Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Eisenbarth

Photo of Thomas  Eisenbarth

Institutsdirektor


Ratzeburger Allee 160
23562 Lübeck
Gebäude 64, 1. OG, Raum 043

Email: thomas.eisenbarth(at)uni-luebeck.de
Phone: +49 451 3101 6600
Fax: +49 451 3101 6604

About Me

I am a Professor of IT Security at the University of Lübeck.  I received my Ph.D. in ECE from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, where I was a member of the Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security (HGI). Starting in 2010, I spent two years at the Center for Cryptology and Information Security (CCIS) at Florida Atlantic University. In 2012, I joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at WPI. Since August 2017 I am the Director of the Institute of IT Security at the University of Lübeck.
Since October 2024, I am the head of the STEM sections (the non-medical departments) of University of Lübeck.

 

My research interests are in:

  • Systems security, software security and code analysis
  • Applied Cryptology
  • Secure virtualization, computer architecture and trusted execution environments
  • Side channel analysis, physical attacks and their prevention

Publications

2025

Felix Mächtle, Nils Loose, Jan-Niclas Serr, Jonas Sander, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
AutoStub: Genetic Programming-Based Stub Creation for Symbolic Execution, in Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Workshop on Search-Based and Fuzz Testing, SBFT 2025 , 2025.
Zane Weissman, Thore Tiemann, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Berk Sunar,
Microarchitectural Security of Firecracker VMM for Serverless Cloud Platforms, in Information Systems Security , Patil, Vishwas T. and Krishnan, Ram and Shyamasundar, Rudrapatna K., Eds. Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025. pp. 3-24.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-80020-7_1
ISBN:978-3-031-80020-7
Weblink: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.15999
Bibtex: BibTeX
@inproceedings{weissman2025firecracker,
  author    = {Weissman, Zane and
               Tiemann, Thore and
               Eisenbarth, Thomas and
               Sunar, Berk},
  title     = {Microarchitectural Security of Firecracker VMM for Serverless Cloud Platforms},
  booktitle = {Information Systems Security},
  editor    = {Patil, Vishwas T. and
               Krishnan, Ram and
               Shyamasundar, Rudrapatna K.},
  year      = {2025},
  pages     = {3--24},
  publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
  isbn      = {978-3-031-80020-7},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-031-80020-7_1},
}
Felix Mächtle, Jan-Niclas Serr, Nils Loose, Jonas Sander, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
OCEAN: Open-World Contrastive Authorship Identification, in Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) 2025 , 2025.
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05049
Bibtex: BibTeX
@misc{maechtle2024oceanopenworldcontrastiveauthorship,
      title={OCEAN: Open-World Contrastive Authorship Identification}, 
      author={Felix Mächtle and Jan-Niclas Serr and Nils Loose and Jonas Sander and Thomas Eisenbarth},
      year={2024},
      eprint={2412.05049},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.AI},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05049}, 
}
Jonas Sander, Sebastian Berndt, Ida Bruhns, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Dash: Accelerating Distributed Private Convolutional Neural Network Inference with Arithmetic Garbled Circuits, IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems , vol. 2025, pp. 420-449, 2025. IACR.
DOI:10.46586/tches.v2025.i1.420-449

