Secure Cyber-Physical Systems (SCy-Phy) Group

CISPA Helmholtz Center For Information Security

The SCy-Phy group at CISPA focuses on applied security research in the domain of cyber-physical systems: industrial control systems (ICS), embedded systems, and the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Current research highlights are results on low-level security of the Bluetooth protocol, adversarial learning attacks on Anomaly detection systems for ICS, and state-aware anomaly detection systems for ICS.

People

We are looking for a prospective PhD student! Please write to tippenhauer@cispa.de

Dr. Nils Ole Tippenhauer

Group leader

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I am interested in information security aspects of practical systems. In particular, I am working on physical-layer attacks and defenses for Industrial Systems, low-layer wireless security, and various other embedded systems security topics.

Personal website

Till Schlüter

PhD student

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Till is a PhD student since June 2020.

Yu-De Lin

PhD student

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Yu-De came to Saarland, Germany from Taiwan in March, 2019. He is curious about what the machine learning can achieve in the world of the security. He wrote his MSc thesis on Side-channel attacks on embedded AI devices, and is now continuing his PhD in this group.

Simeon Hoffmann

PhD student

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Simeon joined in September 2022. He is interested in the security of vehicles, sensors and the IoT.

Joshua Heinemann

PhD student

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Joshua joined the research group in December 2024 as a PhD student. He is interested in microarchitectural security, embedded security, and low-level software security.

Burak Köroğlu

PhD student

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Burak joined the group in December 2024. He is interested in architecture and embedded system security.

Daniel Erceg

Research Assistant

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Daniel is currently working as research assistant on low-level Bluetooth protocols

Arash Ale Ebrahim

MSc student

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Arash is a MSc student since November 2024.

You

PhD student

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We have an open PhD position for research in the area of security of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Industrial Control Systems (ICS), IoT, and wireless communications. The position comes with a competitive salary in a high quality working environment. Working language is English. Please send CV and cover letter to tippenhauer@cispa.saarland.

Selected Recent Publications

List of all publications >>
Till Schlüter, Amit Choudhari, Lorenz Hetterich, Leon Trampert, Hamed Nemati, Ahmad Ibrahim, Michael Schwarz, Christian Rossow, Nils Ole Tippenhauer (2023). “FetchBench: Systematic Identification and Characterization of Proprietary Prefetchers”. Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS).

PDF DOI

Yi Han, Matthew Chan, Zahra Aref, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Saman Zonouz (2022). “Hiding in Plain Sight? On the Efficacy of Power Side Channel-Based Control Flow Monitoring”. Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security).

PDF

Alessandro Erba, Nils Ole Tippenhauer (2022). “Assessing Model-free Anomaly Detection in Industrial Control Systems Against Generic Concealment Attacks”. Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC).

DOI

Ahmad Ibrahim, Hamed Nemati, Till Schlüter, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Christian Rossow (2022). “Microarchitectural Leakage Templates and Their Application to Cache-Based Side Channels”. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS).

DOI

Jianliang Wu, Ruoyu Wu, Daniele Antonioli, Mathias Payer, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Dongyan Xu, Dave (Jing) Tian, Antonio Bianchi (2021). “LIGHTBLUE: Automatic Profile-Aware Debloating of Bluetooth Stacks”. Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security).

PDF Video

Alessandro Erba, Riccardo Taormina, Stefano Galelli, Marcello Pogliani, Michele Carminati, Stefano Zanero, Nils Ole Tippenhauer (2020). “Constrained Concealment Attacks against Reconstruction-based Anomaly Detectors in Industrial Control Systems”. Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC).

DOI

Daniele Antonioli, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Kasper Rasmussen (2020). “BIAS: Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS”. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P).

PDF Code Project Video DOI

Daniele Antonioli, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Kasper Rasmussen (2019). “The KNOB is Broken: Exploiting Low Entropy in the Encryption Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth BR/EDR”. Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security).

