We always welcome students who would like to write a Bachelor or Master thesis with us. If you are interested in writing a thesis at our research group, you can make an appointment for a first meeting with us to inform yourself about possible topics.

Once you have selected a topic, you have to get familiar with your topic, i.e., collect and read initial literature, become aware of the state-of-the-art approaches in your field and gather other related work. Next, you have to focus on the programming environment, programming languages, tools, and other infrastructure that will be necessary for your thesis. Finally, you have to precisely identify the research problems that you will focus on and elaborate clear and concrete ideas how to tackle them. At the end of the preparation phase, you are required to present your research problem and solutions how you plan to solve it as well as your work schedule in the form of an initial talk in front of our research group. The duration of the initial talk is 20 minutes.

Please note that the initial talk is a mandatory requirement for the official registration of your thesis. The preparation phase should not exceed more than approx. 6-8 weeks, full-time work.

The official end of the processing phase will be communicated to you by the registrar's office. Please inform your advisors of your submission date. In addition, we expect that you work regularly and consistently on your thesis during the processing phase. Usually, there will be regular weekly meetings with your advisors and often other students working on similar research topics. You can gladly get access to our student lab and work on your thesis from there. After submitting your thesis, you will present and discuss your results in the form of a final talk in front of our research group. The duration of the final talk is 45 minutes for Master students and 30 minutes for Bachelor students. Last but not least, please also take into account the correction times of both reviewers after submission of your thesis.

Please take a look at our research topics to find out what you are interested in and contact us directly:

Topic 1: Anonymous Communication and Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Privacy on the Internet is attracting more and more attention and has become a concern as an already signicant and ever-growing part of our everyday life takes place on computer networks. Internet users relinquish private information and leave traces with every website they visit and every search query they execute. In a cacophonous world flooded by data, users lose the ability to control what kind of personal information they give away or they are not even aware of doing so. Help us to research and evaluate efficient methods for protection against internet surveillance and traffic analysis.

Topic 2: Secure Cyber-Physical Systems

Sensors and actuators are being controled by software and directly influence our physical world. The complex systems are enhanced with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and smart meters that communicate wirelessly. Help us to to analyze their data leaks and find out security breached to make cyber-physical systems robust and being able to meet expectations of the society.

Topic 3: Online Opinion Manipulation and Trolling Detection

General public is being manipulated. Even democratic societies are being influenced. Help us to detect such activities in online media and make the world a better place.

Topic 4: Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection and Network Security

Hardly a day goes by without headlines about attacks on IT systems and data leaks. Public authorities, companies, operators of critical infrastructures and now (directly or indirectly) every citizen is affected. At the same time, more and more areas are being digitalized - with the aim of ensuring and expanding the industrial lead or out of commercial interest. Since most attacks on IT systems hapen over the network, it is crucial to detect attacks and ensure secure networking in untrustworthy environments. Machine Learning gives us strong mechanisms to construct building blocks for attack detection. Many network protocols (e.g., Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)) were not designed with security in mind. We need to augment them with corresponding ehancements that are performant, secure and scalable at the same time. Isn't it a great challenge?

Topic 5: Censorship Resistance

Censorship resistance deals with an attempt to prevent censors from the acquaintance and thus blocking the distribution of a particular content through the network. Providing resistance against censoring is a very challenging and difficult task to achieve. However, it is vital for the purpose of freedom of speech and mind, as well as for achievement of democratic principles in today's society.

Feel free to contact us via Fg-itsec-thesis.informatik(at)lists.b-tu.de