Keynote lecture anonymity and privacy in communicating critical systems

Summary form only given. It is well known that despite all of its advantages the digital revolution also leads to large variety of new risks. One principal issue in this context is the growing dependence of our modern information society from the availability and correct (proved) function of modern communication services. First, I´ll give a short overview on threats in communication networks (grids, clouds, etc), protocols and secure personal devices. Then I´ll discuss current network security approaches based on anonymous message exchanges within communicating systems. Cryptography was first used to ensure data confidentiality, it has been “democratized” by ensuring the safety of telecommunications services, thereby extending its scope to authentication of a person or device, or a message, non-repudiation, integrity but also the anonymity of transactions. The anonymity is sometimes quite important in the new telecommunication and mobile networks services, much more than just message confidentiality. The talk will focus on some examples and new approaches developed in our research laboratory to deal with anonymity in routing protocols for mobile communicating systems.