ATHENE researchers have uncovered serious security vulnerabilities in children's smartwatches.
Smartwatches enable children to make calls and send text messages to their parents. Parents can also use the device to track their child's location. Designed for children aged 4–10, these smartwatches serve as an introduction to smartphones. ATHENE researchers from the Secure Mobile Networks (SEEMOO) department at TU Darmstadt, headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Hollick, have examined a children's smartwatch and found that even basic IT security mechanisms were not observed. Doctoral student Nils Rollshausen explains the details of the analysis in an interview.
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UNIDIR report on submarine cables is published: Co-Authored by ATHENE researcher
Subsea fiber-optic cables form the backbone of global digital infrastructure, carrying over 99% of intercontinental data traffic, yet despite their critical importance, they have received limited attention in national and international policy frameworks. A new report by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) addresses this gap through a detailed analysis of various approaches to designating and protecting undersea cables as critical infrastructures. The recently published report "Achieving Depth: Submarine Telecommunications Cables as Critical Infrastructure" was written by ATHENE researcher Jonas Franken (PEASEC/TU Darmstadt) in collaboration with Dr. Camino Kavanagh (King's College London) and Wenting He (UNIDIR).
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ATHENE paper accepted at prestigious S&P
The paper "Investigating Voter Perceptions of Printed Physical Audit Trails for Online Voting", written in collaboration with ATHENE researchers, has been accepted at the prestigious IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P). S&P is the premier forum for leading international experts in research and practice to discuss the latest developments in computer security and electronic privacy.
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Accepted papers on the CHI 2024
Three papers written by ATHENE researchers were accepted at the A*-ranked ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI for short. The annual conference is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.
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Congratulations to Dr. rer. nat. Jasmin Haunschild
Jasmin Haunschild, an ATHENE scientist, completed the final part of her doctoral thesis at the Department of Computer Science at the TU Darmstadt. Her thesis titled "Enhancing Citizens' Role in Public Safety: Interaction, Perception and Design of Mobile Warning Apps" was written as part of the ATHENE research area Secure Urban infrastructures (SecUrban). Her thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter and co-supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Fiedrich. The thesis was reviewed and recommended for acceptance by the Department of Computer Science. The oral examination was chaired by Prof. Dr. Marco Zimmerling, with Prof. Dr. Jan Gugenheimer and Prof. Dr. Joachmin Vogt also involved as examiners.
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