About

Marloes Venema

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the IT Security and Cryptography Group of Tibor Jager at the University of Wuppertal (since March 2023). Before this, I was a PhD student under the supervision of Greg Alpár in the Digital Security group at Radboud University Nijmegen. I defended my thesis, Attaining Basically Everything in Attribute-Based Encryption: Simplifying the Design of Practical Schemes via Pair Encodings, in September 2023. I also obtained a master's degree in Computing Science (Cyber Security) and a bachelor's degree in Mathematics at Radboud University.

My research focuses on practical and secure access control mechanisms for real-world applications. In particular, I design and analyze advanced cryptographic mechanisms, e.g., based on attribute-based encryption, that enable fine-grained access to sensitive information while providing strong security and privacy guarantees, e.g., by automating security analysis and implementation. By combining theoretical foundations with practical considerations, I aim to develop mechanisms that can be deployed in real-world settings such as healthcare, cloud infrastructures, citizen services, and content-delivery networks.

I have recently received an Emmy Noether grant from the DFG to establish my own independent research group at the University of Wuppertal (see MAPS-ABE).

Publications

Projects

MAPS-ABE · Emmy Noether Group

Funded by an Emmy Noether grant from the DFG, MAPS-ABE establishes my independent research group at the University of Wuppertal. The project develops modular approaches for simultaneously achieving practical and security properties in attribute-based encryption, with the long-term goal of enabling privacy-preserving access control (also to data that needs to be processed), including in the post-quantum setting.

Tools and Software

Automated analysis and implementation

I have contributed to the automation of various efforts that are usually hard to do manually, e.g.,

ACABELLA
ACABELLA can be used for the automated security analysis of ABE schemes, which includes attacks and security proofs. It is available as a command-line tool and as a web app.
pracy
pracy is a compiler that automatically turns ABE schemes, described as pair encodings, into full-fledged ABE schemes, and then into working implementations in, e.g., Python or C/C++.
Applications of ABE

I have contributed to various real-world applications of ABE, e.g.,

PostGuard
PostGuard is an email encryption tool that uses identity-based encryption. It can be used to securely send emails, with a user-friendly plugin in your mail client or via the web tool.
Portunus
Portunus is an access control system for distributed systems based on ABE. It is implemented in Cloudflare’s CIRCL library and used in Cloudflare’s Geo Key Manager v2.
Implementations of ABE schemes

I have contributed to the implementation of various ABE schemes, e.g.,

ABE Squared
The ABE Squared framework provides implementations of several popular ciphertext-policy ABE schemes for monotone Boolean formulas.
ABE Cubed
ABE Cubed provides various implementations of the decentralized CP-ABE scheme in RVV24, as well as our structural optimizations thereof.

Teaching

University of Wuppertal

IT Security and Cryptography Seminar
Organizer · Winter 2026–2027
Provable Security
Lecturer · Summer 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Effiziente Implementierung kryptographischer Verfahren
Teaching assistant · Winter 2024–2025
Theoretical Foundations of Applied Cryptography
Teaching assistant · Winter 2023–2024

Radboud University

Teaching assistant · Spring 2019, 2020, 2021
Teaching assistant · Fall 2018, 2019

Supervision

University of Wuppertal
Order-Enforcing Encryption: The Definition of a Primitive and Security Model
Master thesis · Peter Dechering · Summer 2026 · Supervisor
Distributed and Decentralized Identity-Based Encryption
Bachelor thesis · Annika Zensen · Winter 2025–2026 · Supervisor
Systematizing Key Revocation Techniques in Attribute-Based Encryption
Bachelor thesis · Ayush Garg · Winter 2024–2025 · Supervisor
Automated Implementations of Pairing-Based ABE in Charm
Master thesis · Adrian Ackermann · Winter 2024–2025 · Co-supervisor with Sven Argo
Radboud University
Master thesis · Wouter de Boer · Feb–Nov 2020 · Co-supervisor with Joan Daemen and Aslı Bay

Service

Program Committees

2027
EUROCRYPT, CHES (cycles 3 and 4)
2026
EUROCRYPT, ACM CCS
2024
CT-RSA, ISC
2023
ESORICS (round 2)

Reviewing

2026
CRYPTO, ASIACRYPT, PKC
2025
EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, PKC, ACM CCS
2024
EUROCRYPT, CRYPTO, PKC, ACNS, ACM TOPS, DCC
2023
EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, TCC, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, ISC, AFRICACRYPT, TDSC, DCC
2022
AFRICACRYPT, JCEN
2021
NDSS, EuroS&P
2020
EUROCRYPT, CRYPTO, NDSS
2019
AFRICACRYPT