Christoph Egger

christoph.webp 
Christoph Egger
Lehrstuhl für angewandte Kryptographie
Fürther Str. 246c / Eingang 5
90429 Nurnberg

Email: Christoph.Egger@fau.de
Jabber: christoph@egger.im

PGP

9FED 5C6C E206 B70A 5857  70CA 9655 22B9 D49A E731
3C1F 32FB E637 85F2 4461  4AD2 53C2 B1F9 83C5 BAA3

About Me

I am a senior PhD Student in Cryptography. As a master student I worked on Modal Logic and Category Theory and as a Bachelor Student on Anonymous Communication and Software Product Lines. I am also a founding member of the FAUST CTF team and its own competition, FAUST-CTF. Finally I am a Free Software person. I have been a Debian Developer for more than 10 years and have contributed to a variety of software projects including the Linux kernel and the Git version control system.

Research Interests

My current research focus is on cryptographic proofs: Composability (both in the classical Universal Composability interpretation as well as composition and modularization of proofs) and extending security from cryptographic primitives towards their concrete use (for example concerning Ring Signatures and Steganography).

In the future, I would like to work on computational notions of entropy, the limits of black box techniques (and related fields like oracle separations) as well as fine-grained and bounded-space cryptography.

In the past I have worked, among other things, on System Software Engineering and Software Product Lines, Coalgebraic Modal Logic and Anonymity Networks.

Free Software

I am a Debian Developer since December 2009, my first contributions go back to 2016. From roughly 2010 to 2016 I have been a core member of the kFreeBSD team supporting this rather unusual combination of BSD and GNU components. Additionally, many small contributions to different Free Software projects are the result of my Debian work. I have initiated the internationalization effort of Unknown Horizons originally implementing its multi-language support. As a research assistant in the VAMOS research project I contributed more than 50 changes to the Linux Kernel. I also added public key pinning support to the Git version control system.

Internships & Research Visits

Comunity Service

Teaching

In summer 2021 Viktoria Ronge and I designed and taught a one-week summer school course for high-school students. Focus of the course was on cryptographic methodology and zero-knowledge proof systems. Also with Viktoria Ronge in Fall 2019 I organized a (graduate level) seminar on privacy notions.

In addition I have been (co-)responsible for the exercise sessions in multiple courses including "Secure Multi-Party Computation", "Password Based Cryptography" and blockchain-related lectures.

Publications

Key-schedule Security for the TLS 1.3 Standard
Chris Brzuska, Antoine Delignat-Lavaud, Christoph Egger, Cédric Fournet, Konrad Kohbrok, Markulf Kohlweiss
In: IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2021(467)
[PDF | BibTeX]
@article{DBLP:journals/iacr/BrzuskaDEFKK21,
  author    = {Chris Brzuska and
               Antoine Delignat{-}Lavaud and
               Christoph Egger and
               C{\'{e}}dric Fournet and
               Konrad Kohbrok and
               Markulf Kohlweiss},
  title     = {Key-schedule Security for the {TLS} 1.3 Standard},
  journal   = {{IACR} Cryptol. ePrint Arch.},
  pages     = {467},
  year      = {2021},
  url       = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/467},
  timestamp = {Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:06:25 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/iacr/BrzuskaDEFKK21.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers
Mike Graf, Daniel Rausch, Viktoria Ronge, Christoph Egger, Ralf Küsters, Dominique Schröder
In: CCS '21: 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Virtual Event, Republic of Korea, November 15-19, 2021
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX]
@article{DBLP:journals/iacr/EggerGKRRS21,
  author    = {Christoph Egger and
               Mike Graf and
               Ralf K{\"{u}}sters and
               Daniel Rausch and
               Viktoria Ronge and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der},
  title     = {A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers},
  journal   = {{IACR} Cryptol. ePrint Arch.},
  pages     = {145},
  year      = {2021},
  url       = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/145},
  timestamp = {Tue, 02 Mar 2021 23:07:15 +0100},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/iacr/EggerGKRRS21.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Foundations of Ring Sampling
Viktoria Ronge, Christoph Egger, Russell W. F. Lai, Dominique Schröder, Hoover H. F. Yin
In: Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol. 2021(3)
[DOI | BibTeX | Abstract]

