possible cocktail?
Lecturer: Marco Mellia

2023-09-14 Documentary

The documentary “Angriff aus dem Internet”, featuring Prof. Elena Andreeva, was broadcast on Puls4.

2023-07-26 Achievement

Eleonora Nesterini is awarded with the Marshal Plan Scholarship by the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, an academic exchange program between Austria and the U.S. that will finance her research visit at UC Berkeley.

2023-07-05 Achievement

Our students have once again made it to the prestigious TUW Under 30 list, and we couldn’t be prouder! Sophie Rain has been recognized for her research in game theory for cybersecurity and her efforts in promoting computer science among elementary school students. Another remarkable accomplishment comes from Giulia Scaffino, who has made a breakthrough in сross-chain communication with Glimpse. We are truly inspired by their achievements!

2023-06-26 Achievement

The research paper titled “Glimpse: On-Demand PoW Light Client with Constant-Size Storage for DeFi” by Giulia Scaffino, Lukas Aumayr, Zeta Avarikioti, and Matteo Maffei has been accepted at the prestigious “USENIX Security Symposium” (August 2023). The paper introduces the “Glimpse” protocol, which enables secure cross-chain token transfers in a fully decentralized manner, eliminating the need for large commercial crypto-depots. One notable feature of the Glimpse protocol is its compatibility with blockchains that have limited scripting languages. The authors provide a specific implementation of Glimpse for the Liquid Network, which is a pegged sidechain of Bitcoin. The protocol’s security is proven within the Universal Composability (UC) framework, indicating a strong level of confidence in its security guarantees. The researchers also conducted an economic analysis of the Glimpse protocol. The cost evaluation reveals that verifying a simple transaction on Bitcoin-like chains using Glimpse incurs a maximum of 700 bytes of on-chain overhead, resulting in a one-time fee of $3. This fee is only twice as much as a standard Bitcoin transaction, demonstrating the efficiency of Glimpse in terms of transaction costs. Overall, the advancements presented in the paper open up exciting new possibilities for the world of cryptocurrencies.

2023-06-28 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Cryptography in the Wild
Lecturer: Kenneth Paterson

2023-06-21 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Consensus in blockchains: Overview and recent results
Lecturer: Christian Cachin

2023-06-20 Talk

During the Tuesday Lounge event titled “TU und Schule: Faszination Technik?” Sophie Rain introduced the “Abenteuer Informatik für Volksschulen” project (Adventure Computer Science for Elementary Schools), which started in May 2023. This initiative aims to cultivate interest in STEM subjects among children by showcasing the captivating nature of computer science. The project plans to organize over 20 workshops annually, specifically designed for third-grade students in Vienna’s elementary schools, providing an opportunity for 18,000 children to participate and engage in STEM activities. Laura Kovacs, the project’s leader, emphasizes the team’s primary goal of easing the transition for children from regular school activities to scientific research. While the role of universities in STEM education development is still evolving, we take pride in the contributions our students make towards this emerging trend.

2023-06-14 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Towards Understandable Privacy and Security Guarantees - The Human Factors Perspective
Lecturer: Katharina Krombholz

2023-05-31 Proficiency evaluation

• Thies Oelerich: Safe Learning-based Robots
• Aakanksha Saha: Attribution of Advanced Persistent Threats
• Patrick Indri: Differential privacy for trustworthy machine learning

2023-05-24 Talk

SecInt PhD student Lorenzo Veronese delivered a talk titled “WebSpec: Towards Machine-Checked Analysis of Browser Security Mechanisms” at the 44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2023). The talk presented a joint work with B. Farinier, P. Bernardo, M. Tempesta, M. Squarcina, and M. Maffei. It introduced WebSpec as the first formal security framework for analyzing browser security mechanisms. WebSpec enables both the automatic discovery of logical flaws and the development of machine-checked security proofs. When a violation is detected, the toolchain automatically generates executable tests corresponding to the identified attack trace, which are validated across major browsers. The effectiveness of WebSpec was demonstrated through practical examples, highlighting its versatility and broad range of applications.

2023-05-31 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Scaling Formal Verification to Realistic Code with Applications to DeFi Verification
Lecturer: Mooly Sagiv

2023-05-04 Talk

Marcel Moosbrugger delivered a talk on the topic of “Probabilistic Loop Analysis with Recurrences” at Bellairs 2023

2023-05-03 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

When Papers Choose their Reviewers: Adversarial Machine Learning in Conference Management Systems
Lecturer: Konrad Rieck

2023-04-17 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Logic meets Learning - Formal Synthesis with Neural Templates
Lecturer: Alessandro Abate

2023-03-30 Award

SecInt PhD student Stefan Kitzler has been awarded by 10th SUERF/UniCredit Foundation Research Prize for the paper Disentangling Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Compositions

2023-03-23 Presentation

SecInt PhD student Aakanksha Saha introduced a novel techniques for the authorship attribution of targeted malware attacks at the Women in Science Seminar at King’s College London, UK. ADAPT, a static machine learning-based approach to APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attribution, automates and standardizes the attribution process across heterogeneous file types. Aakanksha will present the findings and insights obtained from applying ADAPT to a newly crafted APT dataset consisting of 5,989 real-world APT samples from approximately 162 threat groups, spanning from May 2006 to October 2021

2023-03-16 Award

SecInt PhD student Sophie Rain has been awarded by the Christiana HÖRBIGER Award

2022-12-20 Achievement

5 fundamental research projects submitted by SecInt faculty members are the winners of the ICT22 WWTF competition in the field of information and communication technologies. The сommission of international experts selected 9 projects from 66 short and 26 full applications. The total amount of funding is € 6,606,000

