News Archive



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New Collaborative Research Center: Software systems should explain their own behavior

Even experts have less and less of an understanding of the behavior of complex software systems nowadays. Meanwhile, these systems are increasingly involved in our daily lives, whether as intelligent home automation, in autonomous vehicles or in industrial production. Scientists from Saarland University, two Max Planck Institutes and the Dresden University of Technology now want to develop mechanisms in a new Collaborative Research Center to better communicate the behavior of complex software systems [...]

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Jilles Vreeken wins prestigious junior research award for data mining

Jilles Vreeken, leading the group “Exploratory Data Analysis” at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, was awarded the Tao Li Prize in Singapore at the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM). The Tao Li Prize was established in December 2017. The award is named after Professor Tao Li of Florida International University, who passed away in December 2017 and, despite his young age, was considered an outstanding teacher and ingenious researcher in information [...]

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State Chancellery receives computer scientists from Saarland University

Last week the State Chancellery of Saarland invited nine computer scientists to a reception in order to thank them for their commitment to the competition “Landmarks in the Land of Ideas”. Three Saarbrücken computer science projects in the areas of dependable systems, bioinformatics and cybersecurity were able to prevail among almost 1500 applications. Thus, the Saarland Informatics Campus received the title “Excellent Place in the Land of Ideas” three times this year.

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“It is urgent that we break free of this arms race”

Professor Backes, a few days ago your research center organized the Summer of Cybersecurity event in the Congress Hall. Why are researchers so committed to engaging with the public? At some point we came to the conclusion that we could not effectively serve the interests of citizens by holding smaller events. Members of the public kept coming to us with similar questions. Therefore, we came up with the idea to create a large-scale event, which would have workshops on everyday IT security that could [...]

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Advertisement of the Saarland Informatics Campus honored with the ZEIT Career Award

The weekly magazine DIE ZEIT presented the “ZEIT Karriere Award” for the fourth time in a row on October 18 in Berlin. An advertisement of the Saarland Informatics Campus is one of the winners. Together with its print and online job markets the magazine honors both job advertisements and image ads, i.e. advertisements that express emotions in a special way towards a product, a brand or a company.

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Excellent teaching at SIC

Traditionally, the student council awards the so-called Busy Beaver Awards at the beginning of each semester. These awards are given to lecturers for outstanding performance in teaching [...]

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Formal opening: “Fusion” Incubator at the CISPA-Helmholtz Center in Gründung

Last Thursday, “Fusion”, the incubator for IT security at the CISPA Helmholtz Center in Gründung, was inaugurated. In the future it should bring together research and industry. Among the 100 guests selected was Ammar Alkassar, Saarland’s representative for innovation and strategy, as well as regional and national representatives from the start-up scene, industry and politics. The opening ceremony was preceded by a “tour of structural change”. It invited a discussion [...]

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Professor Antonio Krüger is appointed to the “Artificial Intelligence” Inquiry Commission

The Bundestag, the German federal parliament, has set up an Inquiry Commission on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will start work on the 27th of September, 2018. One of the 19 appointed experts is Professor Antonio Krüger. Since 2009 Krüger has been Globus Foundation Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University and Director of the Innovative Retail Laboratory at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. In 2010 he established the Media Informatics study program at Saarland University, which he manages to this day. /gb

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Bitcoin: How users betray the security secrets of their virtual purse

Software systems are prone to attacks if users do not use them properly. This also applies to so-called cryptocurrencies, experts say. For the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, two computer scientists at the CISPA Helmholtz Center are now providing scientific proof. Over several months, they searched publicly available information for disclosed security details. Their conclusion: Cybercriminals could have stolen virtual coins worth about 3.3 million US dollars with the help of the search hits. The two researchers [...]

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Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification held in Saarbrücken for the first time

GandALF 2018, the Ninth International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics, and Formal Verification, will be held September 26–28 in Saarbrücken. It is the first time that the symposium is taking place outside of Italy. The aim of symposium is to bring together researchers from academia and industry who are actively working in the fields of games, automata, logics, and formal verification. Hence, GandALF 2018 covers a wide spectrum of themes to stimulate cross-fertilization, ranging from theory to applications.

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1,5 million euros EU funding for Andreas Bulling and Björn Brandenburg

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded its 2018 Starting Grants. In this year’s funding round, two researchers from Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) were successful. Andreas Bulling, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and Björn Brandenburg, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, received an ERC Starting Grant and up to 1.5 million euros to pursue their research projects. ERC Starting Grants are awarded annually by the European Research Council. The prestigious grants are awarded [...]

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Automating attacks against the second largest cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are increasingly attracting millions of users, but also cybercriminals, as a successful attack means maximum profit with little risk. This also applies to “ether,” the most widely used cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. As a precautionary measure, researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz Center i.G. at Saarland University have developed a methodology for this cryptocurrency that not only finds security vulnerabilities, but also uses them to automatically develop attacks. [...]

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Who controls the internet?

The internet has developed over time and is able to function because of the interplay between various services that are, in turn, operated by a range of different institutions. Frequently, IT security does not play a significant role and, as shown by the latest attacks, we are now paying the price. Institutions are becoming both victims and perpetrators. Researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz Centre in Saarbrücken are consequently investigating the global security status of the internet using formal methods.

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New computer system recognizes a person’s personality by analyzing eye movements

People recognize gestures and interpret glances very quickly and almost automatically. Computers and robots cannot do this. That is why scientists around the world are working on ways to make human-computer collaboration more social, efficient and flexible. Computer scientists from Saarbrücken and Stuttgart have now reached an important milestone together with psychologists from Australia. The software system they developed processes a person’s eye movements to calculate whether they are vulnerable, sociable, tolerant, conscientious or curious.

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