UUlm – Institute of Distributed Systems

Teaching Offers Summer Semester 2024 are Available

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 10:09:14 +0200

The Institute of Distributed Systems has compiled and updated its teachong offers for the upcoming summer semester. All courses, projects and seminars are linked on our Teaching Portfolio page. For many courses the Moodle courses are already open for subscription. For the remaining courses Moodle will open soon.

Teaching Offerings WiSe 2023

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:28:34 +0200

Our teaching offerings for the winter semester 2023areis now completely published on our teaching offerings website. In addition to the well-known (pro-)seminars, master projects and the possibility for theses, we offer the following lectures:

Advanced Research Topics on IT Security [EN]
2V+2Ü, 6LP, Lecture with semester project in cooperation with GUC, Cairo (in presence)
Blockchain Fundamentals [EN]
2V, 4 LP, Interdisciplinary lecture in cooperation with WiWi (in presence)
Embedded Security [EN]
2V+2Ü, 6LP, Lecture (online videos) with practical lab exercises (in presence)
Grundlagen der Rechnernetze / Vernetze Systeme
2V+2Ü, 5LP / 3V+2Ü, 6LP, Lecture (online, recorded + in presence) with lab (online, live)
Grundlagen Verteilter Systeme
3V+1Ü, 6LP, Lecture (online videos) with lab (in presence)

Unfortunately, the lecture "Privacy Engineering and Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs)" cannot be offered this winter due to capacity reasons and is therefore cancelled. If you want to attend a lecture in the area of security, we recommend "Advanced Research Topics [...]" or "Embedded Security", both of which offer exciting and innovative content and teaching formats.

Successful Doctoral Graduation of Gerhard Habiger

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 15:32:17 +0100

Gerhard Habiger, Ph.D. student of Prof. Franz J. Hauck and former employee of the Institute, has successfully concluded his doctoral degree on January 30, 2023. In his thesis about Optimizing Deterministically Scheduled Fault-Tolerant Distributed Systems, Gerhard Habiger developed mulitple optimisations in order to allow the efficient operation of fault-tolerant services by automatic configurations.

Congratulations to Dr. Pascal Oser on the successful defense of his PhD thesis

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:07:00 +0100

The Institute of Distributed Systems congratulates Dr. Pascal Oser on the successful defense of his PhD thesis entitled "Security Risks of IoT Devices: From Device Characteristics to Future Risk Score Predictions". Pascal defended on December 16, 22. After the defense, members of the institute handed over a highly creative doctoral hat.

EU PENTA Project Sunrise wins 2022 PENTA Innovation Award

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 09:38:40 +0100

We are happy to announce that the project SunRise won the 2022 PENTA Innovation Award. We were happy to contribute to the project research on privacy-preserving machine learning.

Our Teaching in the Wintersemester 2022/23

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 14:22:18 +0200

In the winter semester 2022/23 we will have some important changes in our teaching. With this posting, we want to inform you about htem.

Security in IT-Systems: in anticipation of the new structure of the bachelor program, the lecture Sicherheit in IT-Systemen / Security of IT-Systems will be postponed to the summer semester 2023. It will not be offered in the winter semester 2022/23!
Embedded Security: there will be a new lecture on Embedded Security offered by our lecturer, Mr. Ferdinand Nölscher.
Blockchain Fundamentals: this new interdisciplinary lecture (2 SWS) will be offered by lecturers from economics and Prof. Kargl and will cover the topic of blockchains from the perspectives of computer science, law and economics.
Advanced Research Topics in IT-Security: this lecture was offered for the first time in the summer semester 2021 and will now take place again in the winter semester 2022/23. Current research publications in IT security and privacy will be introduced and discussed there. The lecture is offered in cooperation with the German University in Cairo and includes, among other things, joint project work in international student teams.
Proseminar Modern Aspects of Java Software Development: the proseminar KTT will be replaced by this proseminar. The main topic is still Java, but the scope is extended to development environments and tools

Beyond, we also offer the following lectures in the established form:

Introduction to Computer Networks
Introduction to Distributed Systems
Privacy Engineering and Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Distributed Computing Platforms in Practice
Bachelor/Master Seminars ATVS/RTDS
Project Computer Networks and IT Security I/II
Project Distributed Application, Platforms and Systems I/II
und of course our graduate seminar and all courses for the computer science teaching degree

We will add more information to our web pages in the coming weeks.

