Marloes Venema
As of March 2023, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the IT Security and Cryptography
Group of prof. dr. Tibor
Jager at the University
of Wuppertal. Before this, I was a PhD student under supervision of
dr. Greg Alpár in the Digital
Security group at the Institute
for C
omputing
and Information Sciences of the Radboud
University Nijmegen. I defended my thesis
titled "Attaining Basically Everything in Attribute-Based Encryption:
Simplifying the Design of Practical Schemes via Pair Encodings" on Tuesday
19 September 2023. Before my PhD, I obtained a master's degree in
Computing Science (specialization: Cyber Security), and a bachelor's
degree in Mathematics (with a minor in Computing Science), both at the
Radboud University as well.
My research focuses on practical cryptography for privacy.
I design, analyze, and automate advanced encryption mechanisms –
especially attribute-based – that enforce fine-grained access control and
privacy features directly at a cryptographic level. By collaborating
closely with systems and usability experts, I aim to build schemes that
can be deployed in real-world settings such as content-delivery networks,
cloud-based infrastructures, email, and citizen services. My long-term
goal is to provide the cryptographic foundations and tooling needed for
robust privacy-enhancing technologies, including post-quantum secure and
automatically verified constructions.
Contact information
At this time, you can
best reach me via email: venema at uni-wuppertal.de
Academic
publications
- Sven Argo,
Marloes Venema, Adrian Ackermann, and Tim
Güneysu, "pracy: A Practical Compiler for Attribute-Based Encryption
in Python", in
CHES 2025, pp. 46-91, 2025.
- Sven
Argo, Marloes Venema, Doreen Riepel, Tim Güneysu and Diego F. Aranha,
"ABE Cubed: Advanced Benchmarking Extensions for ABE Squared", in
CHES 2025, pp. 544-587, 2025.
- Doreen Riepel,
Marloes Venema, and Tanya Verma, "ISABELLA: Improving Structures of
Attribute-Based Encryption Leveraging Linear Algebra", in ACM CCS
2024, pp. 4628-4642, 2024.
- Marloes Venema,
and Leon Botros, "Using Predicate Extension for Predicate Encryption
to Generically Obtain Chosen-Ciphertext Security and Signatures ", in
IACR CiC 2024-1, 2024, pp. 1-57, 2024.
- Antonio de la
Piedra, Marloes Venema, and Greg Alpár, "ACABELLA: Automated
(Crypt)analysis of Attribute-Based Encryption Leveraging Linear
Algebra", in ACM CCS 2023, pp. 3269-3283, 2023.
- Watson Ladd,
Tanya Verma, Marloes Venema, Armando Faz-Hernández, Brendan McMillion,
Avani Wildani, and Nick Sullivan, "Portunus: Re-imagining Access
Control in Distributed Systems", in USENIX ATC 2023,
pp. 35-52, 2023.
- Leon Botros,
Merel Brandon, Bart Jacobs, Daniel Ostkamp, Hanna Schraffenberger, and
Marloes Venema, "PostGuard: Towards easy and secure email
communication", in Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23), 2023.
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "GLUE: Generalizing Unbounded Attribute-Based
Encryption for Flexible Efficiency Trade-Offs", in PKC 2023,
pp. 652-682, Springer, 2023.
- Marloes Venema,
"A Practical Compiler for Attribute-Based Encryption: New
Decentralized Constructions and More", in CT-RSA 2023, pp.
132-159, Springer, 2023.
- Marloes Venema,
Greg Alpár, and Jaap-Henk Hoepman, "Systematizing Core Properties of
Pairing-Based Attribute-Based Encryption to Uncover Remaining
Challenges in Enforcing Access Control in Practice", in Designs,
Codes and Cryptography 91(1), pp. 165-220, 2023.
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "TinyABE: Unrestricted Ciphertext-Policy
Attribute-Based Encryption for Embedded Devices and Low-Quality
Networks", in AFRICACRYPT 2022, pp. 103-129, Springer, 2022.
- Antonio de la
Piedra, Marloes Venema, and Greg Alpár, "ABE Squared: Accurately
Benchmarking Efficiency of Attribute-Based Encryption", in TCHES
2022(2), pp. 192-239, 2022.
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "A Bunch of Broken Schemes: A Simple yet Powerful
Linear Approach to Analyzing Security of Attribute-Based Encryption",
in CT-RSA 2021, pp. 100-125, Springer, 2021.
Preprints
and other publications
- Sven Argo,
Marloes Venema, Adrian Ackermann, and Tim
Güneysu, "pracy: A Practical Compiler for Attribute-Based Encryption
in Python", in IACR Cryptology
ePrint Archive, Report 2025/1240, 2025, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1240,
[code]
- Sven Argo,
Marloes Venema, Doreen Riepel, Tim
Güneysu, and Diego F.
