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

Drawing

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

Drawing

Till is a PhD student since June 2020.

Yu-De Lin

PhD student

Drawing

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

Drawing

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

Daniel Erceg

Research Assistant

Drawing

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

You

PhD student

Drawing

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

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