The "Förderkreis der Angewandten Informatik" (Society for the Promotion of Applied Computer Science) at WWU Münster sponsors the annual "Förderpreis der Angewandten Informatik" (Advancement Award of Applied Computer Science) for outstanding theses in the field of "applied computer science".

This year, the special award for the best empirical work went to Erwin Quiring BSc for his bachelors thesis entitled "Countermeasures against Sensitivity Attacks on Digital Watermarks."

In this work, which he wrote at the IT Security Research Group, Erwin has developed, implemented, and tested a new countermeasure against attacks on digital watermarks. Digital watermarks are, among other things, used in DVDs to enforce copy protection. By a new combination of known techniques, Erwin impedes known attacks on watermarks and shows that the results of these attacks have a lower quality compared to the individual countermeasures.

The prize of 500 euro was donated  by items GmbH from Münster.