Events & News

Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) is extending its ZISC partnership for another 10 years, reaffirming its long-term commitment to strengthening research and education in information security, data protection and artificial intelligence at ETH Zurich.

Security and reliability, the handling of sensitive data and protection against unauthorized access are core competencies of Zürcher Kantonalbank. “The security of digital financial services and the responsible use of artificial intelligence are key prerequisites for a relationship of trust with our customers. Our renewed partnership with ETH Zurich is a clear commitment to shaping the future responsibly,” explains Dr Jörg Müller-Ganz, President of the Bank Council of Zürcher Kantonalbank. “Thanks to ZKB’s long-term support, we have been able to strengthen research and education at ZISC and expand collaboration with industry. We are very pleased that the partnership is being continued,” emphasizes Srdjan Capkun, Chair of ZISC.

“The long-term commitment of ZKB enables us to further develop key technologies that are central to security, trust and innovation in adigitalized society. We are very grateful for this support,” says ETH President Joël Mesot.

The ZISC center has published its annual report for 2025.

The information security landscape is undergoing a significant disruption. The reason behind this is the rapid emergence of new technologies like AI on the one hand, but also the prospect of quantum technologies. On a geopolitical level, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have affected the security landscape of Europe irreversibly.

Besides these emerging threats, organizations continue to struggle with traditional information security problems  such as ransomware, phishing campaigns, large data leaks and the increasing complexity of IT systems.

During this year, ZISC continued to work on its core mission which is work on significant and fundamental information security and privacy problems together with is industry partners. Particular topics of focus this year included the research on Defeating prompt injections by Designsovereign, stress testing and improving the Internet Routing System and content-defined chunking among others.

You can read our full report here.

The ZISC center thanks its partners and collaborators and is looking forward to 2026!

Professor Adrian Perrig, who leads the Network Security Group at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, has been awarded the prestigious ESORICS 2025 Outstanding Research Award.

The award recognises Perrig’s long-standing contributions to building secure network systems and his pioneering work on the SCION Internet architecture. SCION (Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-Generation Networks) is a next-generation Internet architecture designed to provide highly secure, reliable and high-performance connectivity. It addresses fundamental Internet security and availability challenges, including protection against routing attacks, network failures and DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks.

Under Adrian Perrig’s leadership, the Network Security Group has been driving SCION from research to practical deployment, enabling real-world adoption through collaborations with industry partners and the co-founding of Anapaya Systems.

The ESORICS Outstanding Research Award is particularly significant because it is not handed out lightly: nominees are proposed by the ESORICS Steering Committee, and the final decision is made by a vote among its members. This selectivity underscores how meaningful the distinction is, as it rewards long-term, technically innovative contributions with lasting impact in the area of computer security. ESORICS (the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security) is one of Europe’s leading security conferences, bringing together top academics and practitioners. Receiving this award places Perrig alongside other researchers whose work has helped advance the field of security. It is a meaningful recognition of his contributions and of his ongoing efforts to support the development of secure and resilient network systems.

ZISC researchers from the groups led by Professor Srdjan Capkun and ETH Assistant Professor Shweta Shinde have developed a new software architecture that can divide a smartphone up into several isolated domains that are completely independent of one another.

Now, the two post-doctoral researchers Ivan Puddu and Moritz Schneider have founded the spin-off Soverli, which is bringing smartphones of this kind to the market. The special thing about these phones is users can switch between different areas on their devices that are completely isolated from one another at the touch of a button. These “domains” can host apps or separate operating systems that run independently of the actual OS and with separate access to memory or sensors.

This gives rise to sovereign areas on the phone that the operating system cannot read, offering users full control over their data. Puddu says: “The hard part was isolating these domains completely and allowing users to switch between them without sacrificing userfriendliness.”

Soverli has found a solution to this and recently patented it. There are numerous potential applications for the smartphones from Soverli. One obvious example is to create a domain for a secure messaging app. However, the protection of personal data is just one of Puddu and Schneider’s aims. The new architecture is also an exciting development when it comes to communication in crisis situations. Emergency service organisations could use secure domains in conjunction with a separate emergency mobile network for communication. Systems of this kind are more secure if they are independent of foreign device manufacturers and standard operating systems. Authorities are therefore high on the list of potential customers for Soverli, in addition to business customers with special requirements.

Dennis Hofheinz, Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, has been awarded the Test of Time Award for his 2017 paper, co-authored with Professor Eike Kiltz (Ruhr-University Bochum) and Professor Kathrin Hövelmanns (Eindhoven University of Technology). The paper, “A Modular Analysis of the Fujisaki-Okamoto Transformation”, proved influential in the development of secure key encapsulation mechanisms and played a key role in the NIST postquantum cryptography competition.

The award was presented on 4 December 2025 in Aarhus, Denmark. The committee cited the work “for modular designs of secure key encapsulation mechanisms with tight bounds in both classical and quantum settings, enabling the KEM constructions used in the NIST PQC standard.” The researchers introduced a modular framework that converts weakly secure public-key encryption schemes into strongly secure ones, including in post quantum scenarios.

The TCC Test of Time Award recognises outstanding papers published at least eight years ago that have made a lasting impact on theoretical cryptography and influenced other areas of research. The award is presented annually at the Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC), which has been held worldwide since 2004. TCC 2025, the 23rd edition of the conference, is organised by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).