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28 August 2023
The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)
ISTA invites applications for several open positions in all areas of computer science including cryptography, systems security and privacy.
We offer:
· Thriving international and interdisciplinary research environment with English as the working language
· State-of-the-art facilities
· Attractive salary and generous start-up package
· Guaranteed annual base funding
· International graduate school
· PhD program with a unique blend of interdisciplinary coursework and research group rotations
· Professional development opportunities
· Employee Assistance Program
· Dual-career support
· Childcare facilities
· Commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive working environment
· Close proximity to Vienna
Assistant professors receive independent group leader positions with an initial contract of six years, at the end of which they are reviewed by international peers. A positive evaluation leads to promotion to the tenured professor position.
Tenured positions are open to distinguished scientists with several years of experience leading research groups.
We strongly encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to apply.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Krzysztof Pietrzak (pietrzak@ist.ac.at)
More information: https://www.ista.ac.at/en/jobs/faculty/
The University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science
The ideal candidate should have a PhD degree in Computer Science or related area (or near completion) and a proven record of publications in cryptography and/or security venues such as Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, TCC, PKC, CCS, S&P, USENIX, ACNS, ESORICS, etc. Experience with protocol composition frameworks (such as the UC framework) is a plus, but not required.
The postdoc will be hosted by Bernardo Magri at the Systems and Software Security group at the CS department of the University of Manchester, UK.
The position is for 2 years and can be filled from September to December 2023, and will remain open until October 2nd 2023. For enquiries please contact Bernardo Magri at the email below. The formal application for the position should be completed at the following link: https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=26007
Closing date for applications:
Contact: bernardo.magri@manchester.ac.uk
More information: https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=26007
Institute for IT Security, University of Lübeck, Germany
We are looking for support in the following subject areas:
- Automated code analysis and security analysis of applications
- Analysis and hardening of IoT systems
- Research of software-based protection mechanisms for IoT
As the ideal candidate, you bring motivation and willingness to work and research creatively and independently.
- Your main areas of interest are in system security and/or applied cryptography.
- You have experience in the areas of cryptography, code analysis, hardware-oriented programming and/or machine learning.
- You are highly motivated to contribute to international research collaborations and to develop and publish first-class research results.
We offer excellent working conditions in an international team of top researchers and collaboration opportunities with prestigious working groups in IT security worldwide in one of the most livable cities in Northern Europe.
The position is a full-time position to be classified in pay group 13 of the TV-L, including several benefits such as retirement benefits. The employment is initially limited until December 14, 2025, with an option for extension. The review of applications starts immediately until the position is filled.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Thomas Eisenbarth (its.bewerbungen@uni-luebeck.de)
More information: https://www.its.uni-luebeck.de/en/jobs.html
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology; Vienna, Austria
AIT is Austrias largest non-universitary research institute. Its Cyber Security team focuses on various aspects of security, including anomaly detection, cyber ranges, penetration testing, and cryptography. The cryptography group is conducting research in various directions, including secure communication, privacy-enhancing technologies, and long-term and post-quantum security. Given a growing portfolio of research projects, the group seeks to grow and thus has a vacancy for a post-doctoral researcher in related areas.
Requirements:- PhD degree in Computer Science, Cyber Security, or a related field, with a specialization on cryptology
- Profound knowledge in one or more of the following areas: secure multi-party computation (MPC), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), threshold cryptography, distributed algorithms, privacy-preserving machine learning, verifiable computation
- Strong track record with publications at competitive academic conferences or journals (e.g., Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, TCC, PKC, CCS, S&P, USENIX, ESORICS, ...)
- Good knowledge of a programming language (e.g., C/C++, Rust, Java, Python) and software development is a plus
- Very good written and oral English skills; knowledge of German is not a requirement but willingness to learn German is expected
The position lasts for two years. The salary starts from ~59k€/year, depending on experience. The review process will begin immediately and will continue open until the position has been filled.
Informal inquiries can be done by email, but formal applications must be submitted through: https://jobs.ait.ac.at/Job/215934
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Stephan Krenn; stephan.krenn[at]ait.ac.at
More information: https://jobs.ait.ac.at/Job/215934
Institute for IT Security, University of Lübeck, Germany
We are looking for support in the following subject areas:
- Security analysis and design of trusted execution environments and secure microarchitectures
- Automated code analysis and software-based protection measures, including the use of large language models
- Applied (post-quantum) cryptography and side-channel analysis
As the ideal candidate, you bring motivation and willingness to work and research creatively and independently.
- Your main areas of interest are in system security and/or applied cryptography.
- You have experience in the areas of cryptography, code analysis, hardware-oriented programming and/or machine learning.
- You have already published highly at relevant conferences in system security and cryptography (S&P, CCS, USENIX Security, CHES, CRYPTO, Eurocrypt, etc.) and built your own scientific network.
Necessary prerequisite is a completed PhD in the field of IT security. Your application should contain a CV, list of publications, a short research statement and at least one contact for a reference letter. What else do we offer?
We offer excellent working conditions in an international team of top researchers and collaboration opportunities with prestigious working groups in IT security worldwide in one of the most livable cities in Northern Europe.
