Empirical Software Engineering

Prof. Dr. Yasemin Acar

We work towards empowering society to protect people from digital harms. 

We strive to improve security, privacy, equity, and accessibility through our research, teaching, and beyond. 

We address social challenges that may be exacerbated by technology, and leverage empirical research methods with end users and non-users of technology, developers, administrators, educators and other decision makers to make it easier to safely develop and use technology devoid of social harm. 

We use qualitative and quantitative human computer interaction methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups), large scale measurements, and mixed-methods approaches.

Our goal and approaches are inclusive, and we love collaborating with cryptographers, open source developers, corporate software developers, system administrators, users and non-users of software. 

Research

We use qualitative and quantitative human computer interaction methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups), large scale measurements, and mixed-methods approaches.

Our goal and approaches are inclusive, and we love collaborating with cryptographers, open source developers, corporate software developers, system administrators, users and non-users of software.

About us

Team

We're a multi-disciplinary team & always excited to meet new collaborators.

Teaching

We strive for inclusive teaching, and aim to involve students in the research experience.

News

23.08.2023

Two research papers accepted at IEEE Security & Privacy!

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09.08.2023

Distinguished Paper at USENIX Security!

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Publications

Re-Envisioning Industrial Control Systems Security by Considering Human Factors as a Core Element of Defense-in-Depth
J. Pottebaum, J. Rossel, J. Somorovsky, Y. Acar, R. Fahr, P. Arias Cabarcos, E. Bodden, I. Gräßler, in: 2023 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), IEEE, 2023, pp. 379–385.
"Security is not my field, I’m a stats guy": A Qualitative Root Cause Analysis of Barriers to Adversarial Machine Learning Defenses in Industry
J. Mink, H. Kaur, J. Schmüser, S. Fahl, Y. Acar, in: J.A. Calandrino, C. Troncoso (Eds.), 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX Security 2023, Anaheim, CA, USA, August 9-11, 2023, USENIX Association, 2023.
"Make Them Change it Every Week!": A Qualitative Exploration of Online Developer Advice on Usable and Secure Authentication
J.H. Klemmer, M. Gutfleisch, C. Stransky, Y. Acar, M.A. Sasse, S. Fahl, CoRR abs/2309.00744 (2023).
Lost and not Found: An Investigation of Recovery Methods for Multi-Factor Authentication
S. Amft, S. Höltervennhoff, N. Huaman, A. Krause, L. Simko, Y. Acar, S. Fahl, CoRR abs/2306.09708 (2023).
S3C2 Summit 2202-09: Industry Secure Suppy Chain Summit
M. Tran, Y. Acar, M. Cucker, W. Enck, A. Kapravelos, C. Kästner, L.A. Williams, CoRR abs/2307.15642 (2023).
A World Full of Privacy and Security (Mis)conceptions? Findings of a Representative Survey in 12 Countries
F. Herbert, S. Becker, L. Schaewitz, J. Hielscher, M. Kowalewski, M.A. Sasse, Y. Acar, M. Dürmuth, in: A. Schmidt, K. Väänänen, T. Goyal, P.O. Kristensson, A. Peters, S. Mueller, J.R. Williamson, M.L. Wilson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023, Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023, ACM, 2023, p. 582:1–582:23.
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Prof. Dr. Yasemin Acar

Empirical Software Engineering

Room FU.329
Paderborn University
Fürstenallee 11
33102 Paderborn