About Sven

I am a security researcher focusing on (mobile) operating system security and trusted computing. In the past, I was particularly looking into mandatory access control systems for the Android OS and integrating hardware security building blocks into mobile operating systems. This interest has extended to object-capability systems and developing new confidential computing solutions. More recently, I also worked on the intersection of those topics with human-centered studies, authentication, and data science.

Since December 2021 I am a tenured faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, Germany, and heading the Trusted Systems Group. Between July 2018 and December 2021 I headed the same group at CISPA as tenure-track faculty and between June 2016 and July 2018 as a Research Group Leader.

I earned my Dr.-Ing. from Saarland University in 2016 with my thesis on ‘Establishing Mandatory Access Control on Android OS,’ which I wrote under supervision of Prof. Michael Backes. I finished my Master of Science in Engineering, Security and Mobile Computing on the KTH/DTU track of the NordSecMob Erasmus Mundus programme with my thesis “Using TCG/DRTM for application-specific credential storage and usage” in cooperation with Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland.

You can download my CV here .

Interests
  • Mobile Platform Security
  • Trusted Computing
  • Usable Security
Education
  • Ph.D. in Security in Information Technology, 2016

    Saarland University, Germany

  • Master of Science in Engineering, Security and Mobile Computing, 2010

    Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden / Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Copenhagen, Denmark

We are hiring!

Our team is looking for Ph.D. students and postdocs in any of our areas of interest! Further information and instructions to apply can be found here.

Academic Service

Program (Co-)Chair

Program Committee Member

Workshops

  • FoPI (co-located with IEEE EuroSP): 2021
  • WAY (co-located with USENIX SOUPS): 2020
  • SysTEX (co-located with ACM CCS): 2016

Journal Reviewer

  • IEEE TDSC: 2021, 2016, 2014
  • IEEE TIFS: 2017
  • IEEE TDSCSI: 2014

Recent Publications

Measuring the Effects of Stack Overflow Code Snippet Evolution on Open-Source Software Security. 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP'24), 2024.
A Systematic Study of the Consistency of Two-Factor Authentication User Journeys on Top-Ranked Websites. 30th Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS'23), 2023.
TALUS: Reinforcing TEE Confidentiality with Cryptographic Coprocessors. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC'23), 2023.
A11y and Privacy don't have to be mutually exclusive: Constraining Accessibility Service Misuse on Android. 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security ‘21), 2021.
Bringing Balance to the Force: Dynamic Analysis of the Android Application Framework. 28th Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS'21), 2021.

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