IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
08 January 2019
Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore
Applicants are expected to have a PhD degree in Mathematics/Computer Science/Engineering and a strong background in algebra and number theory in Bachelor degree and higher degree courses.
A preferred candidate is to have experience in lattice-based cryptography and is expected to be proficient in C/C++ language, Magma Software, SAGEMATH Software, a team worker and able to conduct independent research.
Closing date for applications: 15 March 2019
Contact: Dr Tan Chik How, Principal Research Scientist, tsltch (at) nus.edu.sg
IMDEA Software Institute
The primary mission of the IMDEA Software Institute is to perform research of excellence at the highest international level in software development technologies. It is one of the highest ranked institutions worldwide in its main topic areas.
Information about the Institute\'s current faculty and research can be found at http://www.software.imdea.org .
Closing date for applications: 6 February 2019
Contact: Applications should be completed at:
https://careers.imdea.org/software/
Please include reference FAC-1-2019 at the beginning of the form. For full consideration, complete applications must be received by February 6, 2018, although applications will continue to be accepted until the positions are filled. Pending final approval, we expect to fill two positions.
More information: http://www.software.imdea.org
04 January 2019
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam
The challenges concern the modelling, analysis, and design of software systems that satisfy a range of security and privacy requirements related to, but not confined to, secure information flow, static and dynamic security guarantees, security testing, intrusion detection, differential privacy, security games, authentication, authorization, anonymous communication, and cryptography.
We are looking for researchers with excellent track records in computer science, with a focus on privacy and security in software systems and their scientific foundations. The tenure-track candidates are expected to develop a research program that addresses current societal demands on secure software systems, whereas senior candidates are expected to develop and lead a new group in this area. The candidates are expected to utilise synergies with other CWI research groups, like the cryptology group of prof. Ronald Cramer.
For more detailed descriptions of the individual positions and the required profiles, we refer to the link below.
Applicants should send:
- a motivation letter;
- a curriculum vitae with a list of publications;
- a copy of their thesis or of their three most prominent publications;
- the names of at least three prominent scientists who can provide letters of recommendation;
- a research statement and a well-founded, innovative research plan for a period of 5 years, including plans on how to acquire additional funding and a challenging outlook for the future, which takes into account the international research landscape.
The candidates are asked to indicate in their application which position has their preference. We especially invite qualified women to apply.
Closing date for applications: 11 February 2019
Contact: Angelique Schilder (apply (at) cwi.nl)
More information: https://www.cwi.nl/jobs/vacancies/tenure-track-and-senior-researcher-positions-in-secure-software-systems-in-amsterdam
University of Bern, Switzerland
Ph.D. and Postdoc positions are available in the new research group in cryptology and data security, established by Christian Cachin, at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Bern.
Our research addresses all aspects of security in distributed systems, especially cryptographic protocols, consistency, consensus, and cloud-computing security. We are particularly interested in blockchains, distributed ledger technology, cryptocurrencies, and their security and economics.
Candidates should have a strong background in computer science or mathematics. They should like conceptual, rigorous thinking for working theoretically, or be interested in building concrete systems for working practically. Demonstrated expertise in blockchain technology, cryptography, or distributed computing is a plus.
Positions are available from Spring 2019 and come with a competitive salary. The selection process runs until suitable candidates have been found. The University of Bern conducts excellent research and lives up its vision that \'Knowledge generates value\'. The city of Bern lies in the center of Switzerland and offers some of the highest quality of life worldwide.
Applicants should hold a master degree (for Ph.D. positions) or a Ph.D. (for postdoc positions), with expertise in the relevant research topics.
Applications should be sent by email, with subject line *Application for Postdoc* or *Application for Ph.D.*, as one single PDF file, addressed directly to Prof. Christian Cachin by email.
For more information, please contact Christian Cachin ( https://cachin.com/cc/ ).
Closing date for applications: 30 March 2019
Contact: Christian Cachin, cachin (at) inf.unibe.ch
More information: https://cachin.com/cc/positions.html
Transparent Systems, Seattle WA
We\'re in near ‘stealth’ mode and we\'re a well-financed, financial technology start-up located in Seattle. We\'re growing (currently 13 employees) and need a senior level Security Software Engineer to help us deliver our game changing platform. We’re moving past the old way of thinking and are creating a seamless universal platform to bring the exchange of funds up to the speed of the Internet.
What you’ll be doing:
Be our security SME.
Design, implement, and optimize core cryptographic libraries and secure systems (protocols and mechanisms).
Perform technical security assessments, code audits and design reviews.
Develop technical solutions to help mitigate security vulnerabilities.
Conduct research to identify new attack avenues and product enhancements.
What you likely bring to us:
You have start-up experience and you really want to work on v1. Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field.
