Projects

The following list gives an overview about our research in specific projects. We gratefully acknowledge the various funding bodies that provide us grants to conduct cutting-edge research.

If you want to learn more what we are working on, we suggest to also check our publications. They will give you more complete and detailed insights into the challenges that we tackle, which methods we apply, and our proposed solutions.

1. Ongoing Projects
2. Finished Projects

Ongoing Projects

DARKSOL: DTN-Architectures for Space Cloud Operations and Space Cloud Lifecycle Management

Principal Investigator	Dr. Iris Braun, Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	European Union, Free State of Saxony
Partners	D3TN GmbH, Cyberus Technology GmbH
Term	Oct 04, 2024 — Oct 03, 2026
Further Details	TBA
Abstract	In the project DARKSOL, we explore an approach to implement a space cloud that will enable applications of the space industry (so-called payloads) for satellites, robotics, or space probes to operate similar to regular cloud infrastructure..

IPv6Explorer: Efficient Exploration of IPv6 Address Space in Use

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Alpha Strike Labs GmbH
Term	Jun 01, 2023 — May 31, 2026
Further Details	https://ipv6explorer.alphastrike.io/https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/ipv6explorer
Abstract	In the project IPv6Explorer, we design, implement, and analyse scalable methods to explore the active IPv6 address space. These methods will extend an existing search engine that allows to identify vulnerable Internet hosts.

C-ray4edge: Cyber Physical Security Using Radiometry for the Edge

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	PHYSEC GmbH, WestfalenWIND IT GmbH & Co KG, HAW Hamburg
Term	Sep 01, 2022 — Aug 21, 2025
Further Details	https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/c-ray4edge

Concrete Contracts: Extending GNU Taler Towards a Platform for Conrete Business Processes

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Code Blau GmbH
Term	Jul 01, 2022 — Jun 30, 2025
Further Details	https://concretecontracts.codeblau.de/ https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/concrete-contracts
Abstract	The goal of this project is to investigate potentials and limits of digital payment systems on low-end devices for the Internet of Things. In detail, we extend the digital payment system GNU Taler with (1) an innovative, privacy-preserving scheme for age verification during payment, (2) privacy-preserving sealed-bid auctions, and (3) processing of payments on embedded devices. A proof-of-concept will be implemented for RIOT, the friendly operating system for the IoT.

SML: Smart Mobility Lab

Principal Investigator (associated)	Dr. Thomas Springer, Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	several from TUD
Term	April, 2023 - Dec 31, 2026
Further Details
About	The Smart Mobility Lab will conduct interdisciplinary research into emission-free, smart, safe and multimodal mobility. We will work on differnet aspects of networked and distributed systems, show-cased in smart city scenarios. We will add our expertise about scablale and sustainable IoT architectures based on RIOT.

PrioBike-HH: Prioritize Bike Traffic in the City

Principal Investigator	Dr. Thomas Springer
Funding	Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMVI)
Partners	Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg (BVM / LSBG/ LGV / HHVA), TU Dresden, INAVET GmbH
Term	Jan 01, 2021 - Dec 31, 2024
Further Details	News article on heise.de, News article on welt.de
About	The project PrioBike-HH aims to increase the attractiveness of cycling. Among a set of measures, the PrioBike App provides routes and speed advises to allow a digital green wave for cyclist to reduces stops at traffic lights and thus, increase comfort and speed of cycling. The App is being tested and evaluated in a real-world deployment at the scale of the city of Hamburg.

PRIMEnet: Predictive Analysis of Routing and Traffic Flows for Intelligent Network Management

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)
Partners	Leitwert GmbH, BENOCS GmbH, Deutsche Telekom AG, Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH, HAW Hamburg, Technische Universität München
Term	Aug 01, 2021 — Aug 31, 2024
Further Details	https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/primenet
About	In PRIMEnet, we analyze the potential of smart predictions to steer Internet traffic and improve the management of networks.

