Christoph Striecks

I am a senior scientist with a professional focus on secure communcation and cryptography (mainly, key exchange and encryption, secure data access control, and authentication). Particularly, I have worked on quantum-classical hybridisation techniques and on long-term security (e.g., see talks on hybrid cryptography and blog post on forward security).

Before joining the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology – Austria’s largest Research and Technology Organization – in 2016, I held a post-doc position at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.

In 2015, I received my PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in cryptography from KIT under the supervision of Prof. Dennis Hofheinz (now at ETH Zurich) on scalable advanced cryptographic building blocks. Teaching activities included Algorithms I (lab, ST 2015) and IT security (lab, ST 2013), encompassed by several seminars and labs.

In 2010, I received my Diploma in computer science from the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany with a major in cryptography and software engineering. From March to September 2008, I worked as a software-development intern for Siemens USA in Princeton, New Jersey.

News and activities:

Selected publications (alphabetical ordering of authors if not stated differently by asterisk):
      1. Versatile Quantum-Safe Hybrid Key Exchange and Its Application to MACsec
        *Jaime S. Buruaga, Augustine Bugler, Juan P. Brito, Vicente Martin, and Christoph Striecks.
        EPJ Quantum Technologies 12, Article number: 84 (2025)
      2. Muckle+: End-to-End Hybrid Authenticated Key Exchanges
        Sonja Bruckner, Sebastian Ramacher, and Christoph Striecks.
        Post-Quantum Cryptography - 14th International Workshop, PQCrypto 2023, College Park, MD, USA, August 16-18, 2023, Proceedings
      3. Bloom Filter Encryption and Applications to Efficient Forward-Secret 0-RTT Key Exchange
        David Derler, Tibor Jager, Daniel Slamanig, and Christoph Striecks.
        Advances in Cryptology - EUROCRYPT 2018 - 37th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Tel Aviv, Israel, April 29 - May 3, 2018 Proceedings, Part III

    Organizing activities:

    Current projects:

    • QSCS (ETSI 2025-2027)
    • QSNP (HORIZON-RIA 2023-2026)
    • QCI-CAT (Digital European Program, 2022-2025)
    • PETRUS (Digital European Program, 2022-2025)
    • EDOCC (European Defence Fund, 2022-2025)

    Completed projects:

    Research visits:

    Teaching & supervision:

    • Teaching: Advanced Public-Key Encryption (invited lecture, WT 2020, TU Vienna), Advanced Public-Key Encryption (invited lecture, WT 2019, TU Vienna), Algorithms I (TA, ST 2015, KIT), Gems of Theoretical Computer Science (ST 2014, KIT), IT security (TA, ST 2013, KIT), Software Development (WTs 2010-2012, KIT), Traitor Tracing (WT 2011, KIT), Identity-Based Encryption (ST 2011, KIT), Practical Cryptography (ST 2011, KIT), Lattice-Based Cryptography (WT 2010, KIT), TA programming and cryptography/IT security (until WT 09, Braunschweig University of Technology)
    • PhD visitor: Jaime S. Buruaga (Technical University of Madrid, Jul.-Oct. 2024)
    • Students & interns: Augustine Bugler (University of Vienna, Mar. 2025-), Augustine Bugler (University of Vienna, Jul.-Sep. 2024), Kevin Verhaeghe (ETH Zurich, Jul.-Sep. 2024), Alexander Zikulnig (TU Vienna, Aug.-Sep. 2022), Denis Jahic (TU Vienna, Jul.-Sep. 2021)
    • Diploma theses: Christian Matt (KIT, 2011), Alexander Mai (KIT, 2014)

    Program committees:

    Selected external reviewing activities:

    (Recent) selected invited talks and standardisation activities:

    • On the Transition to Quantum-Safe Networks (World of Quantum Application Panel, 2025)
    • On Quantum-Secure Hybrid Key Exchanges (European Commission, 2024)
    • On Forward Security (ETH Zurich & FAU Nürnberg-Erlangen, 2022)
    • On Attribute-Based Encryption for Strong Access Control (ETSI Security Week, 2020)
    • On Security, Safety, and Privacy-by-Design (Austrian Standards, 2020, press coverage in futurezone and Austrian Standards)
    • Involvement in ETSI STF 529 on standardizing Attribute-Based Encryption (press release from ETSI)