Semester Projects
Available Projects
Students interested in a project with the group are kindly requested to send their transcript of records, along with a CV highlighting any relevant experience in cryptography, and either a preferred topic from the proposals below or a description of their interests within cryptography, to the contact noted under Student Projects.
Last updated: 12.03.2026
Ongoing Projects (Master's Level)
(We recommend students currently doing a project in our group to use this Download LaTeX template (ZIP, 436 KB) for the write-up.)
(Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson, Joint Supervisor: Shannon Veitch)
This project aims to provide new definitions and proofs of anonymity of authenticated key encapsulation mechanisms (AKEMs). AKEMs are similar to key encapsulation mechanisms, with the additional feature that the sender is authenticated through incorporation of their private key in the encapsulation algorithm. Sender authentication is then implicitly verified through the inclusion of their public key in decapsulation.
AKEMs have been the focus of recent analyses of the hybrid public key encryption (HPKE) standard. Prior work on AKEMs have considered additional properties, such as deniability, but have yet to cover anonymity in detail. In this project, we will develop formal game-based definitions of anonymity for AKEMs and then prove the (in)security of existing schemes. Time permitting, we will consider constructions of AKEMs with hybrid (relying on traditional/post-quantum assumptions) anonymity guarantees.
(Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson, Joint Supervisors: Kien Tuong Truong, Dr. Lenka Mareková)
This project contributes to the group's ongoing work on building a secure smartphone-based communication tool for humanitarian workers that works even in areas with no internet, cellular, or satellite connectivity. Building on an existing delay-tolerant, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi mesh networking prototype, the current phase focuses on integrating end-to-end cryptographic protections across the entire stack: from link-layer authentication and key exchange between nearby devices to secure group messaging and robust revocation mechanisms to exclude compromised devices.The design must accommodate highly diverse field conditions and unusual cryptographic constraints. The project’s task is to implement these application-layer features and security mechanisms within the existing networking prototype, refine the system’s configurability for different deployments, and use implementation experience to further shape and validate the underlying protocol design.
(Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson, Joint Supervisors: Laura Hetz, Dr. Lenka Mareková)
This project is continuing the group's work on developing a smartphone application to enable humanitarian workers to communicate in areas with no cellular or satellite connectivity and without extra hardware. Key open questions remain about real-world performance. Among these are battery consumption, effective range across environments, device-density thresholds for network saturation, message spread speed and delivery rates under expected usage, the impact of mobility, and the performance overhead of forthcoming security and networking improvements. The main task of this project is to extend the existing test setup and run a comprehensive experimental evaluation via manual/semi-automated lab tests on physical-device testbeds and small-scale participant experiments to measure routing/DTN behavior, connection ranges, partitioning, saturation points and failure modes to directly inform further development.
Completed Projects (Master's Level)
2026
Manuel Dublanc. Messaging Without Borders: Implementing Secure Mesh Networks. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Kien Tuong Truong, Dr. Lenka Mareková.
2025
Marius Mayer. Messaging without Borders: Implementing Platform Interoperable Mesh Networks. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Kien Tuong Truong, Dr. Lenka Mareková.
Oliver Sihlovec. Exploring Decompression Timing Side-Channels. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Yuanming Song, Kien Tuong Truong.
Adam Mernissi Arifi. A Survey on Information Set Decoding [Download pdf (PDF, 1.2 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Simon-Philipp Merz, Kien Tuong Truong.
Timon Meyer. SoK: Secure Mesh Messaging in Context. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Lenka Mareková.
Tony Raffoul. Practical Evaluation of Radio Standards for Mesh Networks in Humanitarian Missions. Supervisor: Prof. Christoph Studer, Co-supervisor: Dr. Stefan Mangold.
Christian Mürtz. Optimized Implementation of Poly1163 and ChaCha20-Poly1163
for x86_64 [Download pdf (PDF, 3.8 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Jan Gilcher.
Kevin Verhaeghe. Key Management Systems in the Wild: An Analysis of HashiCorp Vault. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Jean-Philippe Aumasson (Taurus), Dr. Lenka Mareková.
Fiona Willi. Identifying Compiler Optimizations that Break Constant Time Programming Techniques [Download pdf (PDF, 916 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Jan Gilcher.
