Fabian van den Broek

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I am an assistant professor with the Open University of The Netherlands. As a guest researcher I am working in the digital security group at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences and at the Interdisciplinary Hub for digitalization and society (iHUB), both of the Radboud university of Nijmegen. My current research is mostly focussed on maturing the IRMA (I Reveal My Attributes) technology of the Privacy by Design Foundation. The IRMA technology offers a way to authenticate users based on a subset of their attributes, which results in a very flexible and privacy-friendly eco system.

I finished my PhD on the security of wireless communication technologies such as GSM, GPRS and UMTS. My promotor was prof. Bart Jacobs and my supervisor was dr. Erik Poll. For my PhD I looked into both theoretical and practical questions on security in the access part of mobile technologies, on different abstraction levels: i.e. protocols, cryptographic primitives, implementations of said protocols and the additional services deployed on top of them. By extension I also look at the security of systems utilising mobile communication technology within their architecture, such as remote multi-factor authentication techniques. Finally, I proposed improvements to the wireless standards which prevent fake-base station attacks (IMSI catchers). This work resulted in my doctoral thesis Mobile communication security.

At an earlier stage, I was involved in the OYOI (Own Your Own Identity) project were we succesfully moved the IRMA technology from smart cards, to other carriers, such as the mobile phone. I also participated in the European C-DAX project, working on the security aspects of C-DAX, an ICN (Information-Centric Networking) architecture for smart grids.

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Topics for BSc/MSc projects or general assignments.
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