2024

Luca Wilke, Florian Sieck, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
TDXdown: Single-Stepping and Instruction Counting Attacks against Intel TDX, in Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security , ACM, Oct.2024.
DOI:10.1145/3658644.3690230
Weblink: https://uzl-its.github.io/tdxdown/
Bibtex: BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{tdxdownCCS24,
  author    = {Luca Wilke and Florian Sieck and Thomas Eisenbarth},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGSAC Conference
                on Computer and Communications Security, {CCS} 2024,
                Salt Lake City, UT, USA, October 14--18, 2024},
  title     = {{TDXdown}: Single-Stepping and Instruction Counting Attacks
                against Intel {TDX}},
  year      = {2024},
  doi       = {10.1145/3658644.3690230}
}
Luca Wilke, Jan Wichelmann, Anja Rabich, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
SEV-Step: A Single-Stepping Framework for AMD-SEV, in IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES) , 2024. pp. 180-206.
DOI:10.46586/tches.v2024.i1.180-206
File: 10792
Nils Loose, Felix Mächtle, Florian Sieck, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
SWAT: Modular Dynamic Symbolic Execution for Java Applications using Dynamic Instrumentation (Competition Contribution), in Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems - 30th International Conference, TACAS 2024, Held as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2024, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, April 6-11, 2024, Proceedings, Part III , Bernd Finkbeiner and Laura Kovács, Eds. Springer, 2024. pp. 399-405.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-57256-2_28
File: 978-3-031-57256-2_28
Ida Bruhns, Sebastian Berndt, Jonas Sander, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Slalom at the Carnival: Privacy-preserving Inference with Masks from Public Knowledge, IACR Commun. Cryptol. , vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 40, 2024.
DOI:10.62056/AKP-49QGXQ
File: akp-49qgxq
Paula Arnold, Sebastian Berndt, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Maximilian Orlt,
Polynomial sharings on two secrets: Buy one, get one free, in IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES) , 2024. pp. 671-706.
DOI:10.46586/tches.v2024.i3.671-706
File: 11691
Jan Wichelmann, Anja Rabich, Anna Pätschke, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Obelix: Mitigating Side-Channels Through Dynamic Obfuscation, in 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) , San Francisco, CA, USA: IEEE, 2024. pp. 4182-4199.
DOI:10.1109/SP54263.2024.00261
Weblink: https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00261
Thore Tiemann, Zane Weissman, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Berk Sunar,
Microarchitectural Vulnerabilities Introduced, Exploited, and Accelerated by Heterogeneous FPGA-CPU Platforms, in Security of FPGA-Accelerated Cloud Computing Environments , Szefer, Jakub and Tessier, Russell, Eds. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2024, pp. 203-237.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-45395-3_8
ISBN:978-3-031-45395-3
Bibtex: BibTeX
@inbook{tiemann2024fpgaplatform,
  author      = {Tiemann, Thore
                  and Weissman, Zane
                  and Eisenbarth, Thomas
                  and Sunar, Berk},
  editor      = {Szefer, Jakub
                  and Tessier, Russell},
  title       = {Microarchitectural Vulnerabilities Introduced, 
                  Exploited, and Accelerated by Heterogeneous 
                  {FPGA-CPU} Platforms},
  bookTitle   = {Security of FPGA-Accelerated Cloud Computing 
                  Environments},
  year        = {2024},
  publisher   = {Springer International Publishing},
  pages       = {203--237},
  isbn        = {978-3-031-45395-3},
  doi         = {10.1007/978-3-031-45395-3_8},
  url         = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45395-3_8},
}
Roland Stenger, Steffen Busse, Jonas Sander, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Sebastian Fudickar,
Evaluating the Impact of Face Anonymization Methods on Computer Vision Tasks: A Trade-off Between Privacy and Utility, IEEE Access , pp. 1-1, 2024.
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3519441
Weblink: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10804775
File: ACCESS.2024.3519441
Debopriya Roy Dipta, Thore Tiemann, Berk Gulmezoglu, Eduard Marin, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Dynamic Frequency-Based Fingerprinting Attacks against Modern Sandbox Environments, in 9th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, EuroS&P 2024 , IEEE, 2024. pp. 327-344.
DOI:10.1109/EUROSP60621.2024.00025
Weblink: https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00025
Weblink: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.10715
Bibtex: BibTeX
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/eurosp/DiptaTGME24,
  author       = {Debopriya Roy Dipta and
                  Thore Tiemann and
                  Berk G{\"{u}}lmezoglu and
                  Eduard Marin and
                  Thomas Eisenbarth},
  title        = {Dynamic Frequency-Based Fingerprinting Attacks against Modern Sandbox
                  Environments},
  booktitle    = {9th {IEEE} European Symposium on Security and Privacy, EuroS{\&}P
                  2024, Vienna, Austria, July 8-12, 2024},
  pages        = {327--344},
  publisher    = {{IEEE}},
  year         = {2024},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00025},
  doi          = {10.1109/EUROSP60621.2024.00025}
}
Volodymyr Bezsmertnyi, Jean Michel Cioranesco, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Duplication-Based Fault Tolerance for RISC-V Embedded Software, in Computer Security - ESORICS 2024 - 29th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Bydgoszcz, Poland, September 16-20, 2024, Proceedings, Part IV , Joaquin Garcia Alfaro, Rafal Kozik, Michal Choras, Sokratis K. Katsikas, Eds. Springer, 2024. pp. 86--104.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-70903-6\_5
Weblink: https://dblp.org/rec/conf/esorics/BezsmertnyiCE24.html
Weblink: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-70903-6_5
File: 978-3-031-70903-6\_5

