Software engineering "Secure by Design"
Following the principle of security and privacy by design, the "Secure Software Engineering" workgroup thrives to support software developers in designing and implementing software systems that are known upfront to be secure with respect to certain attack vectors. Opposed to offensive approaches to software security, like ethical hacking, our group specializes on constructive techniques for software security. Our recipe to success is a unique novel combination of program synthesis and analysis techniques.
In our workgroup, we develop languages, mechanisms, processes and tools that allow software developers to clearly state security requirements and, if possible, synthesize partial implementations that achieve or help achieve these requirements. In cases where automated synthesis is impossible, and a programmer hence needs to implement security features by hand, we use automated program analyses to assist the programmer in deciding whether the implementation indeed fulfills the stated security requirements.
„Software has been the Achilles heel of IT security for years. The vast majority of attacks actually exploit quite trivial vulnerabilities in application software. Companies that produce software need to systematically rethink their approach and develop this software securely from the ground up.”
Team, publications, bachelor/master theses
Research, teaching, projects
„Even as a child, I was interested in everything that had to do with technology. During my computer science studies, I specialised in security, because software is used everywhere, but is also full of security vulnerabilities. For the past 20 years, water polo has given me a break from my desk.”
3 questions for Eric Bodden