A ring signature scheme allows the signer to sign on behalf of an ad hoc set of users, called a ring. The verifier can be convinced that a ring member signs, but cannot point to the exact signer. Ring signatures have become increasingly important today with their deployment in anonymous cryptocurrencies. Conventionally, it is implicitly assumed that all ring members are equally likely to be the signer. This assumption is generally false in reality, leading to various practical and devastating deanonymizing attacks in Monero, one of the largest anonymous cryptocurrencies. These attacks highlight the unsatisfactory situation that how a ring should be chosen is poorly understood.

We propose an analytical model of ring samplers towards a deeper understanding of them through systematic studies. Our model helps to describe how anonymous a ring sampler is with respect to a given signer distribution as an information-theoretic measure. We show that this measure is robust – it only varies slightly when the signer distribution varies slightly. We then analyze three natural samplers – uniform, mimicking, and partitioning – under our model with respect to a family of signer distributions modeled after empirical Bitcoin data. We hope that our work paves the way towards researching ring samplers from a theoretical point of view.

@article{DBLP:journals/popets/RongeELSY21,
  author    = {Viktoria Ronge and
               Christoph Egger and
               Russell W. F. Lai and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Hoover H. F. Yin},
  title     = {Foundations of Ring Sampling},
  journal   = {Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol.},
  volume    = {2021},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {265--288},
  year      = {2021},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2021-0047},
  doi       = {10.2478/popets-2021-0047},
  timestamp = {Thu, 14 Oct 2021 09:26:27 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/popets/RongeELSY21.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
The Patient as Genomic Data Manager - Evaluation of the PROMISE App
Lena Griebel, Marc Hinderer, Ali Amr, Benjamin Meder, Marc Schweig, Dominic Deuber, Christoph Egger, Claudia Kawohl, Annika Krämer, Isabell Flade, Dominique Schröder, Hans-Ulrich Prokosch
In: Digital Personalized Health and Medicine - Proceedings of MIE 2020, Medical Informatics Europe, Geneva, Switzerland, April 28 - May 1, 2020
[DOI | BibTeX]
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/mie/GriebelHAMSD0KK20,
  author    = {Lena Griebel and
               Marc Hinderer and
               Ali Amr and
               Benjamin Meder and
               Marc Schweig and
               Dominic Deuber and
               Christoph Egger and
               Claudia Kawohl and
               Annika Kr{\"{a}}mer and
               Isabell Flade and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Hans{-}Ulrich Prokosch},
  editor    = {Louise Bilenberg Pape{-}Haugaard and
               Christian Lovis and
               Inge Cort Madsen and
               Patrick Weber and
               Per Hostrup Nielsen and
               Philip Scott},
  title     = {The Patient as Genomic Data Manager - Evaluation of the {PROMISE}
               App},
  booktitle = {Digital Personalized Health and Medicine - Proceedings of {MIE} 2020,
               Medical Informatics Europe, Geneva, Switzerland, April 28 - May 1,
               2020},
  series    = {Studies in Health Technology and Informatics},
  volume    = {270},
  pages     = {1061--1065},
  publisher = {{IOS} Press},
  year      = {2020},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI200324},
  doi       = {10.3233/SHTI200324},
  timestamp = {Wed, 21 Jul 2021 17:50:05 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/mie/GriebelHAMSD0KK20.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Threshold Password-Hardened Encryption Services
Julian Brost, Christoph Egger, Russell W. F. Lai, Fritz Schmid, Dominique Schröder, Markus Zoppelt
In: CCS '20: 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Virtual Event, USA, November 9-13, 2020
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX]
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ccs/Brost0LSSZ20,
  author    = {Julian Brost and
               Christoph Egger and
               Russell W. F. Lai and
               Fritz Schmid and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Markus Zoppelt},
  editor    = {Jay Ligatti and
               Xinming Ou and
               Jonathan Katz and
               Giovanni Vigna},
  title     = {Threshold Password-Hardened Encryption Services},
  booktitle = {{CCS} '20: 2020 {ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and Communications
               Security, Virtual Event, USA, November 9-13, 2020},
  pages     = {409--424},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year      = {2020},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3372297.3417266},
  doi       = {10.1145/3372297.3417266},
  timestamp = {Fri, 09 Apr 2021 18:39:46 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ccs/Brost0LSSZ20.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Atomic Multi-Channel Updates with Constant Collateral in Bitcoin-Compatible Payment-Channel Networks
Christoph Egger, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, Matteo Maffei
In: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2019, London, UK, November 11-15, 2019.
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX]
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/ccs/0001MM19,
  author    = {Christoph Egger and
               Pedro Moreno{-}Sanchez and
               Matteo Maffei},
  editor    = {Lorenzo Cavallaro and
               Johannes Kinder and
               XiaoFeng Wang and
               Jonathan Katz},
  title     = {Atomic Multi-Channel Updates with Constant Collateral in Bitcoin-Compatible
               Payment-Channel Networks},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 {ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and
               Communications Security, {CCS} 2019, London, UK, November 11-15, 2019},
  pages     = {801--815},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year      = {2019},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3319535.3345666},
  doi       = {10.1145/3319535.3345666},
  timestamp = {Thu, 14 Oct 2021 09:58:24 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ccs/0001MM19.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
My Genome Belongs to Me: Controlling Third Party Computation on Genomic Data
Dominic Deuber, Christoph Egger, Katharina Fech, Giulio Malavolta, Dominique Schröder, Sri Aravinda Krishnan Thyagarajan, Florian Battke, Claudia Durand
In: Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol. 2019(1)
[DOI | BibTeX | Abstract]