Aranha, "ABE Cubed: Advanced
Benchmarking Extensions for ABE Squared", in IACR
Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2025/1230, 2025, available
at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1230, [code]
- Doreen
Riepel, Marloes Venema, and Tanya Verma, "ISABELLA: Improving
Structures of Attribute-Based Encryption Leveraging Linear Algebra",
in IACR
Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2024/1352, 2024, available
at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1352, [code]
- Antonio de la
Piedra, Marloes Venema, and Greg Alpár, "ACABELLA: Automated
(Crypt)analysis of Attribute-Based Encryption Leveraging Linear
Algebra", in
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2023/1274, 2023,
available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1274, [code],
[web application]
- Marloes Venema,
"A Practical Compiler for Attribute-Based Encryption: New
Decentralized Constructions and More", in
IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2023/143, 2023,
available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/143
- Watson
Ladd, Marloes Venema, and Tanya
Verma, "Portunus: Re-imagining Access Control in Distributed
Systems", in IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2023/094, 2023,
available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/094, [code],
[Tanya's
blog post], [RWC2023
talk]
- Marloes Venema,
and Leon Botros, "Efficient and Generic Transformations for
Chosen-Ciphertext Secure Predicate Encryption", in IACR Cryptology
ePrint Archive, Report 2022/1436, 2022, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1436,
[code]
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "GLUE: Generalizing Unbounded Attribute-Based
Encryption for Flexible Efficiency Trade-Offs", in IACR Cryptology
ePrint Archive, Report 2022/613, 2022, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/613,
[code]
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "TinyABE: Unrestricted Ciphertext-Policy
Attribute-Based Encryption for Embedded Devices and Low-Quality
Networks", in IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report
2022/569, 2022, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/569,
[code]
- Antonio de la
Piedra, Marloes Venema, and Greg Alpár, "ABE Squared: Accurately
Benchmarking Efficiency of Attribute-Based Encryption", in IACR Cryptology
ePrint Archive, Report 2022/038, 2022, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/038,
[code], [talk]
- Antonio
de la Piedra, and Marloes Venema, "Practical Attacks Against
Attribute-based Encryption", at Black Hat Europe, London, 8-11
November 2021, available at: [abstract],
[code], [Antonio's
blog post]
- Marloes Venema,
Greg Alpár, and Jaap-Henk
Hoepman, "Systematizing Core Properties of Pairing-Based
Attribute-Based Encryption to Uncover Remaining Challenges in
Enforcing Access Control in Practice", in IACR Cryptology ePrint
Archive, Report 2021/1172, 2021, available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1172
- Marloes Venema,
and Greg Alpár, "A Bunch of Broken Schemes: A Simple yet Powerful
Linear Approach to Analyzing Security of Attribute-Based Encryption",
in IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2020/460, 2020,
available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/460
Teaching
At the University
of Wuppertal:
- Summer semester 2025:
Provable Security - lecturer
- Winter semester 2024-2025:
Effiziente Implementierung kryptographischer Verfahren - teaching
assistant
- Summer semester 2024:
Provable Security - lecturer
- Winter semester 2023-2024:
Theoretical Foundations of Applied Cryptography - teaching assistant
- Summer semester 2023:
Provable Security - lecturer
At Radboud
University:
Supervision
At the University
of Wuppertal:
- Summer semester 2025:
- Master seminar thesis by Peter Dechering on security reductions for
broadcast identity-based encryption and ciphertext-policy
attribute-based encryption - supervisor
- Winter semester 2024-2025:
- Bachelor thesis by Ayush Garg on key revocation techniques in ABE,
titled "Systematizing Key Revocation Techniques in Attribute-Based
Encryption" - supervisor
- Master thesis by Adrian Ackermann on automatically implementing ABE
from pair encodings in Charm, titled "Automated Implementations of
Pairing-Based ABE in Charm" - co-supervisor with Sven Argo
- Summer semester 2024:
- Master seminar thesis by Dennis Funke on Portunus and its
application of ABE, titled "A Careful Look at Portunus and its
Application of Attribute-Based Encryption" - supervisor
- Master seminar thesis by Adrian Ackermann on constructing ABE from
pair encodings titled "(Pairing-based) ABE for Non-Cryptographers" -
supervisor
At Radboud
University:
Reviewing
I served as an external reviewer and PC member for several
conferences and journals. As a PC member:
- ACM CCS 2026
- EUROCRYPT 2026
- ISC 2024
- CT-RSA 2024
- ESORICS 2023
As an external reviewer:
- ASIACRYPT 2023,
2025
- ACM CCS 2023,
2025
- EUROCRYPT
2020, 2023, 2024, 2025
- PKC 2024, 2025
- ACM TOPS 2024
- Designs, Codes
and Cryptography 2023, 2024
- CRYPTO
2020, 2024
- ACNS 2024
- ISC 2023
- TCC 2023
- Transactions
on Dependable and Secure Computing 2023
- IEEE S&P
2023
- AFRICACRYPT
2019, 2022, 2023
- Journal of
Cryptographic Engineering 2022
- EuroS&P
2021
- NDSS
2020, 2021
Other
I wrote my master thesis about Decentralized
Attribute-Based Encryption for DECODE under supervision of Jaap-Henk
Hoepman in the period from February to August 2018.
Last modified: .