About me

I am a professor of information security and computer networks at Worms University of Applied Sciences. I am also affiliated with Fraunhofer FKIE (Bonn) and Cleopa (near Berlin). I received my Ph.D. in 2013 from the University of Hagen. Aged 17, I started writing books (sold 60,000 printed+electronic copies so far and counted 60,000 free downloads of my older editions). A list of my 120+ publications can be found here. My publications appeared in high-quality journals/conference such as ACM CSUR, Comm. ACM, Wiley SCN, IEEE Security & Privacy, IEEE LCN, IFIP SEC, Springer ANTE and J.UCS. However, I also wrote books on the Linux operating system and contributed tons open source code/patches to the free software community. There is also a list of selected talks.

My research focuses on network information hiding (network covert channels and network steganography), science of security (SoC), IoT/smart buildings/homes, security of embedded communication protocols, and information security terminology/taxonomy.

Some of my key publications are on the fundamentals (SoC) of network information hiding: taxonomy/patterns/fundamentals [1,2], creativity evaluation of research paper submissions [3] and scientific methodology of information hiding [4]. Some of my other key contributions are focusing on traffic normalization and active wardens [5, 6] and covert channel optimization [7,8].

I am a member of several steering committees, initiatives, program and organizing committees (cf. details). I am (or was) lecturing and supervising at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Bonn University and Hagen University. A list of my projects, both funded and spare-time software projects, is also available.

In addition to information security, I am interested in university history, campus novels, and retro computing – in particular: operating system history and historic network protocols. I own a small collection of rather historic books on these retro computing topics. Since about five years, I am also a mid-distance runner (5km to half-marathon).

Find (information about) me here: Twitter, Google Scholar and ResearchGate.

Contact: steffen (at) wendzel (dot) de (PGP pub key: FD701BD1).

Recent News (Selection):

  • Oct-11-2018:
  • Sep-13-2018:
    • I received the printed editions of my new book. Here is a photo.
  • Sep-12-2018:
  • Sep-11-2018:
    • A new paper got accepted at NordSec'18:
      Sebastian Zillien, Steffen Wendzel: Detection of covert channels in TCP retransmissions, in Proc. NordSec, Springer, 2018/in press.
      I wrote a blog post on the topic that we are going to cover in this paper and another paper.
  • Aug-25-2018:
    • I contributed a section to the new issue of the newsletter of the German Informatics Society (text in German), see here.
  • Aug-24-2018:
    • The online version of my new German book on TCP/IP and IoT network security is now available. The print version is still in press.
  • Aug-15-2018:
  • Aug-13-2018:
    • A new paper has been accepted at CECC'18:
      Steffen Wendzel, Daniela Eller, Wojciech Mazurczyk: One Countermeasure, Multiple Patterns: Countermeasure Variation for Covert Channels, in Proc. Central European Security Conference (CECC'18), to appear.
  • Jul-31-2018:
    • Received and corrected the proof of my upcoming book on network/IoT security (in German). It should be available via Springer in 1-2 months.
  • Jul-20-2018ff.:
    • Going to lecture at COINS PhD summer school on network security, Lesvos, GR.
  • Jul-12-2018:
  • Jun-15-2018:
    • Two papersgot accepted at the CUING workshop at ARES'18.:
      • W. Mazurczyk, S. Wendzel, K. Cabaj: Towards Deriving Insights into Data Hiding Methods Using Pattern-based Approach.
      • S. Wendzel: Get Me Cited, Scotty! Analysis of Citations in Covert Channel/Steganography Research.
  • Jun-12-2018:
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