Theses

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.tu-darmstadt.de.

Supervised Master and Diploma Theses

Title Year
Cross-Chain Channel between Bitcoin’s Lightning and Perun Masterthesis 2025
Leakage resilience of refresh gadgets in the random probing model Masterthesis 2024
Implementation and Evaluation of Pseudorandom Correlation Generators in the Context of Threshold BBS+ Masterthesis 2024
Threshold Symmetric Identity Based Encryption Masterhesis 2024
Rerandomizable Schnorr Signatures Bachelorthesis 2024
Threshold Blind Schnorr Signature Scheme for Cryptographic Wallets Masterthesis 2023
Trustless incoercible sale of physical goods over a blockchain Masterthesis 2023
Fault Attacks on Serial Leraning with Rounding Bachelorthesis 2023
Erdstall security – Failover protocol for Erdstall using backup TEEs Bachelorthesis 2023
A Thorough Study of Hashed-State Contracts: Techniques, Optimizations and Evaluation Masterthesis 2022
Ethereum Consensus Verification in an EGo-Enclave Masterthesis 2022
Fractional Stake Stability in Proof-of-Stake Cryptocurrencies Masterthesis 2022
Efficient Cryptographic Schemes provable secure against real Side-Channel-Attacks Bachelorthesis 2022
Designing a Memory Encryption and Authentication Engine based on AES-GCM Bachelorthesis 2022
Platooning mit Perun Channels Masterthesis 2021
Efficient Cryptographic Schemes provable secure against real Side-Channel-Attacks Masterthesis 2021
Random Probing Security of Shift-lnvariant Functions Masterthesis 2021
Layer-3 Payment channels on Plasma Masterthesis 2021
Related Key Attack Secure Authenticated Encryption Masterthesis 2021
Fair Exchange Protocol over Bitcoin Masterthesis 2021
Fair Exchange Protocol over Bitcoin Bachelorthesis 2021
Analyzing the definitions and Security of Adaptor Signatures Masterthesis 2020
Implementation and Comparison of ECDSA Threshold Signatures Masterthesis 2020
Blockchain-based Public Verifiable Constant Round Multi-Party Computation against Covert Adversaries Masterthesis 2020
Evaluation of interoperability solutions for blockchains Masterthesis 2020
Designing a Plasma TEE Payment Protocol Masterthesis 2020
From Random Probing to Average Random Probing: Connecting Probing Models Masterthesis 2020
Evaluation of Interoperability Solutions for Blockchains Bachelorthesis 2020
Multiparty State Channels Masterthesis 2019
Interactive Smart Contract-Based Fair Exchange Protocol Masterthesis 2019
Free Option Problem – Avoidance through Mechanism Design based on Smart Contracts Masterthesis 2019
On Consensus in Phantom Masterthesis 2019
Atomic Cross-Chain Payments Masterthesis 2019
Evaluation of payment channel networks for micropayments Masterthesis 2019
Payment and State Channels in practice Masterthesis 2018
Evaluation of the Efficiency of different Architectures and Pathfinding Algorithms Masterthesis 2018
Opportunities and Risk of Crypto-Tokens and ICOS – A Critical Analysis Masterthesis 2018
TeePay – Using Trusted Execution Environments for Off-chain Payment Masterthesis 2018
Cryptographic Techniques for Hardware Security Masterthesis 2018
Payment and State Channels in Practice Bachelorthesis 2018

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.

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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.