IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
13 May 2019
Razvan Barbulescu, Nadia El Mrabet, Loubna Ghammam
After estimating the practical security of an extensive list of families, we compute the complexity of the optimal Ate pairing at 128 and 192 bits of security. For some of the families the optimal Ate has never been studied before. We show that a number of families of embedding degree 9, 14 and 15 are very competitive with $BN$, $BLS12$ and $KSS16$ at 128 bits of security. We identify a set of candidates for 192 bits and 256 bits of security.
Eric Brier, Houda Ferradi, Marc Joye, David Naccache
Pierrick Méaux, Claude Carlet, Anthony Journault, François-Xavier Standaert
Jacob Appelbaum, Chloe Martindale, Peter Wu
Prasanna Raghaw Mishra, Bhartendu Nandan, Navneet Gaba
Karim Baghery
Sébastien Canard, Loïc Ferreira
Sarah McCarthy, James Howe , Neil Smyth, Seamus Brannigan, Máire O'Neill
11 May 2019
Graz University of Technology
Graz University of technology offers a very active research environment with more than 70 researchers on all aspects of information security.
Candidates for a PhD in information security should have experience/interest in at least one of the following fields:
* Side Channels
* Operating system security
* Software isolation techniques
* Applied Cryptography
* Formal methods
* Code analysis and compilers
For details on the position and the application process see: https://www.tugraz.at/projekte/dependablethings/jobs/
Closing date for applications: 9 June 2019
Contact: Stefan Mangard, Email: Stefan.Mangard (at) iaik.tugraz.at
More information: https://www.tugraz.at/projekte/dependablethings/jobs/
Input Output Hong Kong -
You will have a good understanding of cryptography (e.g. mathematics, information theory, primitives, implementations) and the ability to deliver working implementation related to these domains. The ideal candidate should understand and