The review of applications starts immediately until the position is filled. The employment is initially limited until June 30, 2025, with an option for extension.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Thomas Eisenbarth (its.bewerbungen@uni-luebeck.de)
More information: https://www.its.uni-luebeck.de/en/jobs.html
University College Cork, Ireland
The PhD student will work under the supervision of Principal Investigator Dr. Paolo Palmieri, University College Cork (UCC), and co-Investigator Dr. Hazel Murray, Munster Technological University (MTU). The student will join the thriving Cryptography Group at UCC, where several other PhD students and Post-Docs are carrying out related research. The project is a collaboration between UCC (host organization) and MTU, and part of CONNECT - Centre for Future Networks & Communications, a major Science Foundation Ireland research initiative.
Candidates should have a background/strong interest in security and privacy, as well as a good grasp of mathematics. Previous experience in cryptography is an asset, but is not required. Applicants should hold a good honours undergraduate or Master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, or other relevant subject.
The successful applicant will receive a stipend of €19,000 per annum for four years (subject to successful annual progress reviews). Tuition fees will be covered by the project, and a travel budget is available to present at international conferences. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to work with the Principal Investigator and co-Investigator extensive network of international research collaborations.
We expect the PhD student to start in Autumn 2023 or shortly thereafter.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: General informal enquires about the PhD positions can be made to Dr. Paolo Palmieri at e-mail: p.palmieri@cs.ucc.ie
Applications must be made online by September 7, 2023 at the address: https://ucc.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_brw0JC79mZz2lmu
More information: https://security.ucc.ie/vacancies.html
Xiaoyang Dong, Shun Li, Phuong Pham, Guoyan Zhang
In this paper, we answer this open question by building a quantum herding attack, where the time complexity is slightly increased from Benedikt et al.'s $2^{0.43n}$ to ours $2^{0.46n}$, but the size of qRAM is reduced from Benedikt et al.'s $2^{0.43n}$ to ours $\mathcal{O}(n)$. Besides, we also introduce various low-qRAM quantum attacks on hash concatenation combiner, hash XOR combiner, Hash-Twice, and Zipper hash functions.
Sujaya Maiyya, Sharath Vemula, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi, Florian Kerschbaum
Shahar Papini, Ulrich Haböck
Augustin Bariant
In this paper, we show a new univariate modelization on a variant of Ciminion proposed by the designers. This instance restricts the attacker to at most $2^{s/2}$ data, where $s$ is the security level. Because the designers chose to reduce the number of rounds in that specific attacker model, we are able to attack the cipher for large security levels. We also propose some slight modifications of Ciminion that would overcome this vulnerability.
Zibo Zhou, Zongyang Zhang, Jin Dong
In this paper, we construct a PCD scheme having the smallest prover's cost and recursion overhead in the literature. Specifically, the prover's cost at each step is dominated by only one $O(|C|)$-sized multi-scalar multiplication (MSM), and the recursion overhead is dominated by only one $2r$-sized MSM, where $|C|$ is the computation size and $r$ is the number of incoming edges at certain step. In contrast, the state-of-the-art PCD scheme requires $4r+12$ $O(|C|)$-sized MSMs w.r.t. the prover's cost and six $2r$-sized MSMs, one $6r$-sized MSM w.r.t. the recursion overhead. In addition, our PCD scheme supports more expressive constraint system for computations—customizable constraint system (CCS) that supports high-degree constraints efficiently, in contrast with rank-1 constraint system (R1CS) that supports only quadratic constraints used in existing PCD schemes.
Underlying our PCD scheme is a multi-folding scheme that reduces the task of checking multiple instances into the task of checking one. We generalize existing construction to support arbitrary number of instances.
Christoffer Raun, Benjamin Estermann, Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Roger Wattenhofer, Arthur Gervais, Ye Wang
Shuping Mao, Zhiyu Zhang, Lei Hu, Luying Li, Peng Wang
Jun Yan
Additionally, we rephrase the flavor conversion of canonical quantum bit commitments as a hardness conversion, which then can be used to establish a stronger quantum indistinguishability that works well with quantum rewinding just like in the post-quantum setting. Such indistinguishability allows us to establish the security of the Goldreich-Kahan construction of constant-round zero-knowledge proofs for NP instantiated with canonical quantum bit commitments. We thus for the first time construct a constant-round (actually, four-round) quantum computational zero-knowledge proof for NP based on the minimum complexity assumption that is needed for the complexity-based quantum cryptography.
Alessandro Coglio, Eric McCarthy, Eric Smith, Collin Chin, Pranav Gaddamadugu, Michel Dellepere
Anaïs Barthoulot, Olivier Blazy, Sébastien Canard
Hanwen Feng, Qiang Tang
Jacqueline Brendel, Sebastian Clermont, Marc Fischlin
Antonio de la Piedra, Marloes Venema, Greg Alpár
To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce ACABELLA. ACABELLA simplifies generating and verifying security proofs for pairing-based ABE schemes. It consists of a framework for security proofs that are easy to verify manually and an automated tool that efficiently generates these security proofs. Creating such security proofs generally takes no more than a few seconds. The output is easy to understand, and the proofs can be verified manually. In particular, the verification of a security proof generated by ACABELLA boils down to performing simple linear algebra.
The ACABELLA tool is open source and also available via a web interface. With its help, experts can simplify their proof process by verifying or refuting the security claims of their schemes and practitioners can get an assurance that the ABE scheme of their choice is secure.
24 August 2023
Peter Gaži, Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell
We propose and analyze several new committee selection schemes that improve upon existing techniques by adopting low-variance assignment of certain committee members that hold significant stake. These schemes provide notable improvements to the size--security trade-off arising from the stake distributions of many deployed ledgers.