Daniela Thurnher. Fuzzy BFFs: Distance-Sensitive Binary Fuse Filters [Download pdf (PDF, 1005 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Laura Hetz, Dr. Francesca Falzon.
Noah Tittelbach. Breaking SSO. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Matteo Scarlata.
Vaclav Zvonicek. Concrete Cost Analysis of Finding Paths in Isogeny Graphs [Download pdf (PDF, 408 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Simon-Philipp Merz.
Eduarda Assunção. Analyzing IKEv2: Security Proofs, Known Attacks, and Other Insights [Download pdf (PDF, 812 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Shannon Veitch.
2024
Marc Himmelberger. Performance Analysis of AEAD Schemes [Download pdf (PDF, 1.9 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Jan Gilcher.
Melanie Jauch. UOV and MAYO: Analysis and Comparison. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Simon-Philipp Merz.
Andrea Raguso. Scalable Probabilistic Data Structures in Adversarial Environments [Download pdf (PDF, 1.8 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Mia Filić.
Domenico Nobile. Metadata-private Messaging in the Wild: Session. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Lenka Mareková.
Marko Lisicic. Breaking Cryptography in the Wild: CryptPad. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Zichen Gui.
Jonas Lauer. Exploring Anonymous One-to-One Messaging with a Single Server. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Tianxin Tang, Laura Hetz.
Emanuel Opel. SoK: Authenticated Dictionaries and their Applications. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Francesca Falzon.
Andraž Strgar. WhatsApp Multi-Device: Analysis and Noise Protocol Interceptor. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Matteo Scarlata.
Junzhen Lou. Homomorphic Encryption for Healthcare Data Privacy in Industry Use Cases [Download pdf (PDF, 823 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Anwar Hithnawi (Privacy Preserving Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), Roche.
Dimitri Francolla. Privacy implications of AMQ-based PQ TLS authentication [Download pdf (PDF, 932 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Mia Filić, Shannon Veitch.
2023
Jonas Hofmann. Exploring Cuckoo filters in Redis [Download pdf (PDF, 1.9 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Anupama Unnikrishnan, Mia Filić.
Iana Peix. Repairable Threshold Schemes with Malicious Security [Download pdf (PDF, 1.1 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Shannon Veitch.
Yuanming Song. Cryptography in the Wild: Briar [Download pdf (PDF, 614 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
César Descalzo. Crypto in the wild – Analysing the security of CipherStash. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Zichen Gui.
Keran Kocher. Cuckoo filters in adversarial settings [Download pdf (PDF, 636 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Anupama Unnikrishnan.
Sophia Artioli. How Practical is Single-Server Private Information Retrieval? [Download pdf (PDF, 1.5 MB)] Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Tianxin Tang.
2022
Daniele Coppola. Breaking Cryptography in the Wild: Nextcloud. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Prof. Martin Albrecht and Matilda Backendal. [report Download pdf (PDF, 492 KB)] [paper external page pdf]
Younis Khalil. Implementing a Puncturable Key Wrapping Library [Download pdf (PDF, 1.6 MB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisors: Dr. Felix Günther and Matilda Backendal.
Daniel Pöllmann. Perceptual Hash Functions. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson. Co-supervisor: Dr. Fernando Virdia.
Mirco Stäuble. Actually Good Encryption? Confusing Users by Changing Nonces [Download pdf (PDF, 1023 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
2021
Theo von Arx. Analysis of Telegram Clients' Security [Download pdf (PDF, 675 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
Louis Leclair. Analysing Encrypted Databases Using Learning Algorithms. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
Lena Csomor. Why Johnny Can’t Compute Securely: Exploring the Gap between Threat Models and Stakeholder Concerns [Download pdf (PDF, 618 KB)]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson, Co-supervisor: Alexander Viand.
Silvia Ritsch. Analysing Privacy of Zcash PKE scheme. Joint supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
2020
Mathilde Aliénor Raynal. Probabilistic Data-structures in Adversarial Scenarios: The HyperLogLog Case [external page pdf]. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.
2019
Ali El Wahsh. Compromises in Private Set Intersection for Contact Discovery. Supervisor: Prof. Kenny Paterson.