PIVOT: Privacy-Integrated design and Validation in the constrained IoT

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)
Partners	HAW Hamburg, Lobaro GmbH, INSA de Lyon, Villeurbanne (partner in France), Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (Afnic), Montigny-le-Bretonneux (partner in France)
Term	Apr 01, 2021 — Mar 31, 2024
Further Details	https://pivot-project.info/, https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/pivot
About	In PIVOT, we start from two fundamental observations. First, a privacy-friendly IoT requires to protect content objects by themselves, in addition to commonly deployed channel encryption. Content disclosure can thus be attributed to designated receivers. Second, names can serve as the principle interface to access IoT data, eliding source identities. Hence, individual end point identifiers will disappear from public Internet metadata. The innovation in PIVOT is to address the prevalent privacy and security issues in IoT by proposing content object security principles that build on privacy-friendly names, while remaining globally and seamlessly interoperable between IoT devices regardless of networks to which they may connect.

Finished Projects

Conducted at TU Dresden.

VerDatAs: Networked and Data-based Assistance for Vocational Training

Principal Investigator	Dr. Iris Braun
Funding	Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Chair of Psychology of Teaching and Learning at TU Dresden, vimotion GmbH, internetlehrer GmbH, Technische Akademie Esslingen e. V. , ILIAS open source e-Learning e. V.
Term	May 01, 2021 — April 30, 2024
Further Details	https://www.verdatas.de
About	In the VerDatAs project, the integration of learning platforms and innovative methods of vocational education and training are developed and tested. Findability and accuracy of fit of continuing education offers of different granularity will be decisively improved by innovative competence measurement methods and AI-supported learning analytics methods. In addition, platforms and tools are being made more user-friendly for those interested in continuing education, and learning experiences and outcomes are being improved. In interdisciplinary cooperation with the Chair of Psychology of Teaching and Learning at TU Dresden, we will design, develop, and evaluate an intelligent tutoring assistance system (ITS). This system will support learners in simplifying the search for information, visualizing teaching material and learning processes, optimizing problem-solving steps, and deriving recommendations for further learning paths from process analyses.

RoReyBaN: Robust Reconstruction for Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks

Principal Investigator	Dr. Waltenegus Dargie
Funding	German Research Foundation (DFG)
Partners	TU Braunschweig (Prof. Eduard A. Jorswieck)
Term	Jan 01, 2018 — Mar 31, 2024
Further Details	https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/399332937
About	Wireless body area networks can be useful for a wide range of applications in the healthcare domain. These networks consist of wireless sensor nodes which can sense vital biomedical signals, preprocess the signals locally in order to aggregate data and reduce redundancy, and communicate the signals over a wireless channel. This approach enables the free movement of people whilst vital signals are being sensed from them. However, free movement produces significant artifacts which can corrupt the useful signals. Thus, the aim of this project is to jointly design source coding and signal reconstruction stages in order to remove movement artifacts from useful signals. The joint design will in turn ensure (1) the efficient utilization of resources, so as to support long term monitoring and (2) the extraction of reliable measurements from body area networks. As a demonstration of our approach, the project focuses on enhancing the measurements of wireless electrocardiograms (ECG).

Conducted at Freie Universität Berlin.

I3: Information Centric Networking for the Industrial Internet

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Safety io GmbH, HAW Hamburg
Term	Jul 01, 2016 — Aug 31, 2020
Further Details	https://i3.realmv6.org
About	The I3 project will bring information-centric networks to the industrial Internet. Sensors and actors often demand communication requirements in industrial application, both critical for the business and safety. Heterogeneous components – both stationary and mobile – shall be integrated in supra-regional control and monitoring systems and exchange data in a timely and fault tolerant manner. Today’s proprietary and occasionally rudimentary product solutions preclude those requirements. MSA – the leading manufacturer of safety technology and gas detectors worldwide with development site in Berlin, Germany – for example is facing these problems in their product line for sensor controlled fuses and monitoring of industrial systems, oil rigs, fire-brigade operations etc. The I3 project pursues, motivated by these specific application problems, the goal of the development and testing of mobile local networks critical to safety in industrial applications. Based on the potentials of content-based routing, the I3 solution will modify and extend Content or Information Centric Networking (CCN/ICN) for the needs of the industrial Internet. Especially contributions for security and reliability, for autonomous self-configuration and authentication, for content-base prioritized data differentiation, resource efficiency (e.g. energy, memory) and an abstracted, universal software interface will be adapted. This way I3 wants to increase production efficiency of networking industrial systems as well as simplify the operation of networking components with intelligent solutions on the network layer.

