I am an IT security researcher at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT-Security in Bochum, Germany. Currently, I write my master thesis at the NISlab in Gjovik, Norway. I hold a Bachelor of Science (B.SC.) degree in "Applied Computer Science - Industry and Management Informatics" from the Ruhr-University in Bochum.
Besides my fields of interest in IT-security, I like to travel around the world, meeting people from different countries, cultures and religions.
private:
business: 
Dominik Birk, Maximillian Dornseif, Sebastian Gajek, Felix Gröbert: Phishing Phishers - Tracing Identity Thieves and Money Launderer Technical Report 01/02/2006.
Dominik Birk, Maximillian Dornseif, Sebastian Gajek, Felix Gröbert: Ein Framework zur Identifikation von Identitätsbetrügern, Geldwäschern und Phishing-Simulanten 10th German IT Security Congress, Federal Office for Information Security, Bonn (Germany), 2007. Awarded with the Best Student Paper Award
Dominik Birk, Sebastian Gajek, Felix Gröbert, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi: Phishing Phishers - Observing and Tracing Organized Cybercrime IEEE Workshop on Cyber-Fraud (Cyberfraud'07), Silicon Valley (USA), 2007
Dominik Birk, Sebastian Gajek, Felix Gröbert, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi: A Forensic Framework for Tracing Phishers International Summer School on the Future of Identity in the Information Society, Karlstad, 06/08/2007 (Sweden)
Dominik Birk, Christoph Wegener: Web Exploit Toolkits - Moderne Infektionsroutinen D * A * CH Security 2008, Berlin, Germany, June 2008
Dominik Birk, Sean Gaines, Christoph Wegener: A Framework for Digital Watermarking Next Generation Media Broadcasts Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Automated Solutions for Cross Media Content and Multi-channel Distribution ( Axmedis 2008), Firence University Press 2008
Dominik Birk, Felix Gröbert, Christoph Wegener: Datenschutz in Sozialen Netzwerken: Freund oder Feind? In Proceedings of "Informatik 2009 - Im Focus das Leben", Lecture Notes in Informatics, GI-Edition, September 2009
Dominik Birk, Sean Gaines: Using DigitalWatermarking for Securing Next Generation Media Broadcasts Advances in Machine Learning and Data Analysis, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering , Vol. 48, November 2009
Dominik Birk, Felix Gröbert, Jörg Schwenk: Web 2.0: Freund oder Feind? Published in "Web 2.0 - Potenziale für die Entwicklung von Medienkompetenz", Schriftenreihe Medienkompetenz des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Band 7. Also available at the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg
Dominik Birk, Maximillian Dornseif, Sebastian Gajek, Felix Gröbert: Phishing Phishers - Verfolgung von Identitätsbetrügern und Geldwäschern Published in kes - The Information Security Journal 2007 #3
Alexander Kasper, Dominik Birk Sicherheitsaspekte virtueller Hosts: Published in iX / 9 2007
Dominik Birk, Felix Gröbert, Christoph Wegener Schnapp mich - Wie Web 2.0 den automatisierten Missbrauch ermöglicht (title story) Published in iX / 9 2008
Dominik Birk, Christoph Wegener Web Exploit Toolkits - Gefahr durch Malware-Baukästen Published in iX / 11 2008
Sicherheit im Web 2.0 - ECMC and Federal State of NRW, Bochum, January 2007
Ein Framework zur Identifikation von Identitätsbetrügern, Geldwäschern und Phishing-Simulanten - Congress of the German Federal Office for Information Security, Bonn, May 2007
Sicherheit und Datenschutz im Web 2.0 - iteratec Workshops, Frankfurt and Munich, October
Web Exploit Toolkits - Moderne Infektionsroutinen - a-i3/BSI Symposium 2008, Bochum, May 2008
Web Exploit Toolkits - Moderne Infektionsroutinen - D * A * CH Security 2008, Berlin, June 2008
A Framework for Digital Watermarking Next Generation Media Broadcasts - World Congress on Engineering & Computer Science 2008, UC Berkeley, San Francisco, USA, October 2008 & 4th International Conference on Automated Solutions for Cross Media Content and Multi-channel Distribution (Axmedis 2008), Florence, Italy, November 2008
(Un)Sicherheit im Web 2.0 - heise forum - CeBit - Sicherheit und IT-Recht, Hannover, March 2009
Web Exploit Toolkits - Moderne Infektionsroutinen - 16. DFN Workshop „Sicherheit in vernetzten Systemen“, Hannover, March 2009
