CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security

“We are really lucky to have this team” CISPA Faculty Dr. Sven Bugiel in conversation In this interview, Dr. Bugiel shares what he values about the Empirical Research Support team and how the collaboration works.

🧪 How important solid methodological support is in cybersecurity research is the topic of CISPA Faculty Dr. @svebug.bsky.social interview in the latest issue of our CISPA Zine.

📰 Read the full interview here 👉 cispa.de/en/interview...

Connect and corrupt: C++ coroutines prone to code-reuse attack despite CFI A code-reuse attack named Coroutine Frame-Oriented Programming (CFOP) is capable of exploiting C++ coroutines across three major compilers, namely Clang/LLVM, GCC and MSVC.

A new code-reuse attack named Coroutine Frame-Oriented Programming (CFOP) is capable of exploiting C++ coroutines across three major compilers. It has been discovered by CISPA-researchers Marcos Sanchez Bajo and Christian Rossow and will be presented at Black Hat USA this week!
cispa.de/en/cfop

Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz visits CISPA 🚀🔐

During his inaugural visit to Saarland, Friedrich Merz stopped by CISPA together with Minister President of Saarland Anke Rehlinger. The focus was on our cutting-edge research in cybersecurity and trustworthy AI.
cispa.de/en/federal-c...

Methodological Skills: The DNA of Successful Research This article introduces the work of CISPA’s Empirical Research Support team and what it stands for.

🏛 A Dedicated Department for Methodological Consulting and Research Infrastructure? CISPA has the privilege of operating such a department. Department head Dr. Michael Schilling shares insights about how the department was built and what defines his approach: cispa.de/en/zine-8-ar...

A Look Inside the Work of the Empirical Research Support Department: CISPA Zine No. 8 Is Out Now How CISPA supports researchers in empirical and human-centered security research.

🔍 A new issue of our popular publication is out now! In this edition of our CISPA Zine, we introduce you to the work of our Empirical Research Support department. 🎯 Follow the link to find the digital version of the zine: cispa.de/en/zine-8

In our new interview, we talk about the Africa Charter with Isabella Aboderin, Chair of the @perivoliarc.bsky.social. She tells us about the culture shift in the global research ecosystem that the Africa Charter seeks to initiate: cispa.de/en/aboderin

We’re thrilled to share: Three teams from CISPA have been honored at the SpringerOpen Cybersecurity Awards 2025!

Track A – Best Theoretical Research Paper
Track C – Best Machine Learning and Security Paper
Track D – Best Hardware and Physics Paper

cybersecurity.springeropen.com/best-paper-a...

🛠️ Debugging with AI?
LLMs like ChatGPT struggle with debugging—but there’s still potential. CISPA’s @andreaszeller.bsky.social explains how AI can help and what’s next in the DLF podcast Computer und Kommunikation. 🎧
Listen here: www.deutschlandfunk.de/fehlersuche-...

#AI #Debugging #Cybersecurity

A new method can detect whether copyright-protected images were used to train AI models With CDI, CISPA researcher Antoni Kowalczuk has developed a method that could strengthen copyright protection for creators in the future.

🎨 CISPA Researcher Antoni Kowalczuk presents CDI: a new method to detect if copyrighted images were used to train AI models. CDI can identify datasets even without exact matches. 🚀 The respectiv paper was published @ CVPR 2025. To learn more, follow this link: cispa.de/en/kowalczuk...

Wow – 5,000 people joined us at “CISPA❤️IGB”!
Thanks to everyone who came by. We captured some great moments to share with you :-)

CISPA researcher Andreas Zeller awarded ERC Proof of Concept Grant for project on AI-powered software maintenance To transfer his ERC Advanced Grant “S3 – Semantics of Software Systems” into practice, Zeller is receiving an additional €150,000.

🎉 New ERC Proof of Concept Grant for Prof. Dr. @andreaszeller.bsky.social! He receives €150,000 to turn insights from his ERC Advanced Grant S3 into real-world tools for AI-driven software maintenance. @erc.europa.eu
cispa.de/en/erc-proof...

Congrats to Dr. Benedikt Wagner for receiving the @helmholtz.de Doctoral Award! 🎉 His dissertation was supervised by Dr. @julianloss.bsky.social at CISPA. Benedikt is now bringing his cryptographic expertise to the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland.
Wishing him continued success and inspiration!

Rethinking Network Fuzzing 💻:
Instead of replacing clients, Fuzzstruction-Net manipulates communication partners via fault injection.

Results:
• 16% code coverage
• 3 times more discovered bugs
• 23 new vulnerabilities, including in Nginx, OpenSSH client and cURL

More: cispa.de/en/fuzzstruc...