2022-12-09 Talk

Marcel Moosbrugger presented a joint work with Ezio Bartocci, Laura Kovács, and Miroslav Stankovič titled “This Is the Moment for Probabilistic Loops” at OOPSLA 2022. The talk introduced a new automated technique for analyzing probabilistic loops with potentially uncountable state spaces to calculate higher moments for program variables. The work has practical applications in recovering probability distributions of random variables and computing tail probabilities. Empirical evaluation highlighted the technique‘s effectiveness and practicality through various challenging examples. →Video

2022-12-05 Proficiency evaluation

• Eleonora Nesterini: Specification mining for Cyber-Physical Systems
• Marton Hajdu: Scaling Induction in Saturation
• Andrey Kofnov: Multivariate continuous signal modelling with applications in Probabilistic Programming

2022-12-05 Award

SecInt PhD student Marcel Moosbrugger has been awarded by “Radhia Cousot Young Researchers Best Paper Award 2022” for the paper “Solving Invariant Generation for Unsolvable Loops” (joint work with Daneshvar Amrollahi, Ezio Bartocci, George Kenison, Laura Kovács, Miroslav Stankovič) →Video

2022-11-26 Talk

At TEDxSalzburg 2022, Marcel Moosbrugger delivered a talk titled “Künstliche Intelligenz: Ein Duell zwischen Mensch und Maschine?” on the role of artificial intelligence in modern society and the challenges of human interaction with these systems. The talk offers a valuable perspective on the future of technology, particularly in the fields of data analysis and AI development. With in-depth knowledge and exciting insights into these areas, Marcel provides a captivating look into the cutting-edge world of technology. →Video

2022-11-25 Award

SecInt member Sophie Rain is awarded by Netidee 2022 Stipend (Call 17). Her research “Automated Verification of Game-Theoretic Security Properties for Decentralized Protocols” became one of 13 interesting and innovative projects selected by the jury to promote and further develop the Internet in Austria through opensource

2022-09-19 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Calculating Sensitivity by Parametricity
Lecturer: Alejandro Russo

2022-09-16 Award

SecInt members Andrey Kofnov, Marcel Moosbrugger, Ezio Bartocci and Efstathia Bura were awarded with the Best Paper Award at the 19th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems (QEST 2022) held in Warsaw (Poland) for the paper “Moment-based Invariants for Probabilistic Loops with Non-polynomial Assignments”

2022-07-14 Presentation

Patrick Indri was selected for a long talk and poster presentation at EvoStar 2022 and for poster presentation at Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (EEML 2022)

2022-06-15 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

How Dark is the Forest? On Blockchain Extractable Value in Decentralized Finance
Lecturer: Arthur Gervais →Video

2022-06-02 Award

Marcel Moosbrugger became an Awardee of the Christina Hörbiger Prize of TU Wien and was among the 30 “TUW Under 30” who have proven their potential in a variety of areas and distinguished themselves by special achievements

2022-06-01 Presentation

Sophie Rain presented her research on gender balance in Informatics at 1st International EUGAIN Summer Training School (EUGAIN-STS 2022)

2022-05-13 Proficiency evaluation

• Lorenzo Veronese: Computer-Aided Formal Security Analysis of the Web Platform
• Marcel Moosbrugger: Automated Analysis of Probabilistic Programs
• Sophie Rain: Automated Verification of Game-Theoretic Security Properties for Decentralized Protocols

2022-04-13 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Learning from the People: Responsibly Encouraging Adoption of Contact Tracing Apps
Lecturer: Elissa Redmiles →Video →Slides

2022-03-09 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

How to Commit to a Private Function
Lecturer: Dan Boneh →Video →Slides

2022-02-09 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Attacking the Brain: Security and Privacy Case Studies in Online Advertising, Misinformation, and Augmented Reality
Lecturer: Franziska Roesner →Video

2022-01-12 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Quantifying Privacy Risks of Machine Learning Models
Lecturer: Yang Zhang →Video

2021-12-15 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

A Stab in the Dark: Blind Attacks on the Linux Kernel
Lecturer: Herbert Bos →Video

2021-12-01 Presentation

Eleonora Nesterini presented the paper “Mining Shape Expressions with ShapeIt” at International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods 2021 (SEFM)

2021-11-24 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Cascade: Asynchronous Proof-of-Stake
Lecturer: Roger Wattenhofer →Video

2021-10-13 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Digital Personhood: Towards Technology that Securely Serves People
Lecturer: Bryan Ford →Video →Slides

2021-10-02 Presentation

Sophie Rain presented the first results of game-theoretical security properties and models at Dagstuhl seminar “Rigorous Methods for Smart Contracts” (Dagstuhl seminar)

2021-10-01 Presentation

Marton Hajdu presented “Induction with Recursive Definitions in Superposition” at Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design 2021 (FMCAD)

2021-09-01 Presentation

Aakanksha Saha presented a lightning talk on her current research at Women in Security and Cryptography Workshop (WISC)

2021-07-01 Presentation

Sophie Rain presented paper “Summing Up Smart Transitions” at the 33rd International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV 2021)

2021-05-12 Diploma Thesis Award

Marcel Moosbrugger won the Diploma Thesis Award of the City of Vienna

2021-05-12 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Fuzz Testing and Beyond
Lecturer: Thorsten Holz →Video

2021-04-14 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Privacy and Verifiability in Certificate Transparency
Lecturer: Sarah Meiklejohn

2021-03-10 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

Proximity tracing with Coronalert: lessons learned
Lecturer: Bart Preneel →Video

2021-02-10 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

SafetyPin: Encrypted Backups with Human-Memorable Secrets
Lecturer: Henry Corrigan-Gibbs →Video

2021-01-13 Distinguished Lecture Series with ViSP

SandTrap: Securing JavaScript-driven Trigger-Action Platforms
Lecturer: Andrei Sabelfeld →Slides