about me teaching publications contact gitlab

Courses

I'm involved in the following courses. Course material can be found on Brightspace.

Thesis supervision

Below are some potential bachelor/master thesis topics. If you're interested send me an email. I'm also open to interesting topics not on this list.

Topic: Security of identicons

In PubHubs hubs, users are identified by a (shortened) hash, like a3g-a48, to, in principle, prevent impersonation. “In principle”, because it’s unlikely that you’d remember another user’s hash, let alone notice when it’s changed. That’s why we’re considering using an ‘identicon’ like the one used by GitHub (and others), but we see two problems:

  1. How to prevent users from being assigned an identicon they consider offensive? (For example, one having the colors of an opposing soccer team.)
  2. Is it feasible for an attacker obtain an identicon that’s close enough to another person’s identicon, by registering a whole bunch of user accounts.