An individual’s genetic information is possibly the most valuable personal information. While knowledge of a person’s DNA sequence can facilitate the diagnosis of several heritable diseases and allow personalized treatment, its exposure comes with significant threats to the patient’s privacy. Currently known solutions for privacy-respecting computation require the owner of the DNA to either be heavily involved in the execution of a cryptographic protocol or to completely outsource the access control to a third party. This motivates the demand for cryptographic protocols which enable computation over encrypted genomic data while keeping the owner of the genome in full control. We envision a scenario where data owners can exercise arbitrary and dynamic access policies, depending on the intended use of the analysis results and on the credentials of who is conducting the analysis. At the same time, data owners are not required to maintain a local copy of their entire genetic data and do not need to exhaust their computational resources in an expensive cryptographic protocol.

In this work, we present METIS, a system that assists the computation over encrypted data stored in the cloud while leaving the decision on admissible computations to the data owner. It is based on garbled circuits and supports any polynomially-computable function. A critical feature of our system is that the data owner is free from computational overload and her communication complexity is independent of the size of the input data and only linear in the size of the circuit’s output. We demonstrate the practicality of our approach with an implementation and an evaluation of several functions over real datasets.

@article{DBLP:journals/popets/DeuberEFMSTBD19,
  author    = {Dominic Deuber and
               Christoph Egger and
               Katharina Fech and
               Giulio Malavolta and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Sri Aravinda Krishnan Thyagarajan and
               Florian Battke and
               Claudia Durand},
  title     = {My Genome Belongs to Me: Controlling Third Party Computation on Genomic
               Data},
  journal   = {Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol.},
  volume    = {2019},
  number    = {1},
  pages     = {108--132},
  year      = {2019},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2019-0007},
  doi       = {10.2478/popets-2019-0007},
  timestamp = {Tue, 01 Sep 2020 13:13:12 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/popets/DeuberEFMSTBD19.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Simple Password-Hardened Encryption Services
Russell W. F. Lai, Christoph Egger, Manuel Reinert, Sherman S. M. Chow, Matteo Maffei, Dominique Schröder
In: 27th USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX Security 2018, Baltimore, MD, USA, August 15-17, 2018
[PDF | BibTeX | Abstract]