Experience implementing cryptographic primitives/algorithms and cryptographic protocols.
Experience with any of the following is a plus: Go, Rust, C, C++. Significant experience building secure applications and strong knowledge of authentication protocols and applied cryptography. Must be able to identify and defend against protocol/network-level attacks.
Strong experience with security-oriented system design with applied cryptography at the forefront.
What we offer:
Competitive start-up salary.
Full benefits package and equity.
Fun place to work with smart people!
Collaborative environment and a small team, make a big impact immediately.
Closing date for applications: 1 June 2019
Contact: Karl Augustine, Director of Recruiting, kaugust (at) transparentinc.co, 111 S. Jackson St., Seattle WA 98104
More information: https://jobs.lever.co/transparentinc
Transparent Systems, Seattle WA
We\'re in near ‘stealth’ mode and we\'re a well-financed, financial technology start-up located in Seattle. We\'re growing (currently 13 employees) and need a senior level Security Software Engineer to help us deliver our game changing platform. We’re moving past the old way of thinking and are creating a seamless universal platform to bring the exchange of funds up to the speed of the Internet.
What you’ll be doing:
Be our security SME.
Design, implement, and optimize core cryptographic libraries and secure systems (protocols and mechanisms).
Perform technical security assessments, code audits and design reviews.
Develop technical solutions to help mitigate security vulnerabilities.
Conduct research to identify new attack avenues and product enhancements.
What you likely bring to us:
You have start-up experience and you really want to work on v1. Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field.
Experience implementing cryptographic primitives/algorithms and cryptographic protocols.
Experience with any of the following is a plus: Go, Rust, C, C++. Significant experience building secure applications and strong knowledge of authentication protocols and applied cryptography. Must be able to identify and defend against protocol/network-level attacks.
Strong experience with security-oriented system design with applied cryptography at the forefront.
What we offer:
Competitive start-up salary.
Full benefits package and equity.
Fun place to work with smart people!
Collaborative environment and a small team, make a big impact immediately.
Closing date for applications: 1 June 2019
Contact: Karl Augustine, Director of Recruiting, kaugust (at) transparentinc.co, 111 S. Jackson St., Seattle WA 98104
More information: https://jobs.lever.co/transparentinc
03 January 2019
San Ling, Khoa Nguyen, Huaxiong Wang, Yanhong Xu
~~In this work, we provide the first lattice-based accountable tracing signature scheme. The scheme satisfies the security requirements suggested by Kohlweiss and Miers, assuming the hardness of the Ring Short Integer Solution ($\mathsf{RSIS}$) and the Ring Learning With Errors ($\mathsf{RLWE}$) problems. At the heart of our construction are a lattice-based key-oblivious encryption scheme and a zero-knowledge argument system allowing to prove that a given ciphertext is a valid $\mathsf{RLWE}$ encryption under some hidden yet certified key. These technical building blocks may be of independent interest, e.g., they can be useful for the design of other lattice-based privacy-preserving protocols.
Sikhar Patranabis, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Somindu C. Ramanna
Our ZIPE scheme is adaptively attribute private under the standard Matrix DDH assumption for unbounded collusions. It is additionally computationally function private under a min-entropy variant of the Matrix DDH assumption for predicates sampled from distributions with superlogarithmic min-entropy. Existing (statistically) function private ZIPE schemes due to Boneh et al. [Crypto13, Asiacrypt13] necessarily require predicate distributions with significantly larger min-entropy in the public-key setting.
Our NIPE scheme is adaptively attribute private under the standard Matrix DDH assumption, albeit for bounded collusions. It is also computationally function private under a min-entropy variant of the Matrix DDH assumption for predicates sampled from distributions with super-logarithmic min-entropy. To the best of our knowledge, existing NIPE schemes from bilinear pairings were neither attribute private nor function private.
Our constructions are inspired by the linear FE constructions of Agrawal et al. [Crypto16] and the simulation secure ZIPE of Wee [TCC17]. In our ZIPE scheme, we show a novel way of embedding two different hard problem instances in a single secret key - one for unbounded collusion-resistance and the other for function privacy. With respect to NIPE, we introduce new techniques for simultaneously achieving attribute and function privacy. We also show natural generalizations of our ZIPE and NIPE constructions to a wider class of subspace membership, subspace non-membership and hidden-vector encryption predicates.
