I am a professor of information security and computer networks at Worms University of Applied Sciences (scientific director of the Center for Technology and Transfer and founder of the network security research group (NSRG)). In addition, I am a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Hagen. Before my professorship, I was a PostDoc at Fraunhofer FKIE, 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 mostly academic 160+ 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 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. 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

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!