Passwords and access control remain the popular choice for protecting sensitive data stored online, despite their well-known vulnerability to brute-force attacks. A natural solution is to use encryption. Although standard practices of using encryption somewhat alleviate the problem, decryption is often needed for utility, and keeping the decryption key within reach is obviously dangerous. To address this seemingly unavoidable problem in data security, we propose password-hardened encryption (PHE). With the help of an external crypto server, a service provider can recover the user data encrypted by PHE only when an end user supplied a correct password. PHE inherits the security features of password-hardening (Usenix Security ’15), adding protection for the user data. In particular, the crypto server does not learn any information about any user data. More importantly, both the crypto server and the service provider can rotate their secret keys, a proactive security mechanism mandated by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). We build an extremely simple password-hardened encryption scheme. Compared with the state-of-the-art password-hardening scheme (Usenix Security ’17), our scheme only uses minimal number-theoretic operations and is, therefore, 30% - 50% more efficient. In fact, our extensive experimental evaluation demonstrates that our scheme can handle more than 525 encryption and (successful) decryption requests per second per core, which shows that it is lightweight and readily deployable in large-scale systems. Regarding security, our scheme also achieves a stronger soundness property, which puts less trust on the good behavior of the crypto server.

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/uss/Lai0RCMS18,
  author    = {Russell W. F. Lai and
               Christoph Egger and
               Manuel Reinert and
               Sherman S. M. Chow and
               Matteo Maffei and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der},
  editor    = {William Enck and
               Adrienne Porter Felt},
  title     = {Simple Password-Hardened Encryption Services},
  booktitle = {27th {USENIX} Security Symposium, {USENIX} Security 2018, Baltimore,
               MD, USA, August 15-17, 2018},
  pages     = {1405--1421},
  publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
  year      = {2018},
  url       = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/lai},
  timestamp = {Mon, 01 Feb 2021 08:43:20 +0100},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/uss/Lai0RCMS18.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Phoenix: Rebirth of a Cryptographic Password-Hardening Service
Russell W. F. Lai, Christoph Egger, Dominique Schröder, Sherman S. M. Chow
In: 26th USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX Security 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 16-18, 2017
[PDF | BibTeX | Abstract]

Password remains the most widespread means of authentication, especially on the Internet. As such, it is the Achilles heel of many modern systems. Facebook pioneered using external cryptographic services to harden password-based authentication in a large scale. Everspaugh et al. (USENIX Security ’15) provided the first comprehensive treatment of such a service and proposed the PYTHIA PRF-Service as a cryptographically secure solution. Recently, Schneider et al. (ACM CCS ’16) proposed a more efficient solution which is secure in a weaker security model.

In this work, we show that the scheme of Schneider et al. is vulnerable to offline attacks just after a single validation query. Therefore, it defeats the purpose of using an external crypto service in the first place and it should not be used in practice. Our attacks do not contradict their security claims, but instead show that their definitions are simply too weak. We thus suggest stronger security definitions that cover these kinds of real-world attacks, and an even more efficient construction, PHOENIX, to achieve them. Our comprehensive evaluation confirms the practicability of PHOENIX: It can handle up to 50% more requests than the scheme of Schneider et al. and up to three times more than PYTHIA.

