Stego-Punk is an inter-institutional information security research group with a focus on network information hiding and human aspects of information hiding.

Members

Selected Publications

Wendzel S, Zillien S, Zander S (2026) AMPhitryon: Efficient small data compression for low-bandwidth covert channels. In: 41st ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2026).

Wendzel S, Volpert S, Zillien S, Lenz J, Rünz P, Caviglione L (2026) A survey of internet censorship and its measurement: Methodology, trends, and challenges. Computers & Security, DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2025.104732

Wendzel S, Lenz J, Baumann M (2026) Internet Censorship’s Implications on Academic Research: Motivating an Academic Accessibility by Design, Communications of the ACM (CACM).

Weißenborn C, Wendzel S (2026) History Covert Channels with Relative Timing Pointers: Design, Error Resilience, and Detectability, Journal of Information Security and Applications (JISA).

Wendzel S, Caviglione L, Mazurczyk W, Mileva A, Dittmann J, Krätzer C, Lamshöft K, Vielhauer C, Hartmann L, Keller J, Neubert T, Zillien S (2025) A Generic Taxonomy for Steganography Methods, ACM Computing Surveys, DOI: 10.1145/3729165

Wendzel S, Schmidbauer T, Zillien S, Keller J (2025) DYST (Did You See That?): An Amplified Covert Channel That Points To Previously Seen Data, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), Vol. 22(1). DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2024.3410679

Petrov D, Ruffing P, Zillien S, Wendzel S (2025) Domainator: Detecting and Identifying DNS-Tunneling Malware Using Metadata Sequences. In: 20th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2025). Springer, LNCS Vol. 15992, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-00624-0_6. Acceptance rate: 19.5%

Zillien S, Schmidbauer T, Kubek M, Keller J, Wendzel S (2024) Look What’s There! Utilizing the Internet’s Existing Data for Censorship Circumvention with OPPRESSION, In: 19th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2024). pp. 80-95, ACM, DOI: 10.1145/3634737.3637676. Acceptance rate: 21%

Zillien S, Petrov D, Ruffing P, Gross F (2024) A Development Framework for TCP/IP Network Steganography Malware Detection, In: 12th ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security (IH&MMSec 2024). ACM, DOI 10.1145/3658664.3659651

Zillien S, Wendzel S (2023) Weaknesses of popular and recent covert channel detection methods and a remedy. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC). 20/6:5156–5167, DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2023.3241451

Lenz J, Bozakov Z, Wendzel S, Vrhovec S (2023) Why People Replace their Aging Smart Devices: A Push–Pull–Mooring Perspective. Computers & Security (COSE) 130:103258, DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2023.103258

Wendzel S, Caviglione L, Mazurczyk W (2023) Avoiding research tribal wars using taxonomies. IEEE Computer 56/1:93–96. IEEE, DOI: 10.1109/MC.2022.3218175

Schmidbauer T, Wendzel S (2022) SoK: A Survey Of Indirect Network-level Covert Channels. In: 17th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2022). ACM, pp 546–560, DOI: 10.1145/3488932.3517418. Acceptance rate: 18.4%

Mileva A, Velinov A, Hartmann L, Wendzel S, Mazurczyk W (2021) Comprehensive analysis of MQTT 5.0 susceptibility to network covert channels. Computers & Security (COSE) 104:102207. Elsevier, DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2021.102207

Zillien S, Wendzel S (2021) Reconnection-Based Covert Channels in Wireless Networks. In: ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2021). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 118–133, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-78120-0_8.

Wendzel S, Lévy-Bencheton C, Caviglione L (2020) Not all Areas are Equal: Analysis of Citations in Information Security Research. Scientometrics 122/1:267–286. Springer, DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03279-6

Mazurczyk W, Wendzel S, Chourib M, Keller J (2019) Countering adaptive network covert communication with dynamic wardens. Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) 94:712–725. Elsevier, DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2018.12.047

Mazurczyk W, Wendzel S (2018) Information Hiding – Challenges for Forensic Experts. Communications of the ACM (CACM) 61/1:86–94. ACM, DOI: 10.1145/3158416

Zillien S, Wendzel S (2018) Detection of covert channels in TCP retransmissions. In: 23rd Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems (NordSec 2018). Springer, pp 203–218, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-03638-6_13

Keidel R, Wendzel S, Zillien S, Conner ES, Haas G (2018) WoDiCoF – A Testbed for the Evaluation of (Parallel) Covert Channel Detection Algorithms. Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS) 24/5:556–576, DOI: 10.3217/jucs-024-05-0556

Caviglione L, Wendzel S, Mazurczyk W (2017) The Future of Digital Forensics: Challenges and the Road Ahead. IEEE Security & Privacy (S&P) 15/6:12–17. IEEE, DOI: 10.1109/MSP.2017.4251117

Lehner F, Mazurczyk W, Keller J, Wendzel S (2017) Inter-protocol Steganography for Real-time Services and Its Detection Using Traffic Coloring Approach. In: 42th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2017). IEEE, pp 78–85, DOI: 10.1109/LCN.2017.32

Wendzel S, Tonejc J, Kaur J, Kobekova A (2017) Cyber security of smart buildings. In: Song H, Fink G, Jeschke S (eds) Security and privacy in cyber-physical systems: Foundations and applications. Wiley-IEEE Press, pp 327–352, DOI: 10.1002/9781119226079.ch16

Wendzel S (2016) How to Increase the Security of Smart Buildings. Communications of the ACM (CACM) 59/5:47–49. ACM, DOI: 10.1145/2828636

Wendzel S, Mazurczyk W (2016) Poster: An Educational Network Protocol for Covert Channel Analysis Using Patterns. In: ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2016). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1739–1741, DOI: 10.1145/2976749.2989037

Wendzel S, Mazurczyk W, Zander S (2016) A Unified Description for Network Information Hiding Methods. Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS) 22/11:1456–1486, DOI: 10.3217/jucs-022-11-1456

Mazurczyk W, Wendzel S, Zander S, Houmansadr A, Szczypiorski K (2016) Information hiding in communication networks. Fundamentals, mechanisms, and applications. Wiley-IEEE, DOI: 10.1002/9781119081715. IEEE Series on Information and Communication Networks Security

Wendzel S, Zander S, Fechner B, Herdin C (2015) Pattern-based survey and categorization of network covert channel techniques. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 47/3:1–26. ACM New York, NY, USA, DOI: 10.1145/2684195

Kaur J, Tonejc J, Wendzel S, Meier M (2015) Securing BACnet’s pitfalls. In: 30th IFIP TC-11 International Information Security and Privacy Conference (IFIP SEC 2015). Springer, pp 616–629, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18467-8_41. Acceptance rate: 19.8%

Wendzel S, Zander S (2012) Detecting protocol switching covert channels. In: 37th Annual IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2012). IEEE, pp 280–283, DOI: 10.1109/LCN.2012.6423628

Wendzel S, Keller J (2012) Systematic engineering of control protocols for covert channels. In: IFIP International Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2012). Springer, pp 131–144, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32805-3_11

Wendzel S, Keller J (2011) Low-attention forwarding for mobile network covert channels. In: Decker et. al. B de (ed) 12th Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2011). IFIP International Federation for Information Processing; Springer, pp 122–133, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-24712-5_10. Acceptance rate: 21.1%