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Research Group

Stock

Secure Web Applications Group

The Secure Web Applications Group (or SWAG, for short) conducts its research in all areas related to Web Security. Of particular focus is research around client-side security, in the detection, analysis, and mitigation of attacks around JavaScript. In addition, we research how to best communicate discovered vulnerabilities to affected operators. Furthermore, we investigate how malicious JavaScript may adversely affect users on the Web, researching both novel ways of detecting such scripts and attacking existing defensive solutions. Want to work with us? See the details for PhD students, thesis students, and student helper at our jobs page.

Head of Group

Ben Stock

Email

Address

Kaiserstraße 21
66386 St. Ingbert (Germany)

Members

Placeholder

Metodi Mitkov

Shubham Agarwal

Jannis Rautenstrauch

Florian Hantke

Most Recent Publications

Year 2025

2025-08-25

Open Access Alert: Studying the Privacy Risks in Android WebView’s Web Permission Enforcement

Conference / Medium

ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS)

Tags
Empirical & Behavioral Security
Authors
Full Paper Visit Detail Page
2025-08-13

Web Execution Bundles: Reproducible, Accurate, and Archivable Web Measurements.

Conference / Medium

Usenix Security Symposium (USENIX-Security)

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Authors
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2025-08-13

Double-Edged Shield: On the Fingerprintability of Customized Ad Blockers

Conference / Medium

Usenix Security Symposium (USENIX-Security)

Tags
Empirical & Behavioral Security
Authors
Full Paper Visit Detail Page
2025-05-12

403 Forbidden? Ethically Evaluation Broken Access Control in the Wild

Conference / Medium

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

Tags
Empirical & Behavioral Security
Authors
Full Paper Visit Detail Page
2025-02-24

The (Un)usual Suspects – Studying Reasons for Lacking Updates in WordPress

Conference / Medium

Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)

Tags
Empirical & Behavioral Security
Authors
Full Paper Visit Detail Page

PROJECTS

CURRENT PROJECTS

The Web is arguably the most popular platform for information exchange today. To allow for a better user experience, much functionality is shifted towards the client. This shift also increases the complexity of client-side code and hence the attack surface. This can be exhibited in increased vulnerabilities such as Client-Side Cross-Site Scripting. We therefore try to better understand these issues and develop and evaluate potential solutions In general, our research investigates all types of client-side Web security, including areas such as CSP and framing control.

Although detection of many types of web-based flaws has been in the focus of researchers over the previous years, notifying affected parties barely got any attention. For this project, we try to identify potential channels for notification and evaluate their effectiveness. Also, we try to improve not only on technical measures like avoiding spam filters, but also try to understand the human aspects of a notification, such as how different wording might influence the success of a notification.

With its prevalence in the browser, JavaScript also makes for a prime target for attackers. Therefore, our group researches new ways of detecting malicious JavaScript in the wild. Specifically, this subsumes work in which we automatically generate signatures for exploit kits, alleviating the burden of malware analysists .In addition, our work focusses on detection of malicious JavaScript in general through methods of machine learning and novel ways of bypassing existing static analysis tools.