Description
Master’s thesis in cooperation with Fraunhofer AISEC
Systematizing Information Leakage in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption, Secure
Multi-Party Computation, Differential Privacy, Functional Encryption, and Zero-Knowledge
Proofs promise strong confidentiality guarantees. However, even when data is encrypted,
real-world systems often exhibit non-trivial information leakage through access patterns,
metadata, timing behavior, query structure, or verification artifacts. Today, this leakage is
typically described in an ad-hoc, technology-specific way, which makes it difficult to com-
pare PET designs, reason about residual risk, or support explainable privacy engineering.
Task Description
This thesis aims to develop a unified leakage taxonomy for PETs. Building on a systematic
literature review and analysis of representative PET use cases (e.g., encrypted search,
federated learning, verifiable computation), the work identifies and structures common
leakage categories and dimensions (e.g., source, channel, granularity, adversary capabil-
ities, measurability). The taxonomy is then mapped to a lightweight description schema or
domain-specific language for PET configurations, enabling leakage to be annotated in a
machine-readable form. The resulting taxonomy is evaluated by applying them to concrete
PET scenarios and by assessing its expressiveness and usability for engineers. This work
lays the conceptual foundation for automated leakage analysis, risk scoring, and visual
analytics tools for PET-based systems.
Requirements
• First experiences and knowledge about PETs
• Basic knowledge about leakage patterns
• High motivation and ability to work independently
Contact
Please send your application with current CV and transcript of records to:
Andreas M. Binder
Service and Application Security
Mail: andreas.binder@aisec.fraunhofer.de
Georg Bramm
Service and Application Security
Mail: georg.bramm@aisec.fraunhofer.de
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC)
Lichtenbergstr. 11, 85748 Garching near Munich
Publication Date: 24.08.2026
|
Thesis topic in co-operation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC, Garching