Following the successful debut in Berlin in 2024, this year’s CYBER BRIEFING focused on both familiar and emerging threats: denial-of-service attacks that jeopardize the availability of digital systems, and deepfakes, which increasingly undermine trust in digital content.
Denial-of-Service – Luring Cybercriminals into the Honeypot
Prof. Dr. Christian Rossow opened his keynote with an unusual announcement: “I’m sure you’ll like honey even more after my talk than you did before.” For years, the CISPA researcher has been attracting not bears but cybercriminals with his—virtual—honey. Together with his research team, he developed a honeypot called AmpPot. With this software, the researchers can emulate intermediary services that are exploited in denial-of-service attacks to overload and disable IT systems with targeted requests. “And yes, we actually allow ourselves to be drawn into these attacks—which you might reasonably find crazy. But by doing so, we can use our software to observe, analyze, and even trace these attacks worldwide in real time—making prosecution possible. Especially in times like these, in our interconnected world, it’s not only protection goals such as trustworthiness and privacy that matter. The simple availability of digital systems is a much more basic—but no less important—security objective.”
Exposing Deepfakes – Restoring Trust
Philipp Dewald, CEO of the Saarbrücken-based startup Detesia from the CISPA ecosystem, then presented Detesia’s technology for detecting manipulated AI-generated content. The goal: to restore trust and reliability in a world of synthetic media. “There are various ways to detect deepfakes, such as looking for physical or biological anomalies that still appear in AI-generated photos, videos, and audio. However, we see that generative AI is constantly advancing, and such flaws may soon be a thing of the past. With our approach, we fight fire with fire: we train AI models on very large datasets of real and fake media for deepfake detection, achieving robust results. But it remains a never-ending cat-and-mouse game—one we can only win through a holistic approach combining technological progress with societal awareness,” explained Dewald.
Securing Europe’s Digital Future
Digital systems must remain reliable, available, and trustworthy—even in the face of growing cyberattacks and AI-driven manipulation. “Precisely because the threat landscape is constantly changing, it is crucial that research, politics, and business bring their perspectives together. Only then can challenges be realistically assessed and viable solutions developed. Our goal is not only to discuss current threats, but also to present concrete solutions and foster exchange. Only by connecting knowledge and innovation can we make Europe’s digital future resilient and trustworthy,” says Mario Daniels, Head of Public Affairs at CISPA and co-organizer of the briefing.
About the CISPA CYBER BRIEFING
The CISPA CYBER BRIEFING is a recurring event series that promotes dialogue between cutting-edge research, startups, and representatives from politics and industry. It provides insights into current security- and AI-related research topics and demonstrates how innovative approaches from the CISPA ecosystem are making their way into society and the economy.
