I am a professor of information security and computer networks at Worms University of Applied Sciences (founder of the network security research group and deputy scientific director of the Centre for Technology and Transfer). Before my professorship, I was a PostDoc at Fraunhofer FKIE and led a research team on smart building security. I received my Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) and my Habilitation (Dr. habil.) from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Hagen in 2013 and 2020, respectively.

A list of my mostly academic 150+ publications can be found here. However, I also wrote books about the Linux operating system and contributed open source code/patches to the free software community. There is also a list of selected talks that I gave.

Research interests

• CPS/IoT/smart building communications and security
• Application of machine learning/AI for anomaly detection in networks and CPS
• Network information hiding (network covert channels and network steganography)
• Security of (embedded) communication protocols
• Terminology/taxonomy in information security
• Scientometrics

Some of my key publications are focusing on information hiding taxonomy/patterns [1a], [1b], information hiding methodology [2], traffic normalization/wardens [3a], [3b], covert channel optimization [4a], [4b], scientometric citation analysis [5a] and the security of networked IoT devices and smart buildings [6a],[6b],[6c],[6d].

I am a member of several steering committees, initiatives, program and organizing committees (cf. details. I am (or was) lecturing and supervising at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Bonn University and Hagen University. A list of my projects, both funded and spare-time software projects, is also available.

In addition to information security, I am interested in university history, campus novels, and retro computing – in particular: operating system history and historic network protocols. I own a small collection of rather historic books on these retro computing topics. Since about ten years, I am also a mid-distance runner (5km to half-marathon).

Find (information about) me here: Google Scholar, ORCID, ResearchGate.

Contact: steffen (at) wendzel (dot) de (PGP pub key: FD701BD1).

Recent News

2021-Jul-23

• We currently prepare a new special issue for the journal it – Information Technology on Information Security Methodology and Replication Studies. Please find the CfP here: https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ITIT/html. Submissions are due by November 15th, 2021.

2021-Jul-13

• I gave the keynote talk on novel approaches for network steganography countermeasures at ZiTiS, Germany. I make the slides available via e-mail on request.
• The 2nd Edition of my German book on TCP/IP and IoT security (IT-Sicherheit für TCP/IP- und IoT-Netzwerke) is now available via Springer!
• My NEL tool is now also capable of simulating regular, dynamic and simplified adaptive wardens! (The NEL tool itself simulates a sophisticated covert channel.)
  • See NELphase repository on github
• One paper of our SIVERT project will appear in Acta Oncologica:
  • Pettersen H, Aehle M, Alme J, Barnaföldi G, Borshchov V, Brink A van den, Chaar M, Eikeland V, Gregory F, Garth C, Gauger N, Genov G et al (2021c) Investigating particle track topology for range telescopes in particle radiography using convolutional neural networks, Acta Oncologica, 2021. DOI 10.1080/0284186X.2021.1949037.

2021-Jun-27

• Very happy that one paper I co-authored got accepted at this year’s LCN conference:
  • Chourib M, Wendzel S, Mazurczyk W (2021d) Adaptive Warden Strategy for Countering Network Covert Storage Channels. In: Proc. 46th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN). IEEE

2021-Jun-16

• Very glad that our Patterns Project is now online!

2021-Jun-07

• I am very glad that four of our papers have been accepted at different ARES’21 workshops!

  • Wendzel S, Caviglione L, Mazurczyk W et al (2021a) A Revised Taxonomy of Steganography Embedding Patterns. In: Proc. 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021). Association for Computing Machinery

  • Vrhovec S, Caviglione L, Wendzel S (2021c) Crème de la Crème: Lessons from Papers in Top Publications. In: Proc. 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021). Association for Computing Machinery

  • Mileva A, Caviglione L, Velinov A et al (2021d) Risks and Opportunities for Information Hiding in DICOM Standard. In: Proc. 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021). Association for Computing Machinery

  • Schmidbauer T, Wendzel S (2021e) Hunting Shadows: Towards Packet Runtime-based Detection Of Computational Intensive Reversible Covert Channels. In: Proc. 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021). Association for Computing Machinery

2021-Apr-21

• I released version 2.1.3 of my NNTP server WendzelNNTPd.

2021-Mar-23

• Our paper on reconnection-based covert channels in WiFi networks has been accepted at IFIP SEC 2021. Main author is my PhD student S. Zillien.

2021-Feb-24

• I am happy to announce that we will organize the IWSMR workshop for the third time this year jointly with the ARES conference: https://www.ares-conference.eu/workshops/iwsmr-2021/.
• My new website is up.