Prof. Dr. Ghassan Karame


  



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About me

Since November 2021, I am a full Professor of Computer Science at the Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) - leading the Chair of Information Security. I am part of the Cluster of Excellence CASA (Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries) and a member of the Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security (HGI). I am also involved as a (part-time) Chief Scientific Advisor at NEC Laboratories Europe. Before joining RUB, I was working as an NEC Fellow and was leading the Security research group at NEC Labs in Germany.  Prior to joining NEC Labs, I was working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Information Security of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Since 2011, I hold a PhD degree in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.

I am interested in all aspects of security and privacy with a focus on Blockchain security & privacy, ML security, and storage security. A (rather outdated) summary of my research at NEC Labs is highlighted in this interview.

My full list of publications is available here (by date) and here (by topic).

Here, you can find my Book on Bitcoin and Blockchain Security published in 2016.
Selected media reports and interviews covering some of my past research can be found here: [Link1] [Link2] [Link3] [Link4] [Link5].

You can also follow/contact me on the following networks:
           


Open Positions

The Chair of Information Security at the Ruhr-University Bochum has multiple open positions for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in the area of system & information security, particularly (but not limited to) those specializing in:

- Blockchain security and privacy: we explore how to improve the security and privacy of cryptocurrencies and modern blockchain platforms while enhancing their performance and scalability.

- ML security and privacy: we investigate how we can improve the security of machine learning algorithms and how to securely use machine learning to secure existing platforms.

- Platform/Storage security: we explore how to make use of hardware support to improve the security and privacy of platforms.

Do you have a solid background in blockchain technologies, machine learning techniques, or security/privacy concepts? Are you excited about building highly performant secure systems? If so, I'd like to hear from you.

If you are interested in applying, please me send an email with your current CV and a description of why you think you are a good fit.

Selected Recent Activities

For a full list of my activities, please click here.

  • PC Member of ACM ASIACCS 2022
  • PC Member of IEEE DSN 2022
  • PC Member of PoPETS 2022
  • PC Member of ESORICS 2022
  • Associate Editor of IEEE TDSC (2020 - Present)
  • Associate Editor of IEEE T-IFS (2020 - Present)
  • PC Member of FC 2021
  • PC Member of ACNS 2021
  • PC Member of PoPETS 2021
  • PC Chair of ACM CCSW 2017
  • Guest Editor of IEEE Security & Privacy, Special Issue on Blockchain security and privacy

Awards & Recognition

Selected Publications

For a full list of my publications, please click here.

  • Sebastien Andreina, Giorgia Azzura Marson, Helen Moellering, Ghassan Karame
    BaFFLe: Backdoor Detection via Feedback-based Federated Learning
    In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2021 [Preprint | Bibtex] (to appear) (Acceptance rate ~19.8%).
  • Karl Wüst, Loris Diana, Kari Kostiainen, Ghassan Karame, Sinisa Matetic, Srdjan Capkun
    Bitcontracts: Adding Expressive Smart Contracts to Legacy Cryptocurrencies
    In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021 [Preprint | Bibtex] (to appear).
  • Michael Rodler, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, Lucas Davi
    EVMPatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2021 [Preprint | Bibtex] (to appear).
  • Jian Liu, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, N. Asokan
    Scalable Byzantine Consensus via Hardware-assisted Secret Sharing
    In IEEE Transaction on Computers (IEEE TC), 2019 [Preprint | Bibtex]. Won 2019 best paper award at IEEE Transactions on Computers!
  • Claudio Soriente, Ghassan Karame, Wenting Li, Sergey Fedorov
    ReplicaTEE: Enabling Seamless Replication of SGX-Enclaves in the Cloud
    In Proceedings of the IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P), 2019 [Preprint | Bibtex].
  • Michael Rodler, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, Lucas Davi
    Sereum: Protecting Existing Smart Contracts Against Re-Entrancy Attacks
    In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS) [Preprint | Bibtex] 2019.
    Related media reports: [NEC].
  • Sinisa Matetic, Karl Wuest, Moritz Schneider, Kari Kosiainen, Ghassan Karame, Srdjan Capkun
    BITE: Bitcoin Lightweight Client Privacy using Trusted Execution
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security),  2019,[Preprint | Bibtex].
  • Arthur Gervais, Ghassan Karame, K. Wuest, V. Glykantzis, Hubert, Ritzdorf, Srdjan Capkun
    On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchain
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Vienna, Austria, (Acceptance rate: 16.5%), [Preprint | Bibtex], 2016. Measured as one of the normalized top 100 security papers!
  • Frederik Armknecht, Ludovic Barman, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame
    Mirror: Enabling Proofs of Data Replication and Retrievability in the Cloud
    In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security),  2016 (Acceptance rate: 15.5%) [Preprint | Bibtex], 2016
  • Frederik Armknecht, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame, Franck Youssef
    Transparent Data Deduplication in the Cloud
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Denver, USA, (Acceptance rate: 19.8%) 2015 [Preprint | Bibtex].
  • Arthur Gervais, Hubert Ritzdorf, Ghassan Karame, Srdjan Capkun
    Tampering with the Delivery of Blocks and Transactions in Bitcoin
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Denver, USA, (Acceptance rate: 19.8%) 2015 [Preprint | Bibtex].
  • Frederik Armknecht, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame, Zongren Liu, Christian Reuter
    Outsourced Proofs of Retrievability
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Arizona, USA, 2014. (Acceptance rate: ~19.5%) [Preprint | Bibtex].
  • Dan Dobre, Ghassan Karame, Wenting Li, Matthias Majuntke, Neeraj Suri, Marko Vukolic
    PoWerStore: Proofs of Writing for Efficient and Robust Storage
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Berlin, Germany, 2013, (Acceptance rate: 19.8%) [Preprint | Bibtex].
    Related technical report: CoRR abs/1212.3555, 2012.
  • Ghassan Karame, Elli Androulaki, Srdjan Capkun
    Double-Spending Attacks on Fast Payments in Bitcoin
    In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Chicago, IL, USA, 2012, (Acceptance rate: 18.9%) [Preprint | Bibtex].
    Related technical report: Cryptology ePrint Archive Report 2012/248, 2012.
    Related media reports: ETH Globe, September 2012, "Keine versteckten Zahlungen" ETH Life, September 2012, "Better security for the internet currency Bitcoin"
  • Ghassan Karame, Aurelien Francillon, Srdjan Capkun
    Pay as you Browse: Microcomputations as Micropayments in Web-based Services
    In Proceedings of the International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), Hydrabad. India, 2011, (Acceptance rate: 12.46%) [PDF | Bibtex].
 

(C) 2012-2022 Ghassan Karame