Biography

Johannes Willbold is a doctoral student at the chair for systems security at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. In this doctoral thesis, he focuses on the security of space and satellite systems, with a particular emphasis on understanding real-world security issues. His first paper on the security of onboard satellite software “Space Odyssey: An Experimental Software Security Analysis of Satellites” was accepted to the IEEE S&P 2023 conference. In 2022, Johannes visited the Cyber-Defence Campus in Switzerland for an extended research stay on satellite security, where he investigated the security of VSAT systems.

He organizes the yearly SpaceSec workshop, the first academic workshop on space and satellite systems security co-located with the top-tier security conference NDSS.
He participated in the Hack-A-Sat 2 and 4 finals. As a speaker, he presented at numerous conferences about the software security of space and satellite systems, including Black Hat US, REcon, TyphoonCon, CySat, TTI/Vanguard. In addition, he presented his work at the European Space Agency (ESA) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). As the subgroup chair of the integration layer in the IEEE P3349 Space System Cybersecurity Working Group, he is leading the efforts to include strong cybersecurity aspects for future space system integration layer.


News - Upcoming Talks

CYSAT 2024, 2024, Paris, France
24th April, 2024, Johannes Willbold


Selected Publications

I only started publishing in IT-Security after starting my Ph.D. Before that, I worked as software engineer in an assisting researcher position and co-authored eight papers on Alzheimer diagnostics. Refer to my Google Scholar for a full list of publications.

2024

VSAsTer: Uncovering Inherent Security Issues in Current VSAT System Practices
Johannes Willbold, Moritz Schloegel, Robin Bisping, Martin Strohmeier, Thorsten Holz, Vincent Lenders
17th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks

Wireless Signal Injection Attacks on VSAT Satellite Modems
Robin Bisping, Johannes Willbold, Martin Strohmeier, Vincent Lenders
33rd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 24)

Satellite Cybersecurity Reconnaissance: Strategies and their Real-world Evaluation
Johannes Willbold, Franklyn Sciberras, Martin Strohmeier, Vincent Lenders
45th IEEE Aerospace Conference

Scaling Software Security Analysis to Satellites: Automated Fuzz Testing and Its Unique Challenges
Johannes Willbold, Moritz Schloegel, Florian Göhler, Tobias Scharnowski, Nils Bars, Simon Wörner, Nico Schiller, Thorsten Holz
45th IEEE Aerospace Conference

2023

Space Odyssey: An Experimental Software Security Analysis of Satellites
Johannes Willbold, Moritz Schloegel, Manuel Vögele, Maximilian Gerhardt, Thorsten Holz, and Ali Abbasi
44th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)
Distinguished Paper Award

2022

SGXFuzz: Efficiently Synthesizing Nested Structures for SGX Enclave Fuzzing
Tobias Cloosters, Johannes Willbold, Thorsten Holz, and Lucas Davi
31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22)


Talks

2024

Orbital Security: Results of an Academic Work on New Space Satellite Security
Vytah Space Business Conference, 2024, 11th April, Johannes Willbold, Bratislava, Slovakia

Scaling Software Security Analysis to Satellites: Automated Fuzz Testing and Its Unique Challenges
IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2024, February 5th, Big Sky, Montana, USA

Satellite Cybersecurity Reconnaissance: Strategies and their Real-world Evaluation
IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2024, February 4th, Big Sky, Montana, USA

2023

Cosmic Conquest: Analyzing the Security of Low Earth Orbit Satellites
Software Defined Space Conference, November 1st, Johannes Willbold, Tallinn, Estonia

Interstellar Intruders: Hijacking Satellites through Firmware Vulnerabilities
TTI/Vanguard: Networks and Communications, September 15th, Johannes Willbold, Westminster, CO, USA

Houston, We Have a Problem: Analyzing the Security of Low Earth Orbit Satellites
BlackHat USA, August 10th, Johannes Willbold, Las Vegas, USA

Zero Gravity Exploits: Reverse Engineering and Fuzzing Low-Earth Orbit Satellites
TyphoonCon June 15th, Johannes Willbold & Tobias Scharnowski, Seoul, South Korea

Cracking the Final Frontier: Reverse Engineering and Exploiting Low-Earth Orbit Satellites
REcon, June 9th, Johannes Willbold, Montreal, Canada

IEEE S&P’23: Space Odyssey: An Experimental Security Analysis of Satellites
44th IEEE S&P, May 22nd, Johannes Willbold, San Fransisco, CA, USA

CYSAT’23: Space Invaders: An Experimental Security Analysis of LEO Satellites
CySat 2023, 26th April 2023, Johannes Willbold, Paris, France

  • Slides: PDF, HTML
  • Presentation Video YouTube
  • Live-Demo Video (Coming Soon)

SpaceSec’23: Highlights of the NDSS Co-located Events
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium, 2023, San Diego, California, US

2022

ESA Workshop: Small Satellite SW Image Vulnerability Analysis
ESA - ESTEC, 2022, Johannes Willbold & Ali Abbasi, Noordwijk, Netherlands

CYSAT ‘22 : Keynote “Academic projects related to on board security for smallsats”
CySat 2022, April 2022, Johannes Willbold, Paris, France

Before 2022

Analysis and Deobuscation of Google’s BotGuard
Google, 2018, Zurich, Switzerland


Professional Activities


Media Coverage

Podcasts


Theses

Master Thesis
Efficient Fuzzing of VM-Obfuscated Code
21 Oct 2020
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz, M.Sc. Moritz Contag

Bachelor Thesis
Analysis and Deobuscation of Google’s BotGuard
24 Sep 2018
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz, Dr. Tim Blazytko