NingBo Li, TanPing Zhou, XiaoYuan Yang, YiLiang Han, Longfei Liu, WenChao Liu
Ran Canetti, Alex Lombardi, Daniel Wichs
We obtain our result by constructing a new correlation-intractable hash family [Canetti, Goldreich, and Halevi, JACM~'04] for a large class of relations, which suffices to apply the Fiat-Shamir heuristic to specific 3-message proof systems. In particular, assuming circular secure FHE, our hash function $h$ ensures that for any function $f$ of some a-priori bounded circuit size, it is hard to find an input $x$ such that $h(x)=f(x)$. This continues a recent line of works [Holmgren and Lombardi, FOCS~'18; Canetti et al., ePrint~'18] focused on instantiating special forms of correlation intractability and Fiat-Shamir under weaker assumptions. Another consequence of our hash family construction is that, assuming circular-secure FHE, the classic quadratic residuosity protocol of [Goldwasser, Micali, and Rackoff, SICOMP~'89] is not zero knowledge when repeated in parallel.
We also show that, under the plain LWE assumption (without circularity), our hash family is a universal correlation intractable family for general relations, in the following sense: If there exists any hash family of some description size that is correlation-intractable for general (even inefficient) relations, then our specific construction (with a comparable size) is correlation-intractable for general (efficiently verifiable) relations.
Paulo S. L. M. Barreto, Jefferson E. Ricardini, Marcos A. Simplicio Jr., Harsh Kupwade Patil
Dat Le Tien, Frank Eliassen
Jung Hee Cheon, Andrey Kim, Donggeon Yhee
In this paper, we propose MHEAAN - a generalization of HEAAN to the case of a tensor structure of plaintext slots. Our design takes advantage of the HEAAN scheme, that the precision losses during the evaluation are limited by the depth of the circuit, and it exceeds no more than one bit compared to unencrypted approximate arithmetics, such as floating point operations. Due to the multi-dimensional structure of plaintext slots along with rotations in various dimensions, MHEAAN is a more natural choice for applications involving matrices and tensors. We provide a concrete two-dimensional construction and show the efficiency of our scheme on several matrix operations, such as matrix multiplication, matrix transposition, and inverse.
As an application, we implement the non-interactive Deep Neural Network (DNN) classification algorithm on encrypted data and encrypted model. Due to our efficient bootstrapping, the implementation can be easily extended to DNN structure with an arbitrary number of hidden layers
Early-bird discount through Feb 26
The conference will be held March 25-28 in Paris, France.
Dear members of the IACR
The year 2018 saw considerable growth for IACR: The first RWC sponsored by IACR took place in Zurich, attended by 600 people; the largest Crypto ever with 641 attendees, was held at UCSB in August; and the IACR counts a record number of more than 2100 members for the year 2019.
On behalf of everyone in the field, I'd like to thank the organizers of conferences, workshops, schools, and all further activities of the IACR, as well as the Board members and everyone else working behind the scene, for their efforts in making this possible.
As we move into 2019, let me mention some new developments.
Test-of-time award for the General Conferences
A new Test-of-time Award has been established recently and will start in 2019. It is given out yearly for each one of the three IACR General Conferences: Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt. The award honors "a paper with a lasting impact on the field" and will be given at the conference in year X to a paper published at the same conference in year X - 15.
The awards are selected by a yearly committee with five members, of which two members are appointed by Board and three are program chairs for the respective conferences in year X. This year's committee is chaired by Dan Boneh. Please see the details at https://iacr.org/testoftime/
Silvio Micali to hold the IACR Distinguished Lecture 2020
At its meeting in August, the Board has invited Silvio Micali to the hold the 2020 IACR Distinguished Lecture. This lecture is held annually and rotates between the three IACR General Conferences. We look forward to Silvio Micali's lecture at Crypto 2020!For more information about the IACR Distinguished Lecture, see the website at https://iacr.org/publications/dl/
Board members
The IACR 2018 election was held in October/November to fill three of nine IACR Director positions. Congratulations to Michel Abdalla, Nadia Heninger, and Anna Lysyanskaya for being elected as directors! Michel and Anna were re-elected to their director positions and Nadia joins as a new director.
Among the incumbents of director positions, Phil Rogaway did not run for election and leaves the Board. Likewise the General Chairs of the 2019 General Conferences leave the Board and will again have more time to enjoy a conference as a guest: Orr Dunkelman, Tal Rabin, and Josef Pieprzyk. Let me thank all of them for their memorable contributions to the IACR!
Furthermore, Mitsuru Matsui has been elected as the chair of the Asiacrypt Steering Committee; this committee selects the venues for Asiacrypt as set forth in IACR's operational procedures (https://iacr.org/docs/steering.pdf). Thanks to Xuejia Lai for his work in this role until 2018.
Next IACR events
- Real World Crypto Symposium (RWC 2019), San Jose, USA, Jan 9 - Jan 11
- Fast Software Encryption (FSE 2019), Paris, France, Mar 25 - Mar 28
- Public Key Cryptography (PKC 2019), Beijing, China, Apr 14 - Apr 17
- Eurocrypt 2019, Darmstadt, Germany, May 19 - May 23
To find out more about your IACR and the work of the Board of Directors, please visit https://www.iacr.org and see the minutes of meeting at https://www.iacr.org/docs/minutes/
Happy New Year and best wishes for 2019!