Benjamin Erb receives ProTrainU funding for research project PePER

Tue, 03 May 2022 07:57:54 +0200

At the end of April, Dr. Benjamin Erb from the Institute of Distributed Systems officially received start-up funding for young researchers from the Ulm University Graduate & Professional Training Centre. The internal funding program supports researchers at the beginning of their researching career.
The funding will support the prototypical development of a novel digital research platform that will meet specific privacy requirements. The platform uses technical protection mechanisms to implement pre-defined empirical studies and to secure the study data collected in the process. This makes the platform suitable for psychology and other empirical disciplines - especially when highly sensitive and sensitive private data have to be collected, stored and processed as part of the study.

More information: Ulm University News

Reykjavík Summer School on Secure and Reliable Distributed Systems, Application Open

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 10:38:04 +0100

Application is open. Deadline is March 31, 2022.

Congratulations to Dr. Felix Engelmann on the successful defense of his PhD thesis

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:59:35 +0100

The Institute of Distributed Systems congratulates Dr. Felix Engelmann on the successful defense of his PhD thesis entitled "Confidential Types in Transaction Systems". Felix defended on January 17, 22. After the defense, members of the institute handed over a highly creative doctoral hat.

KuVS Bachelor thesis award 2020 for Johannes Deger's thesis on RPKI Security (incl. video)

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 13:58:19 +0200

Our student Johannes Deger presented the results of his Bachelor thesis "State of RPKI-Deployment and Routing Security" and received the KuVS Bachelor thesis award 2020. A video of his presentation at NetSys 2021 is also available on our YouTube channel. Congratulations from the whole Institute!!!

New presentation video of INFOCOM20 paper by Stephan Kleber online

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 12:09:47 +0200

We have a new conference recording in our YouTube channel. This time a presentation by Stephan Kleber from his paper "Message Type Identification of Binary Network Protocols using Continuous Segment Similarity" by S. Kleber, R.W. van der Heijden, F. Kargl. The paper was presented at IEEE INFOCOM 2020 and NetSys 21.

Full paper: IEEE DL, Oparu

Members of the Institute of Distributed Systems as Co-Organizers of IEEE WONS Conference

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 09:51:53 +0100

Members of our institute helped co-organize this year's IEEE Wireless On-demand Network systems and Services Conference (IEEE WONS 2021). In its 16th edition, WONS remains an important event where the research community on wireless network systems meets and discusses the advance in ad-hoc and on-demand wireless networks . It was originally planned to happen in Klosters, Switzerland, with Christoph Bösch acting as General Vice-Chair and Local Arrangement Chair. After moving online due to the COVID pandemic, he then took charge for preparing a nice virtual chalet where attendees can meet online in gather.town. Frank Kargl supported the conference as member of the TPC as well as organizer of a special session on Smartphone Apps for Contact Tracing. The panel-style session featured three top-class speakers, namely Marcel Salathé from EPFL, Tobias Klingbeil from SAP, and Zhiqiang Lin from Ohio State University who gave unique insights into a broad range of aspects of contact tracing apps.

Institute presents four papers at ACM SAC 2021

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 13:27:37 +0100

Our institute is happy to announce that a stunning total of four papers were accepted at the 36th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing and will be presented during the virtual conference from March 22 to March 26, 2021.

Gerhard Habiger and Franz J. Hauck co-authored a paper on "SmartStream: Towards Byzantine Resilient Data Streaming" together with Johannes Köstler and Hans P. Reiser from University of Passau.

