Die Information Security Society Switzerland (ISSS), der schweizweit grösste Verband von ICT Security Professionals, hat unter dem Präsidium von Umberto Annino zum nunmehr sechsten Mald den ISSS Excellence Award verliehen. Mit dem Award werden alljährlich erstklassige Bachelor-, Master- und Doktorarbeiten zur IT- und Informationssicherheit ausgezeichnet.
Übberreicht wurde er dieses Jahr im Rahmen eines ISSS Security Talks mit rund 80 Teilnehmenden, an den die ISSS speziell auch die Studierenden mit Interesse an Informationssicherheit eingeladen hat, am 27. November in Zürich. Den Award, dotiert mit CHF 8‘000, teilen sich dieses Jahr eine Doktor- und eine Bachelorarbeit.
So wurde Damian Vizàr, EPFL, Faculté Information et Communication, Laboratoire de Sécurité et Cryptographie, für seine exzellente Doktorarbeit "Provably Secure Authenticated Encryption" (Preisgeld: CHF 4’000) prämiert. Die Jury zu dieser Arbeit im Originalton: "Authenticated Encryption (AE) is a symmetric key cryptographic primitive that provides for confidentiality and authenticity of processed messages at the same time. While the research of AE started already in 2000, Damian Vizàr presents in his thesis the first provably secure AE scheme based on a compression function, evaluates and discusses various other approaches proposed by other researchers and develops a novel definition for on-line AE-based security. Together with his colleagues he submitted the Offset Merkle-Damgård (OMD) scheme to the international Caesar competition and made it to the second of three rounds, featuring a total of 57 competitors. The ISSS Excellence Award is attributed to this well written, excellent thesis, which provides a wealth of theoretical and practical insights, and will have a significant academic impact. The amount awarded is CHF 4’000.00."
Die zweite Auszeichnung geht an eine Bachelorarbeit: Julien Farine und Xavier Hennig, Berner Fachhochschule, für ihre exzellente Bachelorarbeit "Measuring Darknet Vendors Revenue Using Bitcoin Multisig Feature" (Preisgeld: CHF 4'000). Auch hier der Originalton der Jury: "Blockchains have many potential applications in a digital world. They may replace traditional financial services, revolutionize supply chain management or serve as an enabling technology for novel fundraising schemes. Not surprisingly, blockchain technology has also been adopted by the darknet operators as a means for establishing trust between the vendor of goods, the dark market and the buyer. The “multisig” feature of the Bitcoin architecture will assure that the Bitcoin payment will only be released to the vender when the preceding part of the transaction is complete, confirmed by the market operator’s and the buyer’s signatures. The authors of this thesis, however, noted that this property can be used to observe the transactions carried out on the dark markets, and to estimate the revenue generated by dark market sales. The ISSS Excellence Award is attributed to this technically and experimentally challenging and well written thesis, which goes well beyond typical Bachelor theses in terms of quality and significance of results. The amount awarded is CHF 4’000.00."
