RWTH Aachen University SPICe Im Süsterfeld 9 52072 Aachen, GERMANY
Since June 2024, I am a researcher at the SPICe group.
My research interest lies in securing Cyber-Physical Systems, especially
in Industrial Intrusion Detection Systems.
Publications
2025
Chronicles
SPICe Chronicles 2025: The Year with Hot Papers, a Spicy New Lecture and a Sizzling Round of Applause
With the year coming to a close, we reflect on the past twelve months and start a new tradition of an annual report on research, teaching, life, the universe, and everything surrounding the Security and Privacy in Industrial Cooperation (SPICe) group at RWTH Aachen University. While 2024 was characterized by change, especially concerning the composition of the team and our move to temporary offices while the computer science building gets partly renovated, this year focused on consolidation and embarking on new endeavors spanning across research, teaching, and our team. Most notably, on the research side, we again managed to land a paper at USENIX Security 2025 this year and were successful in positioning our research at further high-ranked venues (including IEEE EuroS&P and ACM WiSec). On the teaching side, we bootstrapped a new lecture on Industrial Data Security and kicked-off a project to enhance our lecture on Industrial Network Security with hands-on security training. Strategically growing our team, we are happy to welcome Gabriel from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as an external PhD candidate to the team. Looking back proudly at the past year ourselves, we were honored by various forms of external recognition of our dedication to research and teaching. Besides nominations for the best paper and teaching awards, we are especially proud that the contributions of our students were recognized through multiple awards. We report on these and many more notable events, including a timeline of the year at SPICe, an overview of the projects that kept us busy, a brief summary of the scientific publications documenting our research output, a revisit of our teaching activities, as well as the composition of our team. Wrapping up, we provide an outlook for exciting new endeavors for next year.
author = {Henze, Martin and Lenz, Stefan and Michaelides, Sotiris and Roson da Silva, Gabriel},title = {{SPICe Chronicles 2025: The Year with Hot Papers, a Spicy New Lecture and a Sizzling Round of Applause}},institution = {Security and Privacy in Industrial Cooperation, RWTH Aachen University},year = {2025}}
LCN
CoFacS – Simulating a Complete Factory to Study the Security of Interconnected Production
Stefan Lenz, David Schachtschneider, Simon Jonas, Liam Tirpitz, Sandra Geisler, and Martin Henze
In Proceedings of the 50th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Oct 2025
While the digitization of industrial factories provides tremendous improvements for the production of goods, it also renders such systems vulnerable to serious cyber-attacks. To research, test, and validate security measures protecting industrial networks against such cyber-attacks, the security community relies on testbeds to simulate industrial systems, as utilizing live systems endangers costly components or even human life. However, existing testbeds focus on individual parts of typically complex production lines in industrial factories. Consequently, the impact of cyber-attacks on industrial networks as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures cannot be evaluated in an end-to-end manner. To address this issue and facilitate research on novel security mechanisms, we present CoFacS, the first COmplete FACtory Simulation that replicates an entire production line and affords the integration of real-life industrial applications. To showcase that CoFacS accurately captures real-world behavior, we validate it against a physical model factory widely used in security research. We show that CoFacS has a maximum deviation of 0.11% to the physical reference, which enables us to study the impact of physical attacks or network-based cyber-attacks. Moreover, we highlight how CoFacS enables security research through two cases studies surrounding attack detection and the resilience of 5G-based industrial communication against jamming.
@inproceedings{lenz2025cofacs,author={Lenz, Stefan and Schachtschneider, David and Jonas, Simon and Tirpitz, Liam and Geisler, Sandra and Henze, Martin},title={{CoFacS -- Simulating a Complete Factory to Study the Security of Interconnected Production}},booktitle={Proceedings of the 50th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN)},doi={10.1109/LCN65610.2025.11146332},year={2025}}
e-Energy
Scalable Supply and Demand Matching Involving Up-to-Date Information from Individual Prosumers
René Glebke, Maximilian Winck, Stefan Lenz, Mirko Stoffers, and Klaus Wehrle
In Proceedings of the 16th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems (e-Energy), Jun 2025
@inproceedings{glebke2025scalable,author={Glebke, René and Winck, Maximilian and Lenz, Stefan and Stoffers, Mirko and Wehrle, Klaus},booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems (e-Energy)},title={{Scalable Supply and Demand Matching Involving Up-to-Date Information from Individual Prosumers}},year={2025},doi={10.1145/3679240.3734591}}
FGCS
Secure Integration of 5G in Industrial Networks: State of the Art, Challenges and Opportunities
The industrial landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, moving away from traditional wired fieldbus networks to cutting-edge 5G mobile networks. This transition, extending from local applications to company-wide use and spanning multiple factories, is driven by the promise of low-latency communication and seamless connectivity for various devices in industrial settings. However, besides these tremendous benefits, the integration of 5G as the communication infrastructure in industrial networks introduces a new set of risks and threats to the security of industrial systems. The inherent complexity of 5G systems poses unique challenges for ensuring a secure integration, surpassing those encountered with any technology previously utilized in industrial networks. Most importantly, the distinct characteristics of industrial networks, such as real-time operation, required safety guarantees, and high availability requirements, further complicate this task. As the industrial transition from wired to wireless networks is a relatively new concept, a lack of guidance and recommendations on securely integrating 5G renders many industrial systems vulnerable and exposed to threats associated with 5G. To address this situation, in this paper, we summarize the state-of-the-art and derive a set of recommendations for the secure integration of 5G into industrial networks based on a thorough analysis of the research landscape. Furthermore, we identify opportunities to utilize 5G to enhance security and indicate remaining challenges, identifying future academic directions.
@article{michaelides2025industry5G,author={Michaelides, Sotiris and Lenz, Stefan and Vogt, Thomas and Henze, Martin},title={{Secure Integration of 5G in Industrial Networks: State of the Art, Challenges and Opportunities}},journal={Future Generation Computer Systems},doi={10.1016/j.future.2024.107645},volume={166},year={2025},}
2022
CDC
Harnessing Cooperative Anycast Communication for Increased Resilience in Wireless Control
René Glebke, Jan Scheiper, Stefan Lenz, Mirko Stoffers, and Klaus Wehrle
In 2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), May 2022
@inproceedings{glebke2022harnessing,author={Glebke, René and Scheiper, Jan and Lenz, Stefan and Stoffers, Mirko and Wehrle, Klaus},booktitle={2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)},title={{Harnessing Cooperative Anycast Communication for Increased Resilience in Wireless Control}},year={2022},doi={10.1109/CDC51059.2022.9992864}}
