Press / Media

This year's ESORICS – European Symposium on Research in Computer Security – will be held virtually. For the first time it will start with monthly tutorials in advance. The first two tutorials will be free of charge. The tutorial series will start at the end of June with cybersecurity expert Dr. Yossi Oren from Ben-Gurion University in Israel. More information and registration: https://esorics2021.athene-center.de/

Dr. Haya Shulman wins first place in the 8th German IT Security Award, securing prize money of 100,000 euros. The prize is awarded by the Horst Görtz Foundation and is considered the most prestigious and highest endowed prize for IT security in Germany.

A key challenge in combating the illegal trade in stolen cultural goods is that illegally traded objects are difficult to identify. The KIKu project – a German acronym for Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Property Protection – aims to facilitate the work of the responsible authorities, especially customs and police, and is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. To this end, the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and cosee GmbH are developing an app that can use artificial intelligence to provide automated information on whether, for example, an antique vase or statue could have come from a looted dig or was otherwise illegally acquired. The project was presented on November 4th, 2020 to numerous relevant actors in the field of cultural property protection from Germany and the EU, who met at the invitation of the Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters for the 7th EU CULTNET meeting in the context of the German EU Council Presidency.

Starting immediately, the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE offers a wide-ranging overview of the most important scientific conferences in the fields of cybersecurity and data protection at https://www.athene-center.de/cfp. Currently, the list includes more than 100 events and it can be filtered by event dates and submission deadlines. Additional filtering options allow for quickly finding suitable publication opportunities of various research topics, while taking into account the scientific reputation of each event listed.

JAB-Code, the color barcode of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT, is on the way to becoming an international ISO standard. JAB-Code – Just Another Barcode – is to be brought to a full ISO standard by 2022. The globally uniform rules for data formats and their use in practice provide both device manufacturers and user companies with planning security for innovative developments – an important prerequisite for the successful dissemination of JAB-Code in industry. The advantage of the color code compared to the common black and white barcodes is that it can store much more data in the same space. Besides securing job certificates, training certificates and last wills, JAB-Code can also provide proof of authenticity for products. JAB-Code is not subject to licensing. It is open source and ready to be put into practice. To test the color barcode, go to www.jabcode.org.

Errors and vulnerabilities in software cause damage running into billions, can ruin a company's reputation and, in the worst case, endanger the safety of people. That's why the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT in Darmstadt developed VUSC – the code scanner. VUSC (for VUlnerability SCanner) helps companies and developers to detect vulnerabilities in code within minutes. VUSC does not require any source code for this. The code scanner works on premises in a data protection-friendly manner.