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)). 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 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 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-Sep-17

• Our new paper on an adaptive warden for network covert channels is now available via IEEEXplore (a free download seems to be feasible right now).

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-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!