Georg's personal homepage

Hello! Welcome to my personal homepage with a focus on my academic work which I will try to keep more or less updated... I am currently working as a "Cyber Security Expert" at DCSO. This is an industry position and hence I do not have that much time for academic activities at the moment. Before joining DCSO, I worked as a Senior Researcher at the Digital Society Institute (DSI) and before that I was a Post-Doc at the University of Bochum and a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts.

My research focus is IT security and so far I have mainly worked on hardware security with topics such as hardware Trojans, side-channel analysis and Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). But as part of my industry funded project at the DSI looked into network security and in particular attack simulation to evaluate defense techniques. In my current position at DCSO I am also concentrating on network security and in particular intrusion detection techniques.

Please find below my CV in a bullet-like fashion.

If you have questions/comments/concerns regarding any of my papers or work, please feel free to simply contact me! It is always nice to hear that someone actually reads this stuff :)

Vita

• • Since 08/2020: Cyber Security Expert at DCSO in Berlin

  • 12/2016-07/2020: Senior Researcher at the Digital Society Institute at the ESMT Berlin

  • 01/2014 - 11/2016: Post-doctoral researcher at the Embedded Security Group at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum

  • 01/2010 - 12/2013: PhD Student at in the VLSI Systems and Circuit Group at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. PhD thesis: "Intentional and Unintentional Side-Channels in Embedded Systems"

  • 08/2013 - 10/2013: Intern in the DPA team at Cryptography Research (CRI), a devision of Rambus

  • 08/2009 - 12/2009: Researcher at the Embedded Security Group at the Ruhr-University Bochum

  • 01/2009 - 06/2009: Visiting researcher in the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University

  • 2007 - 2009: Master of Science in IT-Security at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum

  • 2003 - 2007: Bachelor of Science in Applied Computer Science at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Research

I am working on various topics in the area of IT-Security and in particular hardware security. So far mainly on following topics:

• • New topic: Moving Target Defence (MTD) techniques for network security

  • Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs)

  • Hardware Trojans

  • Side-channel Analysis

  • IP-Protection (Hardware and Software watermark, Hardware Obfuscation)

  • Secure Location Verification

Google Scholar profile

• • • DBLP link

Activities:

• • Co-Organizer of the Workshop of Malicious Software and Hardware in Internet of Things (Mal-IoT 2016, Mal-IoT 2017, Mal-IoT 2018, Mal-IoT 2019); Program committee member at DAC 2017, 2018, DATE 2020, ACM Computer Frontiers 2016, COSADE 2019, 2020, TRUEDEVICE 2020

  • Reviewer for (selected journals): IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (TIFS), IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems (TVLSI), IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), Journal of the ACM, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), ACM Computing Surveys, Journal of Cryptographic Engineering (JCEN), ...

  • Reviewer for (selected conferences): CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, CHES, HOST, DATE, FSE, COSADE, ISCAS, RFIDSec, ReConFig, ...

Teaching:

• • Taught the graduate level course ECE 697AB Security Engineering in Spring 2013 at the University of Massachusetts

  • Responsible for part of the lab-sessions of the courses "Software Implementation of Cryptographic Schemes" and "Implementation of Cryptographic Schemes II" at the Ruhr-University of Bochum in 2014-2016

  • Teaching assistant for "Embedded Microcontrollers" at the Ruhr-University of Bochum in Spring 2008

Publications (peer-reviewed)

Johannes Tobisch, Anita Aghaie and Georg T. Becker, "Combining Optimization Objectives: New Modeling Attacks on Strong PUFs", IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2021, PDF

Alexander Bajic, Georg T. Becker, "dPHI: An improved high-speed network-layer anonymity protocol ", Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies ;

2020 (3):304–326, PETS 2020, youtube link, PDF

Nils Wisiol, Georg T. Becker, Marian Margraf, Tudor A. A. Soroceanu, Johannes Tobisch, and Benjamin Zengin, "Breaking the Lightweight Secure PUF: Understanding the Relation of Input Transformations and Machine Learning Resistance", International Conference on Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications, CARDIS 2019, Prague, Czech Republic, November 11-13 2019, PDF

Alexander Bajic, Georg T. Becker, "Attack simulation for a realistic evaluation and comparison of network security techniques", Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems', NordSec 2018, Oslo, Norway, November 28-30 2018, [Best Paper Award] PDF

Georg T. Becker, "Robust Fuzzy Extractors and Helper Data Manipulation Attacks Revisited: Theory vs Practice", IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TSDC), to appear, accepted October 2017 (early access) PDF

Alexander Wild, Georg T. Becker, Tim Güneysu, "A Fair and Comprehensive Large-Scale Analysis of Oscillation-Based PUFs for FPGAs" International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2017, Ghent, Belgium, September 4-8, 2017 PDF, the code and data is available for download here

