Dr. Thomas Reinhold has been awarded 1st prize of the Weizenbaum Study Prize 2024 for his dissertation, supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter, completed in 2023. The award ceremony took place on 26 October 2024 in Bremerhaven as part of the FIfF conference.
The cyberspace and its global infrastructures are becoming an area of intelligence and military operations, as evidenced by the creation of military cyber divisions and the integration of cyberspace into the security and defence strategies of states. Many traditional instruments of transparency, de-escalation and arms control do not work due to the technical characteristics of cyberspace. The dissertation ‘Towards a Peaceful Development of Cyberspace – Challenges and Technical Measures for the De-escalation of State-led Cyberconflicts and Arms Control of Cyberweapons’ by Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Reinhold examines how de-escalation of state-led conflicts and arms control of cyber weapons can be achieved by adopting existing technical measures from other areas of computing. It presents a classification system for cyber weapons, approaches to reduce vulnerability stockpiles and methods to prove non-involvement in cyber conflicts. In addition, it provides insights into the responsibility and design possibilities of computer science in promoting the peaceful use of cyberspace. Prof. Dr. Volker Roth acted as the second referee. The dissertation can be viewed here and here.
With the Weizenbaum Study Prize, the FIfF aims to honour outstanding achievements by young scientists in this field. Students and academics in the qualification phase are to be encouraged to take a well-founded and differentiated approach to questions in the field of computer science and society. The prize was awarded for the first time in 2010. Since then, FIfF has honoured works on anonymity on the Internet, online searches, the use of mobile IT systems in the classroom, video surveillance, information power on the Internet, criminal prognostics and many other topics.