A team from Ulm University and KU Leuven with Ala'a al-Momani as first author presented its research on "Land of the Lost: Privacy Patterns’ Forgotten Properties – Enhancing Selection-Support for Privacy Patterns".

And – last but not least – Dome Meißner and co-authors successfully submitted two papers, one on "PeQES: A Platform for Privacy-enhanced Quantitative Empirical Studies" and a poster paper on "WAIT: Protecting the Integrity of Web Applications with Binary-Equivalent Transparency".

We wish everyone involved a successful and exciting online conference.

ulm.digital 10x10 zu digitaler Bildung

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 12:33:55 +0100

Mit dem Greenboxstudio der Maurer Veranstaltungstechnik in Blaustein-Dietingen war der perfekte Rahmen für einen Event gegeben, bei dem die Moderatoren und die Hälfte der Referentinnen und Referenten vor Ort, die restlichen Sprecher sowie das Publikum jedoch remote zugeschaltet waren. Dank Antigen-Schnelltests für alle Personen vor Ort war eine sichere Durchführung gewährleistet.

Doch wie kam es zu diesem Event? Kaum ein Thema wurde im letzten Jahr so intensiv diskutiert wie das der Digitalisierung im Bildungswesen. Lockdowns und Teilschließungen von Schulen zwangen Schülerinnen, Schüler und Schulen, aber auch die Hochschulen und selbst KiTas, beim Online-Learning ganz neue Wege zu gehen oder bereits vorhandene Ansätze drastisch auszubauen. Fragen, wie gut oder schlecht man zu Hause online lernen kann und ob unter den aktuellen Bedingungen faire Abschlussprüfungen überhaupt möglich sind, bewegen Familien im ganzen Land. Gleichzeitig legt die Pandemie schonungslos bisherige Versäumnisse bei der Digitalisierung und dem Ausbau unserer digitalen Infrastrukturen auf.

Ein spannendes Thema also, dass bei diesem ulm.digital 10x10 Event in insgesamt sechs Vorträgen beleuchtet. Zusammen mit Sabine Meigel (Stadt Ulm) und Daniela Reuther (Neu-Ulm) und unter Mitwirkung vieler weiterer engagierter Mitglieder der Initiative konnten wir ein buntes Portfolio an Themen zusammenstellen:

Sebastian Schmidt (Aicher-Scholl-Realschule Pfuhl) "Digitalisierung an Schulen – geht nicht, gibt’s nicht"
Monika Schmid & Christina Baumgartl (Stadt Ulm) "ulm.lernt"
Hanna Steuernagel & Florian Schechner (Hans & Sophie Scholl-Gymnasium Ulm) "Digitalisierung ja, aber nicht zu jedem Preis!"
Anita Müller (Gesamtleitung des Kinderhauses Donaukinder) "Das Tablet in der KiTa – Fluch oder Segen?"
Prof. Stefan Wesner (Leiter KIZ Uni Ulm) "Skalierbare Dienste für die Digitale Lehre durch Testing in Production"
Prof. Tina Seufert (Leiterin eLearningzentrum der Uni Ulm, Lehr- und Lernforschung) "Digitalisiertes Lehren und Lernen - worauf es ankommt"

Regio TV Ulm hat vor Ort auch einen kurzen Beitrag gedreht.

Co-Chairing IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference 2020

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 10:58:00 +0100

From December, 16.-18. 2020, members of the Institute of Distributed Systems co-organized the 11. IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference as a virtual online conference. Prof. Frank Kargl acted as Co-General-Chair, Ala'a Al-Momani as Web-Chair and Dominik Mauksch took responsibility for large parts of the technical setup. Having 240 registered participants set a new record for VNC. Attendees especially like the format of pre-recorded presentation videos, compact daily online sessions with live keynotes and discussions, and the availability of Slack and Gather for interaction with other participants. Some voices called this the best online-conferences concept of the year 2020.

