Heinz Zemanek Prize 2024 for outstanding dissertations
Vienna (OTS) – The 2024 Heinz Zemanek Prize winners are the Upper Austrian Lukas Burgholzer and the Styrian Martin Schwarzl. The prize, in honor of the Austrian computer pioneer Heinz Zemanek, is presented every two years by the Austrian Computer Society (OCG) for outstanding dissertations in the field of computer science.
The final hearing of the Heinz Zemanek Prize in front of the 19-person jury chaired by Prof. Stefan Szeider (TU Vienna) took place on May 16, 2024 in the OCG. Burgholzer and Schwarzl were able to prevail against five other candidates with outstanding computer science dissertations. Burgholzer’s work deals with the development of software for quantum computing (JKU, supervisor: Robert Wille). Schwarzl wrote about remote side channel attacks and their prevention (TU Graz, supervisor: Daniel Gruss).
„All finalists for the Heinz Zemanek Prize have already prevailed against very strong competition. Selecting the winners is a challenge every two years. On the one hand, the large jury is necessary to cover the broad expertise of the IT departments, but on the other hand, there is always a lot to discuss. This year we were finally able to agree on two papers that are characterized by excellent scientific achievements and high relevance for current and future technologies
“, says Stefan Szeider, commenting on the decision.
OCG President Wilfried Seyruck emphasizes the motivating value of scientific prizes: “Scientific awards increase visibility and facilitate networking in the scientific community, they promote confidence in one’s own abilities and inspire further commitment and research. Additionally, these awards provide financial support and can open doors to valuable career opportunities by enriching resumes.
“
Burgholzer: Design Automation Tools and Software for Quantencomputing
„Quantum computers are becoming reality!
“, Upper Austrian Lukas Burgholzer opened his presentation. “The performance of corresponding machines is constantly improving, meaning that practically relevant applications could be possible with them in just a few years. However, the most powerful machine is of no use if end users cannot use it. And there is still a big problem here at the moment: quantum computers are being developed by physicists, but the application potential lies in areas such as chemistry, finance or physics. Software can link these ‘worlds’ together
“.
In his dissertation at the Institute for Integrated Circuits at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (under the direction of Prof. Dr. Robert Wille), the 30-year-old developed numerous methods that allow quantum applications to be simulated, executed efficiently and automatically on real quantum computers and Finally, to be able to verify the correctness of the entire process. The resulting software tools were not only made available to the community as open source (e.g. as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit; see https://mqt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), but are also used in workflows by companies like IBM or large quantum computing initiatives like Munich Quantum Valley.
By chance to quantum computing
It was not clear from the start that Burgholzer would work on software for quantum computing. He began his studies in Linz in the technical mathematics course without ever having written a line of program code. However, his interest in programming was quickly aroused, which led him to start a bachelor’s degree in computer science parallel to his master’s degree in industrial mathematics. As part of his bachelor’s thesis, he finally met his later doctoral supervisor, Prof. Dr. Robert Wille, met and gained insight into the field of quantum computing for the first time. This experience sparked such enthusiasm that after graduating from computer science, Burgholzer immediately took up a doctoral position with Prof. Wille to continue researching this topic. Almost four years later, Burgholzer is one of the leading figures in the field of software development for quantum computing and is continuing his research as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Design Automation at the Technical University of Munich.
Schwarzl: Remote Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses
Martin Schwarzl’s work at TU Graz, as part of the CoreSec Group under the leadership of GI dissertation award winner Daniel Gruss, deals with the investigation of new network-based side channel attacks and efficient countermeasures. “Protecting private data online is a top priority. However, modern hardware and software are optimized for high performance. Depending on user input, these optimizations leave measurable side effects reflected in time, power consumption or the device’s electromagnetic radiation. Side channel attacks exploit these side effects to access sensitive data from systems
“, says the Styrian, explaining the phenomenon.
New attacker scenarios on the Internet
Cloud providers also face the new challenge of protecting themselves from network-based side channel attacks. In his research, Schwarzl presents newly discovered attacks that make it possible to read sensitive data from target systems without direct access to the device. This means that any affected server can even be attacked from the Internet. The attacker only needs a stable network connection to the server. The consequences of the attacks are serious because these attacks could, for example, B. undetected industrial espionage can be carried out on a large scale. With network-based side channel attacks, it is possible to read customer data from websites without authorization. The attacks target database systems, web applications, browsers and virtual machines that are widely used in practice. In addition to the attacks described, new techniques are demonstrated to circumvent operating system security mechanisms.
Furthermore, Schwarzl’s dissertation presents a new security measure against Specter attacks in local and cloud scenarios. “In collaboration with the US company Cloudflare, we have developed an efficient countermeasure for network-based Specter attacks. This countermeasure detects and isolates malicious attackers
“, said the 29-year-old. The published work of the dissertation received media attention in specialist journals and was presented at renowned international academic and business conferences.
Passionate about ethical hacking
Even when he was at school, Schwarzl was fascinated by cracking and modding computer games. He took part in a number of hacking challenges and constantly expanded his knowledge of security gaps in software and hardware, so that he also advised Austrian companies on IT security issues during his studies. The Specter side channel attack appeared for the first time in 2018, making it possible to read all data such as passwords from systems. The CoreSec group at TU Graz with Michael Schwarz, Daniel Gruss and Moritz Lipp made a significant contribution to the discovery and motivated Martin Schwarzl to pursue a scientific career.
Questions & Contact:
Austrian Computer Society (OCG)
Irina Scheitz
Communication
066488674860
shit@ocg.at
www.ocg.at