Started during Christmas 2024, I began working on holiday security research projects. These projects have in common that they are named after mythodological/religious characters, places, or rituals.

Background: Some years ago (around 2018), I started reading books on religious studies, of which I can recommend Mircea Eliade’s volumes A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. I-III) (published in the late 70s/early 80s) and his book Patterns in Comparative Religion (published 1958).

Overview

  • Christmas 2024:
    • AMPhitryon:
      • Brief Description: AMPhitryon is a compression scheme. It is tailored (but not limited) to compress small network packets in censorship circumvention/covert channel setups.
      • Published: IFIP SEC 2026, authors: S. Wendzel, S. Zillien, S. Zander (yes, it took one year till we submitted this one)

      • Explanation of the Name (copied from the paper): “We use “AMP” to refer to amplification. Moreover, reflected by the prefix amphi- (Ancient Greek ἀμφί), which can be translated as on both sides, our amplification relies on the combination of both components: the transferred (compressed) data channel and the dictionary component being pointed to by the compressed data. The term AMPhitryon links to Amphitryon — the husband of Alcmene in Greek mythology. Amphitryon itself can be translated as harassing both sides.”

        I also can recommend the theatre play by Heinrich von Kleist (link in German), which was my original inspiration for this name.

      • Link(s):
  • Christmas 2025:
    • AdullamoT:
      • Brief Description: The core idea is to use IoT devices as relays for time-decoupled covert data exchange. In other words, Alice can send data at one point in time while Bob retrives the data at another point. The data is relayed in commercial off-the-shelf devices. In my experiments, I used three printers and a smart speaker.
      • Published: IH&MMSec 2026, author: just me
      • Explanation of the Name (copied from the paper): “According to Biblical reference 1 Samuel 22:1-2 (also Shmuel I:22 in the Jewish Bible). Adullam was a hideout place for King David where he also assembled his fellow soldiers. The name AdullamoT was selected since our approach enables a digital hideout by utilizing IoT devices.”
      • Link(s):

Changelog

2026-05-06:

  • Initial version