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- Prof. Dr. Ghassan Karame
Prof. Dr. Ghassan Karame
Information Security
Professor / Head of Chair
Address:
Ruhr-University Bochum
Faculty of Computer Science
Information Security
Universitätsstr. 150
D-44801 Bochum
Room: MC 1.56 -
Telephone: (+49) (0) 234 32 – 19601
Office Hours: By arrangement
E-Mail: ghassan.karame@rub.de

Curriculum Vitae
Since November 2021, I am a full Professor of Computer Science at the Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) - leading the Chair of Information Security. I am also involved as a (part-time) Chief Scientific Advisor at NEC Laboratories Europe. Before joining RUB, I was working as an NEC Fellow and was leading the Security research group at NEC Labs in Germany. Prior to joining NEC Labs, I was working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Information Security of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Since 2011, I hold a PhD degree in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.
Courses
- 212015 : Introduction to Blockchain Security
- 212007 : Blockchain security and privacy
- 212110 : Information Security Seminar Master
- 212019 : Information Security Seminar Bachelor
Selected Recent Activities
For a full list of my activities, please click here.- PC Member of WWW 2023
- PC Member of ACM ASIACCS 2017, 2022, 2023
- PC Member of PETS 2021, 2022, 2023
- PC Member of IEEE DSN 2021, 2022
- PC Member of ESORICS 2019,2020, 2021, 2022
- PC Member of FC 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
- PC Member of ACNS 2020, 2021
- Associate Editor of IEEE TDSC (2020 – Present)
- Associate Editor of IEEE T-IFS (2020 – Present)
- PC Chair of ACM CCSW 2017
- Guest Editor of IEEE Security & Privacy, Special Issue on Blockchain security and privacy
Awards & Recognition
- Recognized by AMiner as one of the top 50 most influential scholars in the area of security and privacy over the past 10 years (2012 and 2021) .
- Recognized by AMiner as one of the top 100 most influential scholars in the area of security and privacy over the past 10 years (2011 and 2020).
- Value Realization Award (NEC Corporation), 2020
- 2019 best paper award at IEEE Transactions on Computers
- Research Contributions Award (NEC Corporation), 2018
- Excellent Innovation Award (NEC Corporation), 2017
- ACM CCS’16 paper measured as one of the normalized top 100 security papers!
- Excellent Innovation Award (NEC Corporation), 2014
- Research Contributions Award (NEC Corporation), 2014
Selected Publications
For a full list of my publications, please click here.- Sebastien Andreina, Giorgia Azzura Marson, Helen Moellering, Ghassan Karame BaFFLe: Backdoor Detection via Feedback-based Federated Learning In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2021 [Preprint |Bibtex] (Acceptance rate ~19.8%).
- Karl Wüst, Loris Diana, Kari Kostiainen, Ghassan Karame, Sinisa Matetic, Srdjan Capkun Bitcontracts: Adding Expressive Smart Contracts to Legacy Cryptocurrencies In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS), 2021 [Preprint | Bibtex].
- Michael Rodler, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, Lucas Davi EVMPatch: Timely and Automated Patching of Ethereum Smart Contracts In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2021 [Preprint | Bibtex].
- Jian Liu, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, N. Asokan Scalable Byzantine Consensus via Hardware-assisted Secret Sharing In IEEE Transaction on Computers (IEEE TC), 2019 [Preprint | Bibtex]. Won 2019 best paper award at IEEE Transactions on Computers!
- Claudio Soriente, Ghassan Karame, Wenting Li, Sergey Fedorov ReplicaTEE: Enabling Seamless Replication of SGX-Enclaves in the Cloud In Proceedings of the IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P), 2019 [Preprint | Bibtex].
- Michael Rodler, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, Lucas Davi Sereum: Protecting Existing Smart Contracts Against Re-Entrancy Attacks In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium (NDSS) [Preprint | Bibtex] 2019. Related media reports: [NEC].
- Sinisa Matetic, Karl Wuest, Moritz Schneider, Kari Kosiainen, Ghassan Karame, Srdjan Capkun BITE: Bitcoin Lightweight Client Privacy using Trusted Execution In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2019,[Preprint | Bibtex].
- Arthur Gervais, Ghassan Karame, K. Wuest, V. Glykantzis, Hubert, Ritzdorf, Srdjan Capkun
On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchain In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), [Preprint | Bibtex], 2016. Measured as one of the normalized top 100 security papers! - Frederik Armknecht, Ludovic Barman, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame Mirror: Enabling Proofs of Data Replication and Retrievability in the Cloud In Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), [Preprint | Bibtex], 2016
- Ghassan Karame and Elli Androulaki Bitcoin and Blockchain Security Artech House, ISSBN 9781630810139, 240 pages, 2016 [Bibtex]
- Frederik Armknecht, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame, Franck Youssef Transparent Data Deduplication in the Cloud In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), 2015 [Preprint | Bibtex].
- Arthur Gervais, Hubert Ritzdorf, Ghassan Karame, Srdjan Capkun
Tampering with the Delivery of Blocks and Transactions in Bitcoin
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), 2015 [Preprint | Bibtex]. - Frederik Armknecht, Jens-Matthias Bohli, Ghassan Karame, Zongren Liu, Christian Reuter
Outsourced Proofs of Retrievability
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), 2014 [Preprint | Bibtex]. - Dan Dobre, Ghassan Karame, Wenting Li, Matthias Majuntke, Neeraj Suri, Marko Vukolic
PoWerStore: Proofs of Writing for Efficient and Robust Storage
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), [Preprint | Bibtex].
Related technical report: CoRR abs/1212.3555, 2012. - Ghassan Karame, Elli Androulaki, Srdjan Capkun
Double-Spending Attacks on Fast Payments in Bitcoin
In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), 2012, [Preprint | Bibtex].
Related technical report: Cryptology ePrint Archive Report 2012/248, 2012.
Related media reports: ETH Globe, September 2012, „Keine versteckten Zahlungen“ ETH Life, September 2012, „Better security for the internet currency Bitcoin“ - Ghassan Karame, Aurelien Francillon, Srdjan Capkun
Pay as you Browse: Microcomputations as Micropayments in Web-based Services
In Proceedings of the International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2011, [Preprint | Bibtex].