The winners of the 10th German IT Security Award were announced in Darmstadt on 7 November 2024. The first prize of 100,000 euros was awarded to the concept ‘CryptOpt: Verified and High-Performance Cryptographic Code’, submitted by HGI member Yuval Yarom, Professor of Computer Security at the Faculty of Computer Science at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and PI at the CASA Cluster of Excellence, together with colleagues. CryptOpt is a compilation pipeline that automatically generates secure and efficient cryptographic code. Using an innovative optimisation approach, Yarom and team achieve results with CryptOpt that rival manual tuning by experts.
CryptOpt in numerous products
The code generated by CryptOpt has been integrated into Google products such as Chrome and other Chromium-based web browsers, which are used by billions of users worldwide. ‘Overall, it represents a paradigm shift in the development of cryptographic code. This successful solution can be applied to many other areas in the future, helping to advance technology and create a more secure and efficient digital future,’ said the award laudation.
Second place went to a team that also included a scientist from the RUB: PhD student Johannes Willbold, together with Tobias Scharnowski (CISPA) and Simon Wörner
and Simon Wörner (CISPA), submitted the project "Fuzzware: Automated Vulnerability Analysis for Embedded Systems', which has now been awarded a prize. The plaque, designed by artist Reinhard Doubrawa, was presented at the Fraunhofer SIT in Darmstadt.
Prestigious industry award
The German IT Security Award aims to particularly promote IT security concepts and solutions ‘made in Germany’ and thus contribute to strengthening the innovative power of the German economy. The German IT Security Award has been presented by the Horst Görtz Foundation since 2006 and is one of the most prestigious awards in the industry.
If you would like to find out more about the CryptOpt project, you can view the paper at this link.
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