Suchmaschinen - Hacking - a-i3/BSI-Symposium 2009: Identitätsschutz in E-Government und E-Business, Bochum, March 2009
Datenschleudern leicht gemacht: Gläserne Menschen durch Web-2.0-Anwendungen - Postersession at the BSI-Congress 2009: Sichere Wege in der vernetzten Welt, Bonn, May 2009(pdf - 0.1 MB)
Automatisierter Identitätsdiebstahl in sozialen Netzwerken - D*A*CH Security 2009, Bochum, May 2009
Flipping the Phishing Con Game - Design and Implementation of FishPhucker - Hacking at Random (HAR 2009), Vierhouten, August 2009(pdf - 0.8 MB) - Project Homepage
Fortgeschrittener Identitätsdiebstahl in Zeiten des Web-2.0 - Verinice.XP, Göttingen, August 2009
Datenschutz in Sozialen Netzwerken: Freund oder Feind? - Informatik 2009, Lübeck (invited talk), September 2009
The German "Bürgerportal"- A Secure Email and e-Government System? - ISSE 2009, Den Haag, Netherlands, September 2009
"Eine neue Strategie gegen Phishing" Stuttgarter Zeitung, 13.Juni 2007
"Phisher im Netz gefangen" Ruhr-Nachrichten, 27. Juni 2007
"Report: Phoneypot Das Framework gegen Phisher" Techchannel.de, 01.10.2007
"And the Winner was ..." KES Magazine, 2008#4
"Geklautes Ich in Sozialen Netzwerken" Interview, Deutschlandfunk, 08.08.2009
"Die Anzahl der Risiken im Netz steigt" Interview, Unicum.de, September 2009
"Falsche Freunde - Datenklau bei SchülerVZ" Focus Magazin, Oktober 2009
"Die Hacker-Akademie" Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), November 2009
"Bargeldlos in die Falle" Statement, Hessischer Rundfunk, November 2009
Scotland 2002
10 days through the scottish Highlands. From Inverness directly over the Monadiliath Mountains towards Aviemore.
Norway 2002
12 days solo through the norwegian Hardangervidda in August 2002. From Geilo higgledy-piggledy over the Halingskarvet till Finse. I went on from Finse by hitch-hiking until I reached Flam and took the Flamsbana to Myrdal. The night train took me back to Oslo in order to reach Germany.
Massada 2002
A trip from the town Arad in Israel to the ancient town Massada right beside the Dead Sea.
45 Km in 2 days through the tongue of the Negev desert was quite hard - hot during the day - damn cold at night. Our luggage was something about 7 Kg.
Wadi Quelt 2002
A tour in November 2002 from the picturesque old town of Jerusalem to the oldiest and lowest town on our planet (no joke) - Jericho.
On our way we perambulated the Wadi Quelt with the old greek-orthodox monastery. My luggage was something around 7 Kilos and we did approximately 60 Km in these days.
Golan 2002
A 3-day-tour in October to the Golan Heights over the weekend with 3 of my german friends. This was one of my first weekend-tours in Israel and the area wasn't one of the easiest.
However everything went fine and we crossed the Zavitan-Nationalpark and visited the Dvorath-Waterfalls. Arrival and departure by hitch-hiking. Some of the keywords: Hyena, Mortar, Cliff-jumping etc. The luggage was something around 7 Kilos. The distance beetwen starting point and ending point was roughly 40 Km.
Mixed Middle East 2002/2003
This is a collection of a few picture which I couldn't categorize. They are all of my time in the Middle East during 2002/2003.
Jordan 2002
This trip was a 3 weeks tour through whole Jordan by bus, hitch-hiking and by car. From Amman we head out for the desert castles in the far east near the Iraqi border always
on the track of Lawrence from Arabia. After that we went down to Hammamat'Main and the hot springs near the Dead Sea from where we tried to reach Petra by hitch-hiking.
In the end we visited the Wadi Rum and Aquaba before we crossed the border to Israel
again in order to go back by bus to Jerusalem.
Our luggage was something about 7 Kg each and we did around 600 Km or even more,
I really don't know.
Egypt 2003
A few friends from Israel and I stayed almost 4 weeks in Egypt till the second Iraqi War began. We visited pretty much all of the touristic features down there. But my most favorite sight in Egypt is still Cairo - probably the most fascinating city on our planet which I visited up to now.
Our luggage was something around 12 Kg each.
Goeppingen - Esslingen 2003
After coming back from the Middle East, my friend Mikel and me walked in 11,5 hours from Goeppingen to Esslingen.
This was something about 38,5 Km. We planned to do this trip in 2 days, but somehow we had to satisfy our ambition to do the trip in 1 day.
