Markus Guenther Kuhn (born 1971) is a German
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
, currently working at the
Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a fellow of
Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Education
Kuhn was educated at
University of Erlangen (Germany), he received his Master of Science degree at
Purdue University and PhD at the
University of Cambridge.
Research
Kuhn's main research interests include
computer security, in particular the hardware and signal-processing aspects of it, and
distributed systems. He is known, among other things, for his work on
security microcontrollers,
compromising emanations, and
distance-bounding protocol
Distance bounding protocols are cryptographic protocols that enable a verifier V to establish an upper bound on the physical distance to a prover P.
They are based on timing the delay between sending out challenge bits and receiving back the cor ...
s. He developed the Stirmark test for
digital watermarking schemes, the
OTPW
OTPW is a one-time password system developed for authentication in Unix-like operating systems by Markus Kuhn (computer scientist), Markus Kuhn. A user's real password is not directly transmitted across the Computer networking, network. Rather, a s ...
one-time password system, and headed the project that extended the
X11 misc-fixed fonts to
Unicode.
In 1994, as an undergraduate student, he became known for developing several ways to circumvent the
VideoCrypt encryption system, most notably the ''Season7'' smartcard emulator.
In 2002, he published a new method for eavesdropping CRT screens
and in 2003 he went on to publish mitigations such as "Tempest fonts".
In 2010, Kuhn was asked to analyse the
ADE 651, a device used in Iraq that was said to be a bomb-detecting device; he found that it contained nothing but an anti-theft tag and said that it was "impossible" that the device could detect anything whatsoever.
He is also known for some of his work on international standardisation, such as pioneering the introduction of
Unicode/
UTF-8 under
Linux.
Awards and honours
In 1987 and 1988, he won the German national computer-science contest, and in 1989, he won a gold medal for the West German team at the
International Olympiad in Informatics.
Results of the IOI 1989
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhn, Markus
1971 births
Living people
German computer scientists
Purdue University alumni
Fellows of Wolfson College, Cambridge
Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Computer security academics
Studienstiftung alumni
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni
Scientists from Munich
Alumni of the University of Cambridge