Welcome to provsec@CISPA!
We are a research group at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, where we work on the foundations of modern cryptography through the lens of provable security. We analyze cryptographic schemes used in practice to obtain strong and concrete security guarantees, and we design new cryptographic schemes and protocols motivated by real-world applications. This often involves developing new formal models, security notions, and proof techniques.
Our research spans a broad range of topics in applied and theoretical cryptography. In particular, we work on authenticated key exchange and secure messaging, public-key encryption and signature schemes with advanced functionalities, post-quantum cryptography, anonymous and privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols, and the theory of tight security.
News
Together with Martijn Stam, Doreen organizes ProTeCS, a workshop on Proofs and Proof Techniques for Cryptographic Security, as an affiliated event at EUROCRYPT 2026 in Rome. We are very happy to have Bart Mennink and Mike Rosulek as invited speakers!
Doreen and Sabrina Kunzweiler launch PELICAN 🐦, an Équipe Associée funded by Inria to improve the provable security of isogeny-based cryptographic protocols. The funding supports mutual visits between our groups.
Xiangyu joins the PKC 2027 program committee. 📋
Leveled Isogeny Problems with Hints accepted at PKC 2026 🎉 Great work Subham!
more
Two papers accepted at EUROCRYPT 2026 🔐 — Secure Cloud Storage and The Algebraic Isogeny Model. See you in Rome!
Doreen joins the CRYPTO 2026 program committee. 📋
Subham puts down roots and starts his PhD 🌱. Welcome to the team!
Xiangyu Liu joins as a Postdoc 🎊 and Weidan Ji joins as a remote intern. The group is growing!
ABE Cubed accepted at CHES 2025 🛠️. A big benchmarking effort for attribute-based encryption — great collaboration with the team!
Two papers accepted at PKC 2025: Intermundium-DL and Public-Algorithm Substitution Attacks. Joint work with Mihir Bellare and Laura Shea at UCSD.
Verifiable and Provably Secure Machine Unlearning will be presented at SaTML 2025 in Copenhagen 🇩🇰.
provsec is officially live at CISPA 🚀 Excited to get started!
Team
Visitors
Camryn Steckel — Aug 2026
Marvin Beckmann — Jul 2026
Marc Houben, Sabrina Kunzweiler — Jun 2026
Hans Heum — Nov 2025
Paul Rösler, Lea Thiemt — Mar 2025
Jonas Janneck, Jonas Meers — Feb 2025
Alumni
Weidan Ji — Remote Intern, Jun–Dec 2025
Agni Datta — Intern, Jun–Aug 2025
Publications
Preprints
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2025
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2025
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2025
2026
Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO)
Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO)
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
2025
Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC)
ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT)
IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES)
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA
IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML)
2024
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQCrypto)
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
2023
Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
USENIX Security Symposium
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
2022
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO)
Theoretical Computer Science (TCS)
2021
Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO)
Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT)
Journal of Cryptologic Research
2020
International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT)
Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP)
2019
Journal of Cryptologic Research
Teaching
Theoretical Foundations of Applied Cryptography
Cryptographic Foundations of Secure Messaging
Provable Security of Key Exchange Protocols