Peeroskop: Peering monitor and microscopic analysis of the Internet

Principal Investigator	Matthias Wählisch, Jochen Schiller
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Technische Universität München, HAW Hamburg, BCIX, DE-CIX, Globalways AG, The unbelievable Machine Company
Term	Mar 01, 2012 — Feb 28, 2015
Further Details	https://peeroskop.realmv6.org
About	The objective of the Peeroskop project is the design and development of a system for the observational analysis of the Internet part's relevant for Germany, as well as the proactive and reactive protection of the backbone routing. Core components of the project are mechanisms for information fusion and information classification based on passive and active measurements which discover vulnerabilities in the Internet peering beforehand and bypass emerging disruptions.

RAPstore: RIOT App Store for the Internet of Things

Principal Investigator	Prof. Dr. Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)
Partners	HAW Hamburg
Term	Apr 01, 2017 — Sep 30, 2021
Further Details	https://rapstore.riot-apps.net
About	In RAPstore, we design, develop, and evaluate an application store for RIOT, the friendly operating system for the Internet of Things.

SAFEST: Social-Area Framework for Early Security Triggers at Airports

Principal Investigator	Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)
Partners	daviko GmbH, Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH, FÖS, Fraunhofer FOKUS, AW Hamburg, INRIA, SAGEM
Term	May 01, 2012 — Apr 30, 2015
Further Details	https://safest.realmv6.org
About	This Franco-German project aims at a comprehensive solution to ensure the safety and security of the general public and critical infrastructures. Specifically, SAFEST addresses the problems of crowd control and area surveillance at airports. More information is available on the project homepage. The research in SAFEST focuses on Development and analysis of an area surveillance system that is easy to deploy, inexpensive, resilient against malfunctions of individual components, and respects the privacy of citizens The system will operate in distributed way, collect anonymized data, transfer this data to a central location for evaluation, and – if necessary – alert the operator and/or the general public. To ensure the real-world applicability of the project results, we evaluate our system in cooperation with our end user Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH.

X-Check: Detection of Security Incidents at Internet Exchange Points

Principal Investigator	Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	Technische Universität München, HAW Hamburg, DE-CIX Service Management GmbH, DFN-CERT Services GmbH
Term	May 01, 2016 — Dec 31, 2019
Further Details	https://x-check.realmv6.org
About	The overall goal of X-Check (Cross-Check) is to provide improved security for ICT-systems by leveraging data from Internet Exchange Points (IXP). X-Check designs and implements a system for the large-scale detection of (a) known security incidents and (b) novel, unconventional anomalies at central Internet nodes. The three main objectives are as follows: Threat analysis for public network access points. Scalable real-time analysis of network incidents at IXPs. Development of open-source tools for the detection of security incidents. The X-Check software components will be designed and implemented to detect anomalies with a predictable, low latency. These components will scale dynamically for small as well as very large data sets and thus allow a resource-saving usage. Based on a preventive vulnerability and threat analysis new services for the route server infrastructure will be designed and implemented. Correlating event reports between several IXPs will improve the precision of the incident detection. X-Check explicitly pursues the community-driven approach. Innovative solutions are developed considering real-world deployment scenarios. The intended objectives will be realized in close cooperation with the largest IXPs in Germany (DE-CIX and BCIX) and a well-established IT-security company (DFN-CERT). The solutions will be tested and refined during inter-regional field tests in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich.

SKIMS: A Cooperative Autonomous Immune System for Mobile Devices

Principal Investigator	Matthias Wählisch
Funding	German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Partners	HAW Hamburg, DFN-CERT Services GmbH, escrypt GmbH
Term	Sep 01, 2010 — Feb 28, 2013
Further Details	https://skims.realmv6.org
About	The objective of SKIMS lies in the design, development and implementation of a cross-layer security system for mobile devices. Detection mechanisms as well as a proactive and reactive defense of attacks are core components of this project. The vision of a digital immune system will be demonstrated in a proof of concept in terms of an extended security application for mobile phones. Analog to a traffic light system, the mobile signals the current level of risk to the user and relaxes the status wherever applicable. This transparency allows users to regain trust that was lost previously in insecure environments.