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/uss/Lai0SC17,
  author    = {Russell W. F. Lai and
               Christoph Egger and
               Dominique Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Sherman S. M. Chow},
  editor    = {Engin Kirda and
               Thomas Ristenpart},
  title     = {Phoenix: Rebirth of a Cryptographic Password-Hardening Service},
  booktitle = {26th {USENIX} Security Symposium, {USENIX} Security 2017, Vancouver,
               BC, Canada, August 16-18, 2017},
  pages     = {899--916},
  publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
  year      = {2017},
  url       = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical-sessions/presentation/lai},
  timestamp = {Mon, 01 Feb 2021 08:43:05 +0100},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/uss/Lai0SC17.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Global Caching for the Alternation-free μ-Calculus
Daniel Hausmann, Lutz Schröder, Christoph Egger
In: 27th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, CONCUR 2016, August 23-26, 2016, Québec City, Canada
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX]
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/concur/HausmannSE16,
  author    = {Daniel Hausmann and
               Lutz Schr{\"{o}}der and
               Christoph Egger},
  editor    = {Jos{\'{e}}e Desharnais and
               Radha Jagadeesan},
  title     = {Global Caching for the Alternation-free {\(\mu\)}-Calculus},
  booktitle = {27th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, {CONCUR} 2016,
               August 23-26, 2016, Qu{\'{e}}bec City, Canada},
  series    = {LIPIcs},
  volume    = {59},
  pages     = {34:1--34:15},
  publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"{u}}r Informatik},
  year      = {2016},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2016.34},
  doi       = {10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2016.34},
  timestamp = {Sun, 25 Jul 2021 11:47:10 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/concur/HausmannSE16.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Practical Attacks against the I2P Network
Christoph Egger, Johannes Schlumberger, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna
In: Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses - 16th International Symposium, RAID 2013, Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, October 23-25, 2013. Proceedings
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX]
@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/raid/EggerSKV13,
  author    = {Christoph Egger and
               Johannes Schlumberger and
               Christopher Kruegel and
               Giovanni Vigna},
  editor    = {Salvatore J. Stolfo and
               Angelos Stavrou and
               Charles V. Wright},
  title     = {Practical Attacks against the {I2P} Network},
  booktitle = {Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses - 16th International
               Symposium, {RAID} 2013, Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, October 23-25, 2013.
               Proceedings},
  series    = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume    = {8145},
  pages     = {432--451},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year      = {2013},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41284-4\_22},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-642-41284-4\_22},
  timestamp = {Tue, 14 May 2019 10:00:53 +0200},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/conf/raid/EggerSKV13.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}
Facing the Linux 8000 Feature Nightmare
Julio Sincero, Reinhard Tartler, Christoph Egger, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Daniel Lohmann
In: Proceedings of ACM European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys 2010), Best Posters and Demos Session
[PDF]

  


  

    
Configuration coverage in the analysis of large-scale system software

    
Reinhard Tartler, Daniel Lohmann, Christian Dietrich, Christoph Egger, Julio Sincero

    
In: ACM SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 45(3)

    
[PDF | DOI | BibTeX | Abstract]

	
System software, especially operating systems, tends to be highly configurable. Like every complex piece of software, a considerable amount of bugs in the implementation has to be expected. In order to improve the general code quality, tools for static analysis provide means to check for source code defects without having to run actual test cases on real hardware. Still, for proper type checking a specific configuration is required so that all header include paths are available and all types are properly resolved.
In order to find as many bugs as possible, usually a "full configuration" is used for the check. However, mainly because of alternative blocks in form of #else-blocks, a single configuration is insufficient to achieve full coverage. In this paper, we present a metric for configuration coverage (CC) and explain the challenges for (properly) calculating it. Furthermore, we present an efficient approach for determining a sufficiently small set of configurations that achieve (nearly) full coverage and evaluate it on a recent Linux kernel version.

    
@article{DBLP:journals/sigops/TartlerLDES11,
  author    = {Reinhard Tartler and
               Daniel Lohmann and
               Christian Dietrich and
               Christoph Egger and
               Julio Sincero},
  title     = {Configuration coverage in the analysis of large-scale system software},
  journal   = {{ACM} {SIGOPS} Oper. Syst. Rev.},
  volume    = {45},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {10--14},
  year      = {2011},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2094091.2094095},
  doi       = {10.1145/2094091.2094095},
  timestamp = {Mon, 26 Oct 2020 08:24:58 +0100},
  biburl    = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/sigops/TartlerLDES11.bib},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org}
}



  






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