Johannes Deger ranked second in CAST Theses Award 2020

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 11:47:00 +0100

Another noteworthy success for the students of our Institute. Johannes Deger ranked second in the CAST Award IT-Security 2020 with his B.Sc. thesis on "Evaluation of the Deployment-Status of RPKI and Route Filtering".

GDD Science Award for Michael Heinl

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 16:00:23 +0100

We are happy to announce that our former M.Sc. student Michael Heinl received the GDD's Science Award 2020 for his Master's thesis "A Metric to Assess the Trustworthiness of Certificate Authorities". GDD is the German "Gesellschaft für Datenschutz und Datensicherheit e.V.". The thesis was supervised together with Fraunhofer AISEC and Prof. Claudia Eckert.

escar Europe 2020

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 12:42:48 +0100

Prof. Kargl co-chaired this year's escar Europe 2020 which was organized in the lovely city of Bonn ... kind of. While all participants and most speakers attended remotely, a small organizing team gathered in the originally foreseen venue: the old parliament building of the German 'Bundestag' in Bonn to moderate the event. Even though the conference happened mostly remotely, relying on the online conferencing solution of talque allowed a highly interactive event with many discussions.

Algorithmic Artworks

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 18:22:26 +0100

Our colleagues Gerhard Habiger and Matthias Matousek develop algorithms that generate 3D sculptures from personal memories, such as photos. The sculptures materialize in the real world with the help of a 3D printer.

With this idea, the team placed first in the 1. South German 3D printing challenge, which was organized by the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm and InnoSÜD.

Prof. Kargl joins German AI Award Ceremony

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:06:00 +0200

On Oct. 1., Prof. Kargl joined the award ceremony of the German AI Award as a panelist. Together with industry experts like Michael Bolle, director and CTO at Bosch, Michael Würtenberger, research director E/E technologies at BMW, and Ingo Hueck, co-owner Hella, and moderatored by Chris Boos the panel discussed the transformation and challenges that artificial intelligence brings to mobility and the automotive industry.

Congratulations on successful defense to Thomas Lukaseder

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 14:57:28 +0200

We congratulate Dr. Thomas Lukaseder on the successful defense of this PhD thesis entitled "Security in High-Bandwidth Networks". Dr. Lukaseder worked on this thesis in the context of the bwNET project where - among others - he investigated novel protection mechanisms against Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks.

European Commission Calls Project ESIT a Success Story

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 10:03:00 +0100

The European Commission has listed the ITN Project European School for Interdisciplinary Tinnitus Research (ESIT) as one of their Success Stories. Prof. Franz J. Hauck and his student Muntazir Mehdi, who are participating in the project, are happy about the award.

Link to the document at the EC

IEEE INFOCOM Paper "Message Type Identification of Binary Network Protocols using Continuous Segment Similarity“

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 20:57:57 +0100

We are delighted to announce that our paper "Message Type Identification of Binary Network Protocols using Continuous Segment Similarity“ got accepted at IEEE INFOCOM 2020, a leading conference on computer communications. Join main author Stephan Kleber in April in Beijing for an exciting presentation.

Co-Organisation of escar Europe 2019 Conference

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 13:49:11 +0100

On November 19. and 20. 2019, the Exhibition Center in Stuttgart hosted the escar Europe 2019 conference which was packed with exciting presentations of renowned speakers, hands-on workshops, interesting discussions and lots of opportunities for exchange and professional networking. With over 300 participants, escar Europe also set an overall record for all escar conferences in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. As TPC-Chair, Prof. Kargl was strongly involved in organization and conduction of this world-leading conference on automotive cyber security. More information can be found at https://www.escar.info/.

Congratulations to Dr. Benjamin Erb on his successful Ph.D. defense

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 13:46:00 +0100

We congratulate Dr. Benjamin Erb on successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis on "Distributed Computing on Event-Sourced Graphs".