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, and lecturer at the FernUniversität in Hagen. Earlier, I was a PostDoc at the Dep. Cyber Security of Fraunhofer FKIE in Bonn, where I led a research team on smart building security. I received my Dipl.-Inf.(FH) degree from Hochschule Kempten (in 2009), my M.Sc. degree from Hochschule Augsburg (2011), and both, my doctoral degree (2013) and my Habilitation (Dr. habil., 2020), from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Hagen.

A list of my ca. 180 publications can be found here. I also wrote some 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. I am a member of several steering committees, initiatives, program and organizing committees (cf. details). I am (or was) lecturing and supervising at several institutions. A list of my projects, both funded and spare-time software projects, is also available.

Research interests

• Network Steganography / Covert Channels
• Network Security (incl. IoT/CPS)
• Smart Home / Smart Building Security
• Anomaly Detection
• Terminology/taxonomy in information security

Academic Profiles: Google Scholar, DBLP, ORCID, ResearchGate, Mastodon: @cdpxe@dju.social.

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

Recent News

2023-Jul-14

• I will serve as the Chair of GI Sicherheit 2024. This is a conference of the German Informatics Society (GI). We will organize the conference in Worms, Germany, April 9-11, 2024.
• There is some German news about our research on aging smart devices, see here: Studie zu Risiken alternder Smart Home Geräte veröffentlicht

2023-Jul-07

• I will give a talk Herausforderungen an die IT-Sicherheit in der Gebäudeautomation at VDI Arbeitskreis Bauen und Gebäudetechnik: Technische Ausrüstung, online, 2023-08-08.

2023-Jun-23

• In October, I will give an online webinar at EURASIP on Recent developments in Network Information Hiding, see here.

2023-Jun-06

• There is some press release (in German) about the start of our EMPOWER sub-project that forms a cyber security hub for the region (funded: 2.4 Mio. EUR, BMBF).
• Two of my PhD students and myself recently visited Prof. Wojciech Mazurczyk at Warsaw Technical University (WUT).

2023-Apr-19

• My first PhD student just finished his doctorate today. Huge congrats to Tobias Schmidbauer!
  • Update: news entry

2023-Apr-12

• Our new paper Why People Replace their Aging Smart Devices: A Push–Pull–Mooring Perspective was just accepted at Computers and Security (COSE). The early access version is already available.

2023-Apr-05

• Today, I gave a talk on Censorship Circumvention, Steganography and Traffic Obfuscation at the Cyberagentur, Halle. The slides are available for download.

2023-Mar-23

• I visited my colleague Jean-Francois Lalande and give a talk on Obfuscation and Concealment Methods for Network Traffic at CentraleSupélec, Rennes.

2023-Feb-13

• I already teach in Hagen since a few semesters but today I gave my inaugural lecture at the University of Hagen.

2023-Feb-05

• New article Weaknesses of popular and recent covert channel detection methods and a remedy by S. Zillien and me was published by IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC).

2023-Jan-07

• Our new article Avoiding research tribal wars using taxonomies was just published in IEEE Computer Vol. 56(1).

2022-Dec-23

• Our latest work’s pre-print on a new category of covert channels called history covert channels is now available arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.11850.

2022-Dec-04

• Last week, I was a visiting researcher at the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies (IMATI), Genova, to work jointly with my long-time colleague Luca Caviglione.

2022-Nov-21

• We recently had a great kick-off for our KIASH project.

• I gave a talk about writing a Linux book for twenty years at the Linux Presentation Day 2022/2 at Hochschule Worms. The talk was covering the history of our German Linux book. Its history dates back till 2002 (first edition appeared 2004).

2022-Nov-12

• I now operate a Mastodon profile (@cdpxe@dju.social).

• I am very pleased that our new BMBF-funded project EMPOWER received funding for five years (2023-2027). We will run a sub-project on cyber security, funded with around 2.4 Mio. EUR! The project is mostly having a regional focus (Rhine-Main-Neckar area in RLP and connected states). Under the umbrella of this project, we will build a cyber security innovation lab, a think tank, and run several sub-projects, also to empower regional SMEs. Let us know if you are interested in collaborating with us.

2022-Oct-17

• Our new paper Anomaly Detection for Industrial Control Systems Through Totally Integrated Automation Portal Project History appeared in JoWUA.

2022-Oct-04

• We reworked the website on hiding patterns: https://patterns.ztt.hs-worms.de.

2022-Sep-30

• Our new special issue for the Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS) targets Cybersecurity Risks from a Multidisciplinary Perspective (Call for Papers). Looking forward for your submissions!
• There is some news about our steganography taxonomy work and my keynote related to it (in German).

2022-Aug-20

• Next week, I will give a keynote about hiding patterns in steganography at the CUING workshop (ARES conference, Vienna).
• Our PhD student Tobias Schmidbauer will present our paper Challenging Channels: Encrypted Covert Channels within Challenge-Response Authentication, also at the CUING workshop.

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!