Doctoral Defense of Tobias Heer

Tobi’s thesis entitled “Direct End-to-Middle Authentication in Cooperative Networks” presents, analyzes, and evaluates novel end-to-middle authentication protocols. Thereby, it addresses the fundamental tension between security, performance, and lack of central control in cooperative networks. In his thesis, Tobias discusses different design options that enable middleboxes to efficiently verify the source and/or the integrity of forwarded packets at different transmission speeds. With such a capability, middleboxes can shelter against resource misuse and protect end-hosts against DoS attacks that leverage the middleboxes as a weak spot. Following a great talk and a defense behind closed doors, of which rumors only tell that it was “outstanding”, we enjoyed a great celebration in the I4 seminar room. We were also delighted to welcome many guests from other institutes and the family of Tobias. Tobias’ colleagues summarized his work, efforts and some peculiarities with the following poem (in german): There is only one thing left to say: Congratulations, Dr. rer. nat. Tobias Heer!