News
RPKI is insecure - Mechanism for Internet security broken
ATHENE has found a way to break one of the basic mechanisms used to secure Internet traffic. The mechanism, called RPKI, is actually designed to prevent cybercriminals or government attackers from diverting traffic on the Internet. Such redirections are surprisingly common on the Internet, e.g., for espionage or through misconfigurations. The ATHENE scientist team of Prof. Dr. Haya Shulman showed that attackers can completely bypass the security mechanism without the affected network operators being able to detect this. According to analyses by the ATHENE team, popular implementations of RPKI worldwide were vulnerable by early 2021. The team informed the manufacturers, and now presented the findings to the international expert public.
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TrustCerts is winner of the ATHENE Startup Award UP22@it-sa
The winner of this year's ATHENE Startup Award UP22@it-sa has been determined: The startup TrustCerts was able to prevail against nine other startups in yesterday's pitch and may take home the coveted trophy. The team convinced both the jury and the audience with their business idea of signing, creating and managing documents and proofs in a forgery-proof way, while ensuring neutral verifiability with blockchain technology.
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Our researchers present their papers at USENIX 2022
A total of 10 papers in which ATHENE researchers have participated have been accepted at this year's USENIX Security Symposium. Starting today, our researchers will present their papers at this year's hybrid symposium, which is one of the four most important conferences in the field of security.
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Article by ATHENE researchers published in the journal ACM Computing Surveys
The paper "A Survey on Data Augmentation for Text Classification", written as part of the CYWARN, emergenCITY and ATHENE projects by researchers at the Chair of Science and Technology for Security and Peace (PEASEC) at TU Darmstadt, has been published in the journal ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR).
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Client Side Scanning and Deep Perceptual Hashing Vulnerabilities
ATHENE scientists at TU Darmstadt have identified significant vulnerabilities and manipulation possibilities in client-side scanning and deep perceptual hashing. The process came into focus when Apple introduced "NeuralHash" in 2021, a new approach to detecting child abuse imagery, but withdrew the introduction after massive criticism. The research results of the scientists now prove the dangers of client-side scanning methods for users.
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Fragile protection of our communications via submarine cables
ATHENE researchers study states' vulnerability to submarine cable failures
Today, we take it for granted that we can call up a website, stream a movie or be active in social networks within seconds. Many people are often unaware that the data transfer takes place via thousands of kilometers of cable laid at the bottom of the ocean. Today, around 98 percent of international Internet traffic is handled via undersea communication cables. Coastal and island states are highly dependent on this physical infrastructure to provide Internet connections. However, although an annual average of about 100 submarine cable failures of human or natural origin occur, there is currently no global analysis that assesses the vulnerability of individual states to failures on a global scale.
ATHENE scientists Jonas Franken, Thomas Reinhold and Prof. Christian Reuter from the Chair of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) at TU Darmstadt have tackled this issue.
Post by ATHENE researcher on APNIC Blog: Stalloris: RPKI downgrade attack
Cybersecurity expert Prof. Haya Shulman and her team have demonstrated that RPKI deployments in the Internet are vulnerable to downgrade attacks: adversaries can disable RPKI validation exposing networks to BGP prefix hijacks attacks. Haya Shulman describes the findings and conclusions the researchers draw from their attack in her latest blog post on APNIC.
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ATHENE scientist issues new commentary on data protection
Data protection law presented in an comprehensible way – this is what a new commentary on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other data protection standards offers. Until now, there has been no work that explicitly addresses not only students and graduates of law, but also those outside the field. This gap has now been closed by the new commentary published by ATHENE researcher Dr. Annika Selzer. The data protection expert has been working intensively on questions of legal and technical data protection for more than ten years. At ATHENE, she leads projects in the research area User-centered Security and Privacy (UCSP).
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AirGuard declares war on stalkers
AirTags are small Bluetooth transmitters from Apple that people can use to quickly and easily find lost items, misplaced keys and bags. But what is intended as a help can also be used to track people unnoticed. Apple itself warns against AirTag stalking. A research-team at the Secure Mobile Networking Lab at TU Darmstadt is conducting research on this topic in ATHENE. Last year, the team published AirGuard, an app that also warns users of Android devices about unwanted AirTag tracking. Now, in a new paper, the researchers use user reports and data donations from 38,000 users to show that the app works well - and even warns faster than the Apple protection mechanism.
read moreSuccessful submissions at USENIX 2022 - fall submission
In the "fall submission" of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, two contributions from researchers participating in ATHENE were accepted. USENIX is one of the four most important conferences in the field of security. Scientists, practitioners, system administrators and programmers from all over the world come together to share the latest advances in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks.
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