Mr Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Mainka

Biography

Christian Mainka has been Head of the Chair of ROSES (Robust, Secure and Privacy-Preserving Smart Systems) at the University of Wuppertal since May 2025. His research focuses on web and data security topics, which he presents at the most important security conferences in academia and industry. His journey began in 2009 with the threats posed by data description languages such as JSON and XML. Since then, he has published numerous CVEs in widely used applications and libraries. Together with his team, he is developing new cyberattacks on PDF, which won first place in the CSAW Applied Research Competition 2019, among others. His previous results include forging digitally signed PDFs, e.g. to convert an Amazon invoice into a valid, signed refund for 1 billion dollars. He also investigates the embedding and execution of programme code in documents, which is often used as the basis for malware attacks. Furthermore, at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2021, his joint publication on cross-site leaks in web browsers was honoured with the Best Paper Award.

Further details can be found on his personal website:
https://christianmainka.de/