2023

Florian Sieck, Zhiyuan Zhang, Sebastian Berndt, Chitchanok Chuengsatiansup, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Yuval Yarom,
TeeJam: Sub-Cache-Line Leakages Strike Back, in IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES) , Dec.2023. pp. 457-500.
DOI:10.46586/tches.v2024.i1.457-500
Weblink: https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11259
Bibtex: BibTeX
@article{Sieck_Zhang_Berndt_Chuengsatiansup_Eisenbarth_Yarom_2023, 
title={TeeJam: Sub-Cache-Line Leakages Strike Back}, 
volume={2024}, 
url={https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11259}, 
DOI={10.46586/tches.v2024.i1.457-500}, 
number={1}, 
journal={IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems}, 
author={Sieck, Florian and Zhang, Zhiyuan and Berndt, Sebastian and Chuengsatiansup, Chitchanok and Eisenbarth, Thomas and Yarom, Yuval}, 
year={2023}, 
month={Dec.}, 
pages={457–500} 
}
Andrija Neskovic, Saleh Mulhem, Alexander Treff, Rainer Buchty, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Mladen Berekovic,
SystemC Model of Power Side-Channel Attacks Against AI Accelerators: Superstition or not?, in 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD) , IEEE/ACM, Nov.2023. pp. 1-8.
DOI:10.1109/ICCAD57390.2023.10323687
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.13387
Philipp Schmitz, Tobias Jauch, Alex Wezel, Mohammad R. Fadiheh, Thore Tiemann, Jonah Heller, Thomas Eisenbarth, Dominik Stoffel, and Wolfgang Kunz,
Okapi: A Lightweight Architecture for Secure Speculation Exploiting Locality of Memory Accesses, 2023.
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.08156
Bibtex: BibTeX
@misc{schmitz2023okapi,
  author        = {Philipp Schmitz and
                   Tobias Jauch and
                   Alex Wezel and
                   Mohammad R. Fadiheh and
                   Thore Tiemann and
                   Jonah Heller and
                   Thomas Eisenbarth and
                   Dominik Stoffel and
                   Wolfgang Kunz},
  title         = {Okapi: A Lightweight Architecture for Secure
                   Speculation Exploiting Locality of Memory Accesses}, 
  year          = {2023},
  eprint        = {2312.08156},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.CR},
  url           = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2312.08156},
  doi           = {10.48550/arXiv.2312.08156},
}
Pascal Bemmann, Sebastian Berndt, Denis Diemert, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Tibor Jager,
Subversion-Resilient Authenticated Encryption Without Random Oracles, in Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Kyoto, Japan, June 19-22, 2023, Proceedings, Part II , Mehdi Tibouchi and Xiaofeng Wang, Eds. Springer, 2023. pp. 460-483.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-33491-7_17
File: 978-3-031-33491-7_17
Claudius Pott, Berk Gulmezoglu, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Overcoming the Pitfalls of HPC-based Cryptojacking Detection in Presence of GPUs, in Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy, CODASPY 2023, Charlotte, NC, USA, April 24-26, 2023 , Mohamed Shehab and Maribel Fernandez and Ninghui Li, Eds. ACM, 2023. pp. 177-188.
DOI:10.1145/3577923.3583655
File: 3577923.3583655
Sebastian Berndt, Thomas Eisenbarth, Sebastian Faust, Marc Gourjon, Maximilian Orlt, and Okan Seker,
Combined Fault and Leakage Resilience: Composability, Constructions and Compiler, in Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2023 - 43rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2023, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 20-24, 2023, Proceedings, Part III , Helena Handschuh and Anna Lysyanskaya, Eds. Cham: Springer, 2023. pp. 377-409.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-38548-3_13
ISBN:978-3-031-38548-3
File: 978-3-031-38548-3_13
