At the 28th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2025), Jonas Röckl, Julian Funk, Matti Schulze, and Tilo Müller, researchers at the Chair of Computer Science 1 (IT Security Infrastructure) of ESI-Member Prof. Dr.-Ing. Felix Freiling, received the Distinguished Practical Paper Award for their paper “SH3ARS: Privilege Reduction for ARMv8.0-A Secure Monitors”.

In their work, they redesigned the otherwise omnipotent firmware of ARMv8.0-based devices to ensure that the isolation of the ARM TrustZone Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) remains intact even if an attacker compromises the firmware layer of the device — an attacker model significantly stronger than those typically assumed in TEE-based systems.

The paper was presented in Gold Coast, Australia, on October 20, 2025.