Theses (Bachelor/Master)
We offer thesis topics related to cryptography, IT security and Blockchain technologies. Our major areas of research are:
- Hardware cryptography: for example, designing new cryptographic primitives that are provably secure against side-channel attacks, analyzing existing countermeasures and benchmarking their efficiency.
- Scalability of blockchains: for example, investigating how to improve the efficiency and transaction throughput of blockchain technology.
- Security of blockchain: for example, attacking the privacy or robustness of existing cryptocurrencies.
- Cryptographic protocols: for example, designing cryptographic protocols that guarantee fairness by using smart contracts, or preserve privacy by using zero-knowledge proof systems.
We offer both more theoretical and applied thesis topics. A theoretical thesis may include a literature survey, security models and a formal security analysis of a security/cryptographic/blockchain protocols. In a more applied thesis you will implement new primitives and protocols and benchmark their performance (according to various measures). Alternatively, you may also try to attack existing cryptographic/security/blockchain systems.
If you are interested please do not hesitate to contact us via thesis@cac.cysec.de.
Supervised Master and Diploma Theses
| Y.T. | Cryptographic Techniques for Hardware Security | 2018 |
| J.V. | TeePay – Using Trusted Execution Environments for Off-chain Payment | 2018 |
| A.H. | Opportunities and Risk of Crypto-Tokens and ICOS – A Critical Analysis | 2018 |
| C.d.C. | Evaluation of the Efficiency of different Architectures and Pathfinding Algorithms | 2018 |
| M. v. d. W. | Payment and State Channels in practice | 2018 |
| H. A. | Evaluation of payment channel networks for micropayments | 2018 |
| T. Z. | Atomic Cross-Chain Payments | 2019 |
| D. H. | On Consensus in Phantom | 2019 |
| F. L. | Free Option Problem – Avoidance through Mechanism Design based on Smart Contracts | 2019 |
| B. Sch. | Interactive Smart Contract-Based Fair Exchange Protocol | 2019 |
| D. K. | Multiparty State Channels | 2019 |
| N. M. | From Random Probing to Average Random Probing: Connecting Probing Models | 2019 |
| T. St. | Designing a Plasma TEE Payment Protocol | 2020 |
| D. S. | Evaluation of interoperability solutions for blockchains | 2020 |
| M. St. | Blockchain-based Public Verifiable Constant Round Multi-Party Computation against Covert Adversaries | 2020 |
| Ch. Z. | Implementation and Comparison of ECDSA Threshold Signatures | 2020 |
| Y. M. | Analyzing the definitions and Security of Adaptor Signatures | 2020 |
| L. R. | Fair Exchange Protocol over Bitcoin | 2020 |
| P. J. | Related Key Attack Secure Authenticated Encryption | 2021 |
| P. K. | Layer-3 Payment channels on Plasma | 2021 |
| N. M. | Random Probing Security of Shift-lnvariant Functions | 2021 |
| A. K. | Efficient Cryptographic Schemes provable secure against real Side-Channel-Attacks | 2021 |
| U. W. | Platooning mit Perun Channels | 2021 |
| T. M. | Fractional Stake Stability in Proof-of-Stake Cryptocurrencies | 2022 |
| F. W. | A Thorough Study of Hashed-State Contracts: Techniques, Optimizations and Evaluation | 2022 |
Proposals
Some example proposals are listed below. However, these are just samples. If you are interested in doing a thesis with us, we advise to check out our research web-pages and contact us for further topics.
Access restricted section: Log in to see this section.
General Information
Requirements
We expect that undergraduate students preparing a Bachelor thesis show a strong interest in topics related to our lectures. Bachelor theses may be written in German or English. Please choose German if you have difficulties drafting a flawless document in English.
A Master thesis should have substantial knowledge in at least one sub-field of security or cryptography, and they should have prior experience with the research methodology they plan to use. The default language for Master theses is English.
We only supervise student from TU Darmstadt. In exceptional cases we supervise Master students at a company. In this case you need to write a proposal (ca. 2 pages) highlighting why your topic is important for our research.
Recommendation
Candidates are expected to be familiar with the general instructions for writing a thesis at the Department of Computer Science.
Please consider the following options to find a topic of the thesis:
- Consult our web-pages on research and our projects.
- If you have an idea for an interesting topic that matches the research area of one of our team members, you may also contact him/her and propose your own topic. The decision to supervise will be made by the potential supervisor.