Christian Cachin
IACR President
02 January 2019
Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing Jabalpur
Post: Junior Research Fellow (JRF)
Number of Posts: 1
Project Duration: 3 years or till the completion of the project, whichever is earlier (the position is purely temporary in nature and performance will be reviewed periodically) extendable on approval of ICPS, DST as per ICPS guidelines.
Stipend: 25,000 per month and HRA as admissible depending upon merits, suitability, qualifications and as per the ICPS, DST guidelines.
Essential Qualifications:
BE/B.Tech/ME/M.Tech in Electronics and Communication / VLSI / Computer Science / Information Technology or any other related subject with minimum CPI of 5.5 or 55% marks aggregate in the last degree.
Candidates having good academic and research background with GATE Qualification will be given preference.
Desirables: Candidates having knowledge of Communication/ FPGA (VHDL/Verilog) / Xilinx / Cryptography will be preferred.
Selection Procedure: Written Test (if found desirable by the selection committee) and Interview
How to Apply?
Completely filled application form along with detailed Biodata may be sent by e-mail to soundra.pandiankk (at) gmail.com and the hard copy to be brought on the date of interview. Please note that no TA/DA will be given to the candidates called for the interview.
Incomplete application or only CV shall not be entertained.
Last date for receipt of applications by email: January 31, 2019. Please note that the list of shortlisted candidates and date of interview shall be notified on the web portal after January 31, 2019.
Closing date for applications: 31 January 2019
Contact: Contact: Principal Investigator (PI)
Dr. K.K. Soundra Pandian
Department of Electronics and Communication, VLSI - Cryptography
Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing (IIITDM) Jabalpur
Dumna Airport Road, P.O. Khamaria,
Jabalpur-482005, Madhya Pradesh
Tel: (O): +91-0761-2794473
(M): +91-94446-08310
More information: https://www.iiitdmj.ac.in
Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic
Tasks and objectives: Design and evaluate novel cryptographic technologies for the protection of privacy and digital identity of electronic users, in particular those providing attribute-based authentication in electronic systems; Ensure the user authenticity in dynamic wireless wearable architectures; Find solutions to solve the inefficient revocation of invalid users, the missing identification of malicious users and low performance on constrained devices, such as wearables; Test and benchmark the developed algorithms on existing wearable hardware devices, such as personal tags, smart watch, smart cards.
Closing date for applications: 28 February 2019
Contact: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/364125
More information: http://www.tut.fi/a-wear/recruitment/ESR13.pdf
01 January 2019
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
NTU Singapore offers globally competitive salary package with extremely low income tax and an excellent environment for research. The contract will be initially for one-year, and has the possibility to be extended subject to the performance and availability of funding. The position will be open until filled, interested candidates are to send their CV and 2 reference letters to Prof. Jian Guo. Further information about the research group can be found here: http://catf.crypto.sg
Closing date for applications: 31 May 2019
Contact: Jian Guo, Assistant Professor, guojian (at) ntu.edu.sg
31 December 2018
Ran Canetti, Sunoo Park, Oxana Poburinnaya
To date, only partial results were known: either deniability against coercing only the sender, or against coercing only the receiver [Sahai-Waters, STOC 14] or schemes satisfying weaker notions of deniability [ONeil et al., Crypto 11].
In this paper we present the first fully bideniable interactive encryption scheme, thus resolving the 20-years-old open problem. Our scheme also satisfies an additional, incomparable to standard deniability, property called off-the-record deniability, which we introduce in this paper. This property guarantees that, even if the sender claims that one plaintext was used and the receiver claims a different one, the adversary has no way of figuring out who is lying - the sender, the receiver, or both. This is useful when parties dont have means to agree on what fake plaintext to claim, or when one party defects against the other.
Our protocol has three messages, which is optimal [Bendlin et al., Asiacrypt11], and works in a CRS model. We assume subexponential indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) and one way functions.
Ioana Boureanu, David Gerault, Pascal Lafourcade
Inspired by application-security definitions, we propose a new security model, OracleDB, distinguishing two prover-corruption types: black-box and white-box.
We use this distinction to settle the long-lasting arguments about terrorist-fraud resistance, by showing that it is irrelevant in both the black-box and white-box corruption models.
We then exhibit a security flaw in the PayPass protocol with relay protection, used in EMV contactless payments. We propose an extension to this industry-standard protocol, with only small modifications, and prove its security in our strongest adversary model.
Finally, we exhibit a new generalised distance-fraud attack strategy that defeats the security claims of at least 12 existing distance-bounding protocols.