PDF Code Project

Alumni

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Gleb Rostanin
Gleb was a research assistant on In-Vehicle-Networks with focus on Intrusion/Anomaly Detection 23-24
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Dr. Alessandro Erba
Alessandro was a Ph.D. student in SCy-Phy from May 2019 to April 2024, working on anomaly detection in Cyber-Physical Systems. His research comprises the development and study of adversarial attacks to deceive anomaly detection systems.
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Dr. John H. Castellanos
John worked as PostDoc in the area of Cyber-Physical System Security
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Sahil Sihag
Sahil worked as research assistant in this group until 2024 and is now pursuing a PhD at CISPA.
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Lavanya Govindaraju
Lavanya worked as research assistant on anomaly detection in Industrial Control Systems.
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Dr. Hamid Ghaeini
Hamid got his PhD from SUTD in 2019, and was a PostDoc researcher in this group from 2020-2022.
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Giovanni Salzillo
Visiting PhD Student from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy, working on ICS security and fuzz testing
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Valerio Giuseppe
Visiting MSc student (University of Bologna) working on fuzzing of industrial protocols.
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Anirudh Upadhya
Anirudh wrote his MSc thesis on embedded security of automotive and industrial control systems.
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Davide Berardi
Visiting PhD student (University of Bologna) working on the Security of Industrial Networks.
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Lorenzo Rinieri
Visiting MSc student (University of Bologna) working on certificate management in the OPC UA ecosystem.
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Anne Müller
Anne worked as graduate researcher on the security of the OPC UA ecosystem.
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Amir Heinisch
Amir wrote his BSc thesis on secure motor controllers in 20/21.
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Max Bäumler
Max wrote his BSc Thesis about security of a (to be disclosed later) PLC ecosystem in 2020.
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Nils Glörfeld
Nils was a student helper in 2019, working on Bluetooth security.
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Christian Geldermann
Christian wrote his BSc Thesis about security of ICS in 2020.
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Dr. Daniele Antonioli (SUTD)
Daniele was a PhD student from 2015 to 2019. Now: Faculty at EURECOM
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Dr. Rajib Ranjan Maiti, PostDoc (IIT Kharagpur)
Rajib was a PostDoc on the ResilIoT project (SUTD) in 2016-2018
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Dr. Yan Lin Aung, PostDoc (NTU)
Yan Lin is a PostDoc on the ResilIoT project (SUTD) since March 2017
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Dr. Wang Xueou, PostDoc (NUS)
Xueou was a PostDoc on the location privacy project (SUTD) in 2017/2018
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Francesco Scandola
Francesco was a Research Assistant on two projects between 2016 and 2018
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Ragav Sridharan
Ragav was a Research Assistant between 2017 and 2018
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Dominik Breitenbacher
Dominik is a Research Assistant on the ResilIoT project (SUTD) since 2017
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Amit Tambe
Amit was a Research Assistant on the ResilIoT project (SUTD) between 2016 and 2018
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Swetha Rajagopalan
Swetha was a Research Intern on the ResilIoT project (SUTD) in 2017
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Dr. Aymen Fakhreddine
Aymen was a Visiting PhD Student from IMDEA Networks Institute in 2017
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Ahnaf Siddiqi
Ahnaf was a Research Assistant from 2016-2017
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Sandra Siby
Sandra was a Research Assistant from 2016-2017. Now: PhD student at EPFL
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Giuseppe Bernieri (Roma Tre University)
Sandra was a Visiting PhD student in 2017. Now: PostDoc at Uni Padova
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Anand Agrawal, Research Assistant
Anand was a Research Assistant in 2016. Now: Research Assistant at NYU-Abu Dhabi
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Dr. Marco Rocchetto (U. Verona)
Marco was a PostDoc in 2015-2016. Now: Senior Research with ALES, United Technologies Research Center
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Naman Govil (IIIT Hyderabad)
Naman was a Research Intern in 2016. Now: PhD student at Georgia Tech
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Dr. David Urbina (UT Dallas)
David was a Visiting PhD student in 2015, working on attack and detection in the Fieldbus, author of SWaT attack. He is now working with Intel.
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Pierre Gaulon (ENSEIRB-MATMECA, Bordeaux)
Pierre was a Research student in 2015, working on Bro extensions for attack detection for EtherNet/IP.
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Nicolas Iooss (with Akheros/Corps des mines, Paris)
Nicolas was a Research student in 2015, working on Scapy tools and MitM attacks for EtherNet/IP in SWaT

Contact

  • tippenhauer@cispa.de
  • Stuhlsatzenhaus 5, Saarbrucken, 66123
  • Enter CISPA Building and take the stairs to Office 3.09 on Floor 3