In its August 2025 issue (08/2025), "Bilder der Wissenschaft" reports on cyberattacks in modern cars under the headline “Hacker mit an Bord“ (Hackers on board). Prof. Melanie Volkamer also weighs in with her assessment of the potential threat. Prof. Volkamer warns that attacks on vehicle fleets or transport networks are a real threat that could even get worse in the future with the use of generative AI.

The article “RFC 9116 (”security.txt“) on German university servers” by Finn Eckstein, Ria Rosenauer, Pascal Huppert, Melanie Volkamer, and Dominik Herrmann was published this month in the journal Datenschutz und Datensicherheit (Data Protection and Data Security). The article examines the dissemination of the RFC 9116 standard at German universities. By implementing the standard, website operators can provide contact details for reporting security vulnerabilities. Notifying universities that had not implemented security.txt resulted in a threefold increase in implementation, albeit at a very low level. The way universities were addressed had no effect on implementation.

The lecture period for the 2025/26 winter semester at KIT starts October 27, 2025. The following courses will be organized or co-organized by the SECUSO research group this semester: The internship “Security, Usability, Society” (Bachelor and Master), the seminar "Informationssicherheit und Datenschutz" (Bachelor), and the seminar “Security and Privacy Awareness” (Master). There are no lectures during the winter semester. Applications for topics in the SECUSO internship are already being accepted. Please use the links to the WiWi portal. The topics for the other courses and registration will be announced shortly.

Another paper with SECUSO's contribution has been accepted for publication at the Tenth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting (E-Vote ID 2025). The paper "On a Study of Mechanisms for End-to-End Verifiable Online Voting (StuVe)" von Veronique Cortier, Alexandre Debant, Ralf Kuesters, Florian Moser, Johannes Mueller, and Melanie Volkamer was accepted in the "Election and Practical Experiences" track. The authors describe the core idea of selected end-to-end verifiable online voting mechanisms and evaluate them using an interdisciplinary approach that considers secrecy, end-to-end verifiability, usability, and practicality. The paper is a summary of a study on end-to-end verifiable online voting mechanisms that was published by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). E-Vote ID 2025 will take place from October 1-3 in Nancy, France.