Prof. Dr. Ghassan Karame

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 A (rather outdated) summary of my research at NEC Labs is highlighted in this interview.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.

- 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, 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 send me 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 2023
PC Member of PoPETS 2023
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 Chair of ACM CCSW 2017
Guest Editor of IEEE Security & Privacy, Special Issue on Blockchain security and privacy

Awards & Recognition

Recognized by AMiner as one of the top 50 most influential scholars in the area of security and privacy over the past 10 years (2012 and 2021) .
Recognized by AMiner as one of the top 100 most influential scholars in the area of security and privacy over the past 10 years (2011 and 2020).
Value Realization Award (NEC Corporation), 2020
2019 best paper award at IEEE Transactions on Computers
Research Contributions Award (NEC Corporation), 2018
Excellent Innovation Award (NEC Corporation), 2017
ACM CCS'16 paper measured as one of the normalized top 100 security papers!
Excellent Innovation Award (NEC Corporation), 2014
Research Contributions Award (NEC Corporation), 2014

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] (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].
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].
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].