I am a professor of information security and computer networks at Hochschule Worms, where I am also the scientific director of the Center for Technology and Transfer. In addition, I am a lecturer at the University of Hagen. Before my professorship, I was a PostDoc at Fraunhofer FKIE in Bonn, where I 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 170+ mostly academic publications can be found here. However, I also wrote non-academic 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 [CSUR’15], [CUING’21], [AsiaCCS’22], information hiding methodology [JUCS’16], traffic normalization/wardens [FGCS’18], [IJAS’12], covert channel optimization [CMS’11], [CMS’12], scientometric citation analysis [Scientometrics’20] and the security of networked IoT devices and smart buildings [ACCESS’19],[SEC’15],[JCSM’17],[CACM’16].

I am a member of several steering committees, initiatives, program and organizing committees (cf. details. I am (or was) lecturing and supervising at Bonn University, FernUniversität in Hagen and Hochschule Augsburg. 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. Sparetime: different kinds of sports.

Academic Profiles: Google Scholar, DBLP, ORCID, ResearchGate.

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

Recent News

2022-Jul-13

• Our new BMBF-funded project is about to start: KIASH will investigate privacy-preserving AI-based anomaly detection for smart homes. The project will be conducted from 2022 till 2025.
• During the last year, we revised the 2021-taxonomy for steganography methods and heavily extended the previous taxonomy. More information can be found on the steganography hiding patterns website and in the pre-print.
• I am honored to serve as the program co-chair of the European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference 2023 (EICC’23), 2023, Stavanger, Norway. I hope the conference can take place in person.

2022-Jun-14

• I am honored to give the keynote at this year’s CUING workshop.

2022-Jun-10

• Our paper Challenging Channels: Encrypted Covert Channels within Challenge-Response Authentication was accepted at the CUING workshop co-located with the ARES conference in Vienna and will be presented in August.

2022-May-31

• Our AsiaCCS SoK paper on indirect network covert channels is now available for download.
• It looks like my group receives two new BMBF-funded security projects this summer. Stay tuned!

2022-Apr-19

• New paper: Analysis of Reversible Network Covert Channels, IEEE ACCESS, in press.
• New paper: Detection Of Computational Intensive Reversible Covert Channels Based On Packet Runtime, Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol. 13(1), 2022.
• I was interviewed by SWR Aktuell regarding cyberattacks on companies.

2020-Apr-04

• We finished a new special issue:
  • Wendzel S, Caviglione L, Mileva A, Lalande J-F, Mazurczyk W (2022c) Guest editorial: Information security methodology and replication studies, DOI: 10.1515/itit-2022-0016. The full issue is available here. Also: many thanks to Ulrich Flegel, who was our host editor!
• Two of our submissions have been accepted at EICC’22 / DETONATOR workshop at EICC’22.

2020-Mar-12

• We uploaded the final version of our AsiaCCS’22 paper SoK: A Survey Of Indirect Network-level Covert Channels to ResearchGate: link. This is an open access paper and will be presented in early June.

2022-Feb-10

• Our paper Detection Of Computational Intensive Reversible Covert Channels Based On Packet Runtime as been accepted at the Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA) under the umbrella of an ARES’21 special issue.

• Very grateful that our AsiaCCS paper ``SoK: I’d Rather Drop It From The Eaves’’: A Survey Of Indirect Network-level Covert Channels’’ got accepted!

• I am happy to announce that we organize the 4th International Workshop on Information Security Methodology and Replication Studies (IWSMR), co-located with ARES 2022, Vienna, AT. Please consider submitting your papers to IWSMR’22.

2022-Jan-26

• Our new IEEE Security & Privacy special issue on Security and Privacy Issues of Home Globalization was published today: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9693419.

• Our paper Information Hiding in the DICOM Message Service and Upper Layer Service with Entropy-Based Detection has been published by Entropy, https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/2/176.

• Our German paper Untersuchung des Gender-gaps bei Cybersecurity-Publikationen has been accepted as a short paper at GI SICHERHEIT 2022, Karlsruhe.

2022-Jan-17

• Our new special issue at the Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA) on Multidisciplinary Solutions to Modern Cybersecurity Challenges is now available.

2021-Oct-24

• I am very glad that the 9th(!) edition of our German Linux book is now available, see here. In earlier editions, the book was called Einstieg in Linux, but the name was recently changed to Linux. Der Grundkurs (that is why it is now officially a 1st edition instead of a 9th edition) and the book is now more tailored for academic students (features more kernel-internal concepts etc.).
• Moreover, I am very glad that we have finished our special issue on Emerging topis in defending networked systems of the highly ranked journal Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS). Our editorial is available here.
• 3 out of 3 papers that we submitted to EICC’21 have been accepted and will be presented online next month.

2021-Sep-01

• After 4.5 years as deputy scientific director, I am now the scientific director of the Centre for Technology and Transfer (Zentrum für Technologie und Transfer) at the University of Applied Sciences in Worms.

2021-Aug-17

• This week, the 3rd IWSMR workshop on Information Security Methodology and Replication Studies will take place co-located with ARES, see here.
• We will present four papers at ARES’2021, which are available via ACM DL since today:

  • 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 10.1145/3465481.3470069

  • 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 10.1145/3465481.3470027

  • 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 10.1145/3465481.3470072

  • 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 10.1145/3465481.3470085

• I am glad that two of our papers about steganography (CoAP-based covert channels and TIA portal data evaluation) got accepted at this year’s DETONATOR workshop co-located with EICC’21.

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-16

• Very glad that our Patterns Project is now online!