Research Areas

Research at the Security Group at TU/e covers both empirical and theoretical areas of computer security, including network detection and system authentication, physical security and malware engineering and trading, as well as management of health and sensible data and risk evaluation.

Below you can find an updated list of the recent and core contributions in these areas of research.

Research output

Research Area	Staff member(s)	Sample of output
Network monitoring	S. Etalle J. Hartog Emmanuele Zambon-Mazzocato	From Intrusion Detection to Software Design. Sandro Etalle. ESORICS - European Symposium on Research in Computer Security 2017 (keynote talk). (slides) A white-box anomaly-based framework for database leakage detection. Elisa Costante, Jerry den Hartog, Milan Petkovic, Sandro Etalle, Mykola Pechenizkiya. Journal of Information Security and Applications 32: 27-46 (2017) Encryption in ICS Networks: a Blessing or a Curse? Davide Fauri, Bart de Wijs, Jerry den Hartog, Elisa Costante, Emmanuele Zambon, Sandro Etalle. In Proceedings of IEEE SmartGridComm 2017. Similarity-Based Clustering For IoT Device Classification. G Dupont, C Leite, DR dos Santos, E Costante, J den Hartog, S Etalle. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Omni-Layer Intelligent Systems (COINS)
Software security	Wil Michiels
Secure data management	Jerry den Hartog, Milan Petkovic, Nicola Zannone	Formal analysis of XACML policies using SMT. Fatih Turkmen, Jerry den Hartog, Silvio Ranise, Nicola Zannone: Formal analysis of XACML policies using SMT. Computers & Security 66: 185-203 (2017) Data Governance and Transparency for Collaborative Systems. Rauf Mahmudlu, Jerry den Hartog, Nicola Zannone: Data Governance and Transparency for Collaborative Systems. DBSec 2016: 199-216 SAFAX - An Extensible Authorization Service for Cloud Environments. Samuel Paul Kaluvuri, Alexandru Ionut Egner, Jerry den Hartog, Nicola Zannone: SAFAX - An Extensible Authorization Service for Cloud Environments. Front. ICT 2015 (2015) On Missing Attributes in Access Control: Non-deterministic and Probabilistic Attribute Retrieval. Jason Crampton, Charles Morisset, Nicola Zannone: On Missing Attributes in Access Control: Non-deterministic and Probabilistic Attribute Retrieval. SACMAT 2015: 99-109 GEM: A distributed goal evaluation algorithm for trust management. Daniel Trivellato, Nicola Zannone, Sandro Etalle: GEM: A distributed goal evaluation algorithm for trust management. TPLP 14(3): 293-337 (2014)
Trustworthy AI and Deep learning applied to cyber security	Milan Petkovic
Process mining applied to security and privacy	Nicola Zannone	Subgraph Mining for Anomalous Pattern Discovery in Event Logs. Laura Genga, Domenico Potena, Orazio Martino, Mahdi Alizadeh, Claudia Diamantini, Nicola Zannone: Subgraph Mining for Anomalous Pattern Discovery in Event Logs. NFMCP@PKDD/ECML 2016: 181-197 Constructing Probable Explanations of Nonconformity: A Data-Aware and History-Based Approach. Mahdi Alizadeh, Massimiliano de Leoni, Nicola Zannone: Constructing Probable Explanations of Nonconformity: A Data-Aware and History-Based Approach. SSCI 2015: 1358-1365 Privacy Analysis of User Behavior Using Alignments. Arya Adriansyah, Boudewijn F. van Dongen, Nicola Zannone: Privacy Analysis of User Behavior Using Alignments. it - Information Technology 55(6): 255-260 (2013) Controlling Break-the-Glass through Alignment Arya Adriansyah, Boudewijn F. van Dongen, Nicola Zannone: Controlling Break-the-Glass through Alignment. SocialCom 2013: 606-611 Purpose Control: Did You Process the Data for the Intended Purpose? Milan Petkovic, Davide Prandi, Nicola Zannone: Purpose Control: Did You Process the Data for the Intended Purpose? Secure Data Management 2011: 145-168
Attacker economics and operating environment	Luca Allodi	Economic Factors of Vulnerability Trade and Exploitation: empirical evidence from a prominent Russian cybercrime market. Luca Allodi. ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2017. Then and Now: On The Maturity of the Cybercrime Markets. The lesson black-hat marketeers learned. Luca Allodi, Marco Corradin, Fabio Massacci. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 4(1):35–46, Jan 2016. The Work-Averse Cyber Attacker Model. Evidence from two million attack signatures. Luca Allodi, Fabio Massacci, Julian Williams. Published in WEIS 2017. The Heavy Tails of Vulnerability Exploitation Luca Allodi. In the Proceedings of ESSoS 2015. MalwareLab: Experimentation with Cybercrime Attack Tools. Luca Allodi, Vadim Kotov, Fabio Massacci. In Proceedings of Usenix CSET 2013.
