Christian Rossow

Christian Rossow is Faculty at CISPA – Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Dortmund, Germany, where he leads the System Security research group. He holds dual academic appointments as a professor in the Computer Science department at Saarland University and as an honorary professor at TU Dortmund University. His research spans systems, software, and network security, with a focus on cyber attacks, defenses, and privacy.

Research Interests: His primary research areas include software and system security (e.g., exploitation techniques, compiler-assisted defenses, AI-assisted (in)security), network security (e.g., DDoS mitigation, attack attribution, traffic analysis), and cybercrime (e.g., malware analysis, data-driven studies). He emphasizes foundational research with practical applications.

Publication Trends: His recent work (2023–2025) shows a strong focus on microarchitectural attacks (e.g., cache side-channels, prefetcher analysis), browser and web security (e.g., sandbox escapes, CSS fingerprinting), network protocol vulnerabilities (e.g., TCP spoofing, infinite loops), and applied cryptography (e.g., ISA extensions for key management). His research consistently targets top-tier venues like IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, and NDSS.

• Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE EuroS&P 2021
• Best Student Paper Award at MIT Spam Conference 2010

Advising and Grants: He actively supervises PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, with alumni placed in industry (NVIDIA, Crowdstrike, Continental) and academia. His research is supported by major grants including EU H2020 SISSDEN, BMBF-funded BOB, DFG-funded anonymous communication, and RAMSES. He regularly serves in leadership roles in the community, including PC Chair for RAID 2022/2023 and USENIX WOOT 2018, and Track Chair for ACM CCS 2026.

Labs and Teams: He leads the System Security research group at CISPA, a world-leading institution for security and privacy. The group comprises talented full-time researchers and focuses on cutting-edge research with strong individual supervision and worldwide collaborations.