In celebration of Hermann von Helmholtz’s 200th birthday, the Helmholtz Association is presenting 200 scientific challenges, researchers in the Helmholtz centres are currently working on. Challenge No. 65 is dedicated to the topic of secure E-Voting. With the German federal elections around the corner, more and more people in Germany are supportive of online voting. But urgent research questions are still without answers, such as: How can security of the ballot be ensured? How can the voter’s trust in online voting systems be increased?

The paper “SMILE - "SMILE - Smart eMaIl Link domain Extractor" by Mattia Mossano, Benjamin Berens, Philip Heller, Christopher Beckmann, Lukas Aldag, Peter Mayer and Melanie Volkamer was accepted at the 3rd Workshop on Security, Privacy, Organizations, and Systems Engineering (SPOSE 2021). In the paper a scheme for a new security intervention, called SMILE (Smart eMaIl Link domain Extractor) is presented. SMILE aims at supporting email users judging the legitimacy of the messages they receive. It is meant to be used alongside existing SPAM filters and other tools, but it can also work on its own, as it provides the minimum necessary information to distinguish between phishing and legitimate emails.

According to current numbers, two third of the German citizens would consider e-voting at elections. Questions of security and trust are not always asked in these processes. At #meetdigilog, Prof. Volkamer will explain whom citizens and organizers need to trust when holding online elections. She will also explain why current, non-electronic voting will be the future rather than absentee voting via letter or the Internet. #meetdialog will be streamed via the Instagram channel of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM) on September 23, 2021, 17.30 to 18.00.

The internship "Security, Usability and Society" will cover topics both of usable security and privacy programming, and how to conduct user studies. This internship will be only in English. Topics this year will be for example the development of the Notes 2.0 app, programming a Password Manager Enrolment Add-On or a Cookie Consent Manager for websites as well as creating user studies in the area of Phishing Detection. Enrollment for the internship is now enabled.