Der Award, mit dem erstklassige Bachelor-, Master- und Doktorarbeiten zur IT- und Informationssicherheit ausgezeichnet werden, wurde im Rahmen eines ISSS Security Talks mit rund 15 Teilnehmenden, an den die ISSS speziell auch die Studierenden mit Interesse an Informationssicherheit eingeladen hat, am 25. November überreicht. Der Award, dotiert mit CHF 8‘000, teilen sich dieses Jahr zwei Bachelorarbeiten.
Wir danken ganz herzlich der ISSS Excellence Award Jury für Ihre Arbeit:
- Prof. em. Dr. Bernhard Plattner, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Vorsitz
- Prof. Dr. Endre Bangerter, Berner Fachhochschule (BFH) Biel
- Prof. Dr. Srdjan Capkun, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich
- Lektor Angelo Consoli, Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana (SUPSI) Manno
- Prof. Dr. Marc Rennhard, Zürcher Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW) Winterthur
- Prof. Dr. Serge Vaudenay, École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPF) Lausanne
Die Information Security Society Switzerland (ISSS) freut sich, die Gewinner des ISSS Excellence Award bekannt zu geben.
Die eine Auszeichnung, dotiert mit CHF 4’000, geht an eine Bachelorarbeit, die an der Haute Ecole d’Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud eingereicht wurde. Originalton der Jury:
The 2020 ISSS Excellence Award is awarded to Filipe Fortunato, for his outstanding Bachelor thesis entitled
Vers un TLS post-quantique
Quantum computers will – once available for practical use – revolutionize solutions of computationally difficult problems, but they also pose a severe threat to today’s cryptography. It is therefore of utmost importance to mitigate this threat by identifying algorithms that will allow for implementations of post-quantum safe encryption, and to verify implementations of such algorithms. In his thesis, Filipe Fortunato addresses this challenge by modifying a popular open-source TLS library, BearTLS, to use proposed post-quantum resistant algorithms for key exchange, encryption, decryption and signing. His results show that his selection of cryptographic algorithms yields an implementation allowing a performance level sufficient for typical usage, but he also identifies important future improvements required for a production-quality implementation. In his well-written thesis, Filipe Fortunato demonstrated his excellent knowledge in the area of applied cryptography.
Die zweite Auszeichnung, ebenfalls dotiert mit CHF 4’000, geht an eine Bachelorarbeit, die an der Berner Fachhochschule entstanden ist. Originalton der Jury:
The 2020 ISSS Excellence Award is awarded to Dominik Samuel Meister and Dennis Neufeld, for their outstanding Bachelor thesis entitled
Anastasis – Password-less key recovery via multi-factor multi-party authentication
Passwords and other secret information are important elements in our life today, whether we access personal services provided via the Internet or confidential information kept in local storage. But how can we access such services or information if the secret keys needed got lost, e.g. due to hardware failure, negligence or a cyber attack? In their thesis, Dominik Meister and Dennis Neufeld demonstrate a novel approach to mitigate such risks, by designing a method and a system for secret key recovery. Their approach consists of an authentication of the secret owner using multiple redundant factors and a distribution of parts of the secret key(s) to various service providers. It features a zero-knowledge authentication of the secret owner and warrants that none of the service providers will be able to reconstruct the recovered secret key(s). The authors also propose a business model and corresponding case studies using their approach, and plan to build a start-up company based on this model, thus exploiting the technical approach they designed in their thesis.