Welcome to CISPA, Jonas Hielscher. #newfaculty

📱🎥 How do you find security flaws in hardware you can’t look into?
In the latest episode of CISPA TL;DR, Matteo Leonelli explains how he uses black box testing and differential fuzzing to uncover issues in video decoding.
🎧 Listen here: cispa.de/en/TLDR_41

CISPA was honored with two awards at this year’s EuroS&P in Venice!
Distinguished Paper Award for Raoul Scholtes, Soheil Khodayari, Cristian-Alexandru Staicu & Giancarlo Pellegrino
Distinguished Reviewer Award for Giada Stivala.
Congrats to Dr. Ben Stock for his role as chair!

Visit from INRIA 🇫🇷🇩🇪: Ludovic Mé & Charlotte Peyrat-Vaganay shared insights into INRIA’s cybersecurity research & strategy. The meeting showed the strong interest among CISPA researchers in cross-border partnerships and the shared ambition to deepen the collaboration with the partner institute.

The Future of Cybersecurity: CISPA Expands Its Key Role in Lower Saxony The “Leibniz Center for Industrial Security” is receiving a total of 11 million euros in funding as part of the zukunft.niedersachsen program.

CISPA, together with Leibniz University Hannover, is strengthening protection against cyberattacks.
At the new Leibniz Center for Industrial Security, we are pooling our scientific expertise. Together, we can take research, education, technology transfer to the next level.
cispa.de/en/Leibniz-C...

🌐 CISPA x VivaTech 2025: Trust drives digital innovation 🔐
Discover how CISPA founders and startups turn cutting-edge research into real cybersecurity solutions. Learn about their journey and career paths from internships to PhDs in our latest blog post!
cispa.de/en/viva-tech...

Recap of @elsa-ai.eu's milestones: Last week, the CISPA-coordinated network both got a 12-month #extension and hosted it’s 3rd #General #Assembly, where CISPA researchers shared knowledge, networked & won a Best Poster #Award!

Learn more about the extension here: cispa.de/en/elsa-exte...

FANDANGO, a new open-source fuzzing tool, uses an evolutionary algorithm to generate myriads of high-quality test inputs that satisfy defined constraints. Developed by a team of CISPA-researchers led by @andreaszeller.bsky.social. Now on GitHub! Learn more here cispa.de/en/fandango-...

We are thrilled to welcome eleven outstanding new senior researchers to CISPA. 🎉 Over the next few days, we will be introducing them here. Today, we are pleased to welcome Andrew Lowy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ruijie Meng from the National University of Singapore.

We would like to thank everyone who helped make CISPA ❤️ IGB such an inspiring celebration. On June 21 the Alte Schmelz in St. Ingbert opened its doors – and together with the citizens this place became a vibrant center for research, exchange, and community.

We are thrilled to welcome eleven outstanding new senior researchers to CISPA. 🎉 Over the next few days, we will be introducing them here. Today, we are pleased to welcome Jane Im from the University of Michigan and Adam Kortylewski from the @uni-freiburg.de.

CISPA-Ellis-Summer School 2025

Don’t miss your chance to join our CISPA ELLIS Summer School focusing on Trustworthy AI this!
Check out our program including no less than 10 invited speakers and CISPA researchers! Apply now and secure one of the last remaining spots.
Application deadline: June 30, 2025.
cispa.de/summer-schoo...

We are delighted to welcome eleven new outstanding senior scientists to CISPA! 🎉 We will introduce them to you here in the coming days. Today we warmly welcome Simon Oddershede Gregersen from New York University and Jonas Hielscher from @ruhr-uni-bochum.de.

We're thrilled to welcome eleven outstanding new senior researchers to CISPA! 🎉 Over the next few days, we’ll be introducing them to you in more detail. Today, please join us in warmly welcoming @ana-mariacretu.bsky.social from EPFL and Thorsten Eisenhofer from @tuberlin.bsky.social.

The scientific evaluation was the most important milestone for us since our foundation. We received top marks in all categories from outstanding reviewers.

This award is confirmation of our leading position in research and our immense potential for the economy and society.
cispa.de/en/evaluation

CISPA Receives Top Rating in International Helmholtz Evaluation 2025 In the 2025 international Helmholtz evaluation, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security was awarded the highest possible rating, “Outstanding,” in all categories. The review confirms CISPA’s g...

🌍 From June 4-6, 2025, we hosted a group of international luminaries in cybersecurity and trustworthy artificial intelligence in Saarbrücken.

Result of our evaluation: “Outstanding” - world leader in all categories!
cispa.de/en/evaluation

🔝 CISPA was awarded top marks in the Helmholtz Association's international evaluation.

The “Outstanding” grade recognizes a globally leading research position and groundbreaking work with major impact and disruptive societal or economic potential.
cispa.de/en/evaluation