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Water, electricity, transportation—all of them are critical infrastructures. In Germany, everything classified as part of a critical infrastructure has to conform to security and safety guidelines. I had some nightmares^Wexperiences with these in the past. And I decided to only work on projects classified as critical infrastructure if I could do defensive research, despite being a mostly offensive security researcher. This blog post outlines why offensive critical infrastructure research is a bad idea, and is also a long rant about an article that will be released in a German magazine on December 19th. Sorry for ranting!!!!1!11 Critical infrastructure security Critical infrastructure is regulated and has to follow various certifications. Disclaimer, I'm not an expert on this. However, certifications are both good and bad: Everything classified as critical infrastructure has to pass various tests, ensuring it is safe and secure. Such tests are limited in scope and prevent the abilit

What to expect from supervising students So far, I supervised approximately 30 B.Sc./M.Sc. students. My supervision style might not work for everyone—but it turned out to work quite well for the average chaotic nerd with an interest in IT security. When deciding to supervise a thesis, many people think this could be a great workforce in accelerating their PhD. I didn't have that illusion, as my M.Sc. thesis co-supervisor told me that he had a ratio of 1/3 of the students actually helping him with research, and the others just being more supervision overhead than what they got in return. Depending on your research topic this ratio is quite accurate. In fact, not supervising theses, working on your own whenever possible, and carefully selecting with whom you're going to collaborate might be the better career advice for finishing your PhD within a short time. Nonetheless, being a good thesis supervisor can be very rewarding and you will learn a lot. While most think a PhD is