Jan Wichelmann, Christopher Peredy, Florian Sieck, Anna Pätschke, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
MAMBO-V: Dynamic Side-Channel Leakage Analysis on RISC-V, in Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA) - 20th International Conference , Daniel Gruss and Federico Maggi and Mathias Fischer and Michele Carminati, Eds. Springer, 2023. pp. 3-23.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-35504-2_1
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.00584
Nils Loose, Felix Mächtle, Claudius Pott, Volodymyr Bezsmertnyi, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Madvex: Instrumentation-based Adversarial Attacks on Machine Learning Malware Detection, in Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA) - 20th International Conference , Daniel Gruss and Federico Maggi and Mathias Fischer and Michele Carminati, Eds. Springer, 2023. pp. 69-88.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-35504-2_4
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02559
Thore Tiemann, Zane Weissman, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Berk Sunar,
IOTLB-SC: An Accelerator-Independent Leakage Source in Modern Cloud Systems, in Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ASIA CCS 2023 , Joseph K. Liu and Yang Xiang and Surya Nepal and Gene Tsudik, Eds. ACM, 2023. pp. 827-840.
DOI:10.1145/3579856.3582838
Weblink: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.11623
File: Dateilink
Bibtex: BibTeX
@inproceedings{tiemann2023iotlbsc,
  author       = {Thore Tiemann and
                  Zane Weissman and
                  Thomas Eisenbarth and
                  Berk Sunar},
  editor       = {Joseph K. Liu and
                  Yang Xiang and
                  Surya Nepal and
                  Gene Tsudik},
  title        = {{IOTLB-SC:} An Accelerator-Independent Leakage Source in Modern Cloud
                  Systems},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2023 {ACM} Asia Conference on Computer and Communications
                  Security, {ASIA} {CCS} 2023, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, July 10-14,
                  2023},
  pages        = {827--840},
  publisher    = {{ACM}},
  year         = {2023},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3579856.3582838},
  doi          = {10.1145/3579856.3582838}
}
Jan Wichelmann, Anna Pätschke, Luca Wilke, and Thomas Eisenbarth,
Cipherfix: Mitigating Ciphertext Side-Channel Attacks in Software, in 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX Security 2023, Anaheim, CA, USA, August 9-11, 2023 , Joseph A. Calandrino and Carmela Troncoso, Eds. USENIX Association, 2023. pp. 6789-6806.
DOI:10.48550/arXiv.2210.13124
File: wichelmann
Thore Tiemann, Sebastian Berndt, Thomas Eisenbarth, and Maciej Liskiewicz,
"Act natural!": Exchanging Private Messages on Public Blockchains, in 8th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, EuroS&P 2023 , IEEE, 2023. pp. 292-308.
DOI:10.1109/EuroSP57164.2023.00026
Weblink: https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/EuroSP57164.2023.00026
Weblink: https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1073
File: Dateilink
Bibtex: BibTeX
@inproceedings{tiemann2023actnatural,
  author       = {Thore Tiemann and
                  Sebastian Berndt and
                  Thomas Eisenbarth and
                  Maciej Liskiewicz},
  title        = {"Act natural!": Exchanging Private Messages on Public Blockchains},
  booktitle    = {8th {IEEE} European Symposium on Security and Privacy, EuroS{\&}P
                  2023, Delft, Netherlands, July 3-7, 2023},
  pages        = {292--308},
  publisher    = {{IEEE}},
  year         = {2023},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSP57164.2023.00026},
  doi          = {10.1109/EUROSP57164.2023.00026}
}