Pawel Swierczynski, Georg T. Becker, Amir Moradi, Christof Paar, "Bitstream Fault Injections (BiFI) – Automated Fault Attacks against SRAM-based FPGAs", IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC), to appear 2017 (early access) PDF

Samaneh Ghandali, Georg T. Becker, Daniel Holcomb, Christof Paar, "A Design Methodology for Stealthy Parametric Trojans and Its Application to Bug Attacks", Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2016, Santa Barbara, CA, August 17 - 19, 2016 PDF

Alexander Wild, Georg T. Becker, Tim Güneysu, "On the Problems of Realizing Reliable and Efficient Ring Oscillator PUFs on FPGAs", IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2016, McLean, VA, USA, May 3-5, 2016 PDF

Georg T. Becker, "The Gap Between Promise and Reality: On the Insecurity of XOR Arbiter PUFs", Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2015, SaintMalo, France, September 13 - 16, 2015 PDF

Shweta Malik, Georg T. Becker, Christof Paar, Wayne P. Burleson, "Development of a Layout-Level Hardware Obfuscation Tool", IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, ISVLSI 2015 (Invited Paper), Montpellier, France, July 2015 PDF

Johannes Tobisch, Georg T. Becker, "On the Scaling of Machine Learning Attacks on PUFs with Application to Noise Bifurcation", 11th Workshop on RFID Security (RFIDSec 2015), New York, USA, June 23-24, 2015 PDF

Georg T. Becker, "On the Pitfalls of using Arbiter-PUFs as Building Blocks", IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, TCAD, 34 (8):1-13, August 2015 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Alexander Wild, Tim Güneysu, "Security Analysis of Index-Based Syndrome Coding for PUF-Based Key Generation", IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2015, McLean, VA, USA, May 5-7, 2015 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Francesco Regazzoni, Christof Paar, Wayne P. Burleson, "Stealthy dopant-level hardware Trojans: extended version", Journal of Cryptographic Engineering (JCEN), 4.1 (2014): 19-31 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Francesco Regazzoni, Christof Paar, Wayne P. Burleson, "Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans", Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2013, Santa Barbara, California, USA, August 20 - 23, 2013 PDF

Markus Kasper, Amir Moradi, Georg T. Becker, Oliver Mischke, Tim Güneysu, Christof Paar, Wayne Burleson, "Side Channels as Building Blocks", Journal of Cryptographic Engineering (JCEN), Volume 2, Number 3, pages 143-159,, 2012, Springer. PDF

Georg T. Becker, Daehyun Strobel, Christof Paar, Wayne Burleson, "Detecting Software Theft in Embedded Systems: A Side-Channel Approach", IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), vol.7, no.4, pp.1144,1154, Aug. 2012 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Ashwin Lakshminarasimhan, Lang Lin, Sudheendra Srivathsa, Vikram B. Suresh, Wayne Burelson, "Implementing Hardware Trojans: Experiences from a Hardware Trojan Challenge", 29th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (Invited Paper), ICCD 2011, Amherst, USA, October 2011 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Wayne Burleson, Christof Paar, "Side-channel Watermarks for Embedded Software", 9th IEEE NEWCAS Conference (Invited Paper), NEWCAS 2011, Bordeaux, France, June 2011 PDF

Georg T. Becker, Markus Kasper, Amir Moradi, Christof Paar, "Side-channel based watermarks for IP Protection", First International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design COSADE 2010 (Extended Abstract), 2010

Georg T. Becker, Sherman C. Lo, David S. De Lorenzo, Per K. Enge, Christof Paar, "Secure Location Verification - A Security Analysis of GPS Signal Authentication", DBSec 2010, Rome, Italy, June 21-23, 2010, PDF

Georg T. Becker, Markus Kasper, Amir Moradi, Christof Paar, "Side-channel based watermarks for integrated circuits", IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST 2010), AnaheimCA , USA, 13-14 June 2010. PDF

Georg T. Becker, Sherman C. Lo, David S. De Lorenzo, Di Qiu, Christof Paar, Per Enge, "Efficient Authentication Mechanisms for Navigation Systems – a Radio-Navigation Case Study", Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009) pp. 901 - 912, September 22-25 2009, Savannah, GA. PDF

Selected non peer-reviewed publications

Georg T. Becker, Marc Fyrbiak, Christian Kison "Hardware Obfuscation: Techniques and Open Challenges", Book Chapter, Foundations of Hardware IP Protection, Springer International Publishing, 105-123, 2017, Link, PDF

Christine Utz, Johannes Tobisch, Georg T. Becker,"Extended Abstract: Analysis of 1000 Arbiter PUF based RFID Tags ", Conference on Trustworthy Manufacturing and Utilization of Secure Devices (TRUDEVICE 2016), Barcelona, November, 2016, PDF

Georg T. Becker, Raghavan Kumar "Active and Passive Side-Channel Attacks on Delay Based PUF Designs", IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive 2014, 287. PDF