Cyber-risk quantification	Luca Allodi	Security Events and Vulnerability Data for Cybersecurity Risk Estimation. Luca Allodi and Fabio Massacci (2017), Risk Analysis, 37: 1606–1627. doi:10.1111/risa.12864 Comparing vulnerability severity and exploits using case-control studies. Luca Allodi, Fabio Massacci.ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC). 17, 1, Article 1 (August 2014), 20 pages. The heavy tails of vulnerability exploitation. Luca Allodi. In International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems (pp. 133-148). Springer, Cham. How CVSS is DOSsing your patching policy (and wasting your money). Luca Allodi, Fabio Massacci. Presentation at BlackHat USA 2013. Quantitative assessment of risk reduction with cybercrime black market monitoring. Luca Allodi, Woohyun Shim, Fabio Massacci. Proceedings of IEEE S&P 2013 International Workshop on Cyber Crime.
Identification and Authentication	Boris Skoric	Decay-Based DRAM PUFs in Commodity Devices. André Schaller; Wenjie Xiong; Nikolaos Athanasios Anagnostopoulos; Muhammad Umair Saleem; Sebastian Gabmeyer; Boris Škorić; Stefan Katzenbeisser; Jakub Szefer. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing Volume: 16, Issue: 3, May-June 1 2019. Asymmetric cryptography with physical unclonable keys. Ravitej Uppu, Tom A W Wolterink, Sebastianus A Goorden, Bin Chen, Boris Škorić, Allard P Mosk,and Pepijn W H Pinkse. Quantum Science and Technology, Volume 4, Number 4, 2019. Quantum-secure authentication of a physical unclonable key. Sebastianus A. Goorden, Marcel Horstmann, Allard P. Mosk, Boris Škorić, and Pepijn W. H. Pinkse. Optica Vol. 1, Issue 6, 2014 Fingerprint template protection using minutia-pair spectral representations. Taras Stanko, Bin Chen & Boris Škorić. EURASIP Journal on Information Security volume 2019 Tally-Based Simple Decoders for Traitor Tracing and Group Testing. Boris Škorić. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Volume: 10, Issue: 6, June 2015
Information-theoretic security	Boris Skoric	Quantum digital signatures with smaller public keys. Boris Škorić. 2021 Can't Touch This: unconditional tamper evidence from short keys. Bart van der Vecht, Xavier Coiteux-Roy, Boris Skoric. 2020 Two-way Unclonable Encryption with a vulnerable sender. Daan Leermakers, Boris Skoric. 2020 Qubit-based Unclonable Encryption with Key Recycling. Daan Leermakers and Boris Skoric. Quantum Information and Computation, Vol.21 No.11&12 September 2021 Data Sanitisation Protocols for the Privacy Funnel with Differential Privacy Guarantees. Milan Lopuhaä-Zwakenberg, Haochen Tong, Boris Škorić. Fourteenth International Conference on the Digital Society, 2020
IoT Security and Privacy	Savio Sciancalepore	Mitigating Energy Depletion Attacks in IoT Networks via Random Time-Slotted Channel Access. Savio Sciancalepore, Pietro Tedeschi, Usman Riasat, and Roberto Di Pietro. 2021 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), October 4-6, 2021. ARID - Anonymous Remote Identification of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Pietro Tedeschi, Savio Sciancalepore, Roberto Di Pietro. 2021 ACM Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) (ACSAC), December 6-10, 2021. PPRQ: Privacy-Preserving MAX/MIN Range Queries in IoT Networks. Savio Sciancalepore, Roberto Di Pietro. IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IOT-J), November 2020. doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2020.3037115. PICO: Privacy-Preserving Access Control in IoT Scenarios through Incomplete Information. Savio Sciancalepore, Nicola Zannone. SAC ’22, April 25–29, 2022, Virtual Event.
Social engineering	Luca Allodi, Nicola Zannone	Testing the effectiveness of tailored phishing techniques in industry and academia: a field experiment. Pavlo Burda, Tzouliano Chotza, Luca Allodi, Nicola Zannone. ARES 2020: 3:1-3:10 Dissecting Social Engineering Attacks Through the Lenses of Cognition. Pavlo Burda, Luca Allodi, Nicola Zannone. EuroS&P Workshops 2021: 149-160 The Need for New Antiphishing Measures Against Spear-Phishing Attacks. Luca Allodi, Tzouliano Chotza, Ekaterina Panina, Nicola Zannone. IEEE Security & Privacy 18(2): 23-34 (2020) A Toolkit for Security Awareness Training Against Targeted Phishing. Simone Pirocca, Luca Allodi, Nicola Zannone. ICISS 2020: 137-159