We tried to to avoid walking on normal streets and we did well. ;-)
Pyrenees 2003
10 days through the rough mountain area of the Pyrenees. Tilo, a friend of mine accompanied me.
Saentis 2003
2 of the most exhausting days in my life. A friend of mine, Jonas, and me planned to walk just a little bit around the mountain Saentis in Switzerland. After 15 hours, 35 Km snowshoeing,
endless differences in altitude, we finalized this horror trip in December 2003.
The luggage was something around 20Kg each!
Fleckistock (3416m) 2004
One weekend in the Alpes in order to climb the Fleckistock with 2 crazy colleagues, Alex and Ant.
Ireland 2004
A quite easy tour through the northern part of Ireland with 3 of my friends in March 2004.
In spite of everything it was really a nive trip - thanx a lot to Jonas, Manuel and Ferdinand.
The luggage was something around 15-20Kg each and we did ca. 100Km in 10 days - so easy walking.
Piz Palue (3905m) 2004
One weekend in July in Bernina at the Piz Palue in order to get skilled in alpine touring, attitude in ice etc. Everything went fine and we learned a lot.
My luggage was something around 5 Kg.
White Desert 2004/2005
The greatest tour till this day. A friend of mine, Manuel, and I went 10 days on foot through the White Desert in Egypt from the northern to the southern end.
We carried our water on self-made sulkies. Our luggage was around 60Kg each and we did something around 140 Km in 10 days - this was really a hard trip of which I'm dreaming till today. It was my first desert trip - and now I'm addicted.
Trans-Sarek 2005
10 days with 3 friend of mine (Tilo, Nam, Carina) through the last wilderness of Europe. Carina, the only girl in our team did a great job, though it was her first tour.
The whole trip was great ... but never Sarek again in August. Damn midges ...
My luggage was something around 16 Kg.
Jordan Desert Solo 2005/2006
A dream became reality during the turn of the year 2005 - 2006. I accomplished almost 220 KM alone with my desert-sulky in the Eastern Jordan Desert near the Saudi-Arabian border. After succeeding in the White-Desert the year before with Manuel, this trip was the top of the mountain.
Anything went fine except for a few problems with the desert border patrol of Jordan which took me into custody for several hours. But with managing 10 days alone in one of our damn deserts on this world with own water supply etc. I realized, that I have to make smaller steps from now on concerning desert trips.
Hungary/Romania Backpacking 2006
2 weeks travelling around especially in Romania was very illuminating - to see that there are also in Europe pretty fucked up living conditions for many people.
We also went to the Carpathian Mountains, the Black Sea, Bukarest, Budapest, to the hometown of Dracula :-) etc.
Thx to Buzzer, Jonas and Ferdi for the nice company.
Alpes - New Year 2006/2007 5 days in the Alpes over New Year in order to escape from these boring New Year celebration parties. 5 friends of mine joined this trip, even though they didn't know each other. This was really great! Thx goes out to Jonas, Andre, Buzzer, Rene und Mikel ...
Morocco 2007
2 weeks in this amazing country with Buzzer, a friend of mine. We went trekking in the High Atlas, rocked the desert in the south and chilled in several bigger cities.
Sardinia 2007/2008
I went to Sardinia for almost 2 weeks in order to sidestep the boring german new year celebrations. Two of my friends joined me and we really had a great time.
San Francisco 2008
1 week conference trip to San Francisco (USA). I didn't have much spare time, but I saw a lot of awesome things in this amazing city.
Florence 2008
4 days conference trip to Florence, Italy. I went out with some guys I met at the conference. Florence is really great and there's much to see. Always worth a visit.
India 2009
3 weeks in an awesome country with so much to see. It was my first trip with four more friends of mine. We mainly visited east and central India by bus, foot, plane and train - January 2009.
Ostkustleden 2009
Around Easter 2009 I spent just a few days on parts of the beautiful Ostkustleden (Schweden) together with Felix and Niggels.
Krakau 2009
In November 2009, I visited Krakau (Poland) for a few days with 3 of my friends. Very nice city with a lot of churches and other interesting things to see.
Syria 2009
Around christmas 2009 I went to Syria for the next desert trip. This time, two of my friends accompanied me for approximately 20 days in Syria. It is really a great and fascinating country with a lot of things to see, however due to the current political situation I cannot recommend it for desert trips in the eastern desert regions.
Eina 2010
This was just a short weekend trip in January 2010 with one of my colleagues in Gjovik, Norway. We decided to leave the everyday life behind us for 2 days and go out for some hiking in the area of the town Eina.