IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
04 April 2022
Chaoyang District, China, 20 March - 24 March 2023
School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Sushmita Ruj, sushmita.ruj@unsw.edu.au
31 March 2022
Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT), Queen’s University Belfast, UK
The successful candidate must have and your CV/Cover letter application should clearly demonstrate you have:
• 2:1 Honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering/Computer Science/Mathematics (or related discipline)
• A PhD, or about to obtain a PhD, in a relevant subject
• At least 3 years relevant research experience in FPGA/ASIC/Embedded systems design
• Evidence of a strong publication record commensurate with career stage and experience.
This is a fixed term contract available until 31 March 2023.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Professor Máire O'Neill
More information: https://hrwebapp.qub.ac.uk/tlive_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=551890GLbr&WVID=6273090Lgx&LANG=USA
Mustafa Safa Ozdayi, Yue Guo, Mahdi Zamani
In this paper, we propose \textit{Instachain}, a novel sharding approach that breaks the scalability limits of sharding by reducing the shard size to significantly-smaller numbers than was previously considered possible. We achieve this by relaxing the liveness property for some of the shards while still preserving the safety property across all shards. To do this, we carefully adjust the quorum size parameter of the intra-shard SMR protocol to achieve maximum parallelism across all shards without compromising security. In addition, Instachain is the first sharding protocol to adopt the stateless blockchain model in shards, which in conjunction with a novel cross-shard verification technique allows the protocol to efficiently prevent double-spending attempts across significantly-more shards than previous work.
Po-Jen Chen, Tung Chou, Sanjay Deshpande, Norman Lahr, Ruben Niederhagen, Jakub Szefer, Wen Wang
Aurélien Greuet, Simon Montoya, Clémence Vermeersch
Knowing the quotient of the Euclidean division of an integer by the modulus allows to easily recover the remainder. We propose a way to compute efficiently, without divisions, an approximation of this quotient. From this approximation, both full and partial reductions are deduced. The resulting algorithms are modulus specific: the sequence of operations to perform in order to get a reduction depends on the modulus and the size of the input.
We analyse the cost of our algorithms for a usecase coming from post-quantum cryptography. We show that with this modulus, on a CPU with a slow multiplication, our method gives an algorithm faster than prior art algorithms.
Ziaur Rahman, Xun Yi, Mustain Billah, Mousumi Sumi, Adnan Anwar
Vicent Sus
Agnese Gini, Pierrick Méaux
Edward Eaton, Sajin Sasy, Ian Goldberg
To restore unlinkability, we propose a number of concrete designs that use Private Information Retrieval (PIR) to hide information about which service is being queried, even from the HSDirs themselves. We examine the three major classes of PIR schemes, and analyze their performance, security, and how they fit into Tor in this context. We provide and evaluate implementations and end-to-end integrations, and make concrete suggestions to show how these schemes could be used in Tor to minimize the negative impact on performance while providing the most security.
Helger Lipmaa, Janno Siim, Michal Zajac
James Howe, Bas Westerbaan
Atsuki Momose, Ling Ren
Lorenzo Grassi, Yonglin Hao, Christian Rechberger, Markus Schofnegger, Roman Walch, Qingju Wang
These hash functions often look very different from more classical designs such as AES or SHA-2. For example, they work natively with integer objects rather than bits. At the same time, for example Poseidon and Rescue share some common features, such as being SPN schemes and instantiating the nonlinear layer with invertible power maps. While this allows the designers to provide simple and strong arguments for establishing their security, it also introduces some crucial limitations in the design, which affects the performance in the target applications.
To overcome these limitations, we propose the Horst mode of operation, in which the addition in a Feistel scheme $(x,y) \mapsto (y+F(x), x)$ is replaced by a multiplication, i.e., $(x,y) \mapsto (y \times G(x), x)$.
By carefully analyzing the relevant performance metrics in SNARK and STARK protocols, we show how to combine an expanding Horst scheme and the strong points of existing schemes in order to provide security and better efficiency in the target applications. We provide an extensive security analysis for our new design Griffin and a comparison with all current competitors.
Jinyu Lu, Yunwen Liu, Tomer Ashur, Bing Sun, Chao Li
Taipei, Taiwan, 29 August - 2 September 2022
Submission deadline: 3 May 2022
Notification: 10 June 2022
Taipei, Taiwan, 5 December - 9 December 2022
Submission deadline: 27 May 2022
Notification: 25 August 2022
University of Tübingen, Department of Computer Science; Tübingen, Germany
Research Topics: Development and analysis of cryptography-based privacy-preserving solutions for real-world healthcare problems. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): privacy-preserving machine learning, data privacy as well as foundations for real-world cryptography.
Your profile:
- Completed Master's degree (or equivalent) at a top university with excellent grades in computer science, or a similar area.
- Knowledge in applied cryptography/security and machine learning.
- Very good software development skills.
- Self-motivated, reliable, creative, can work independently and want to do excellent research.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Dr. Mete Akgün (mete.akguen@uni-tuebingen.de)
Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
The department of Mathematics and Computer Science at TU Eindhoven has a postdoc vacancy for theoretical work in CAT2. The research will concentrate on
- theory related to the Quantum Key Distribution testbed under development in Eindhoven;
- quantum cryptography beyond QKD, e.g. key recycling, unclonable encryption, unclonable credentials, quantum PUFs etc.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Boris Skoric
More information: https://jobs.tue.nl/en/vacancy/postdoc-cat2-quantum-protocols-910938.html
Technology Innovation Institute (TII) - Abu Dhabi, UAE
Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is a recently-established publicly-funded research institute in Abu Dhabi (UAE). It is home to a diverse community of leading scientists and engineers from across the globe.
Job DescriptionWe are looking for permanent researchers to join the Cryptographic Protocols team within the Cryptography Research Center (CRC) at TII. The main aim of the team is to conduct applied academic research in areas relating to cryptographic protocols, such as: TLS, QUIC, Tor, Key Exchange, Secure Channels, Cryptographic Primitives, Privacy Enhancing Technologies, MLS and Secure Messaging, Probabilistic Data Structures in Adversarial Environments, and Blockchain-Related Technologies. The nature of the research spans both theory and practice, covering aspects such as provable security, security models, efficient designs, implementation aspects, and attacks.
Applicants should have completed (or be close to completing) their PhD in a related area and preferably have postdoctoral research experience. Preference will be given to applicants with publications in top-tier venues such as CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, and USENIX.
Required Skills:- Fluency in English (verbal and written) and an ability to communicate research effectively.
- Good problem-solving skills and an ability to conduct research independently.
- Good interpersonal and collaborative skills.
- Solid knowledge in cryptography.
- Strong background in Mathematics and/or Computer Science.
- Programming, Software Engineering, experience in implementing cryptographic primitives and attacks on real-world cryptosystems, reverse engineering of closed-source protocols.
- Experience in analyzing protocol standards and specifications.
- Vibrant working environment, flexible working conditions, and travel funding.
- Industry-competitive tax-free salary.
- Family-wide health insurance and children’s education allowance.
- Sunshine all year round.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
- Contact Jean Paul Degabriele (jeanpaul.degabriele@tii.ae) for information relating to research and work environment.
- To apply send your CV to Mehdi Messaoudi (mehdi.messaoudi@tii.ae) - Talent Acquisition Manager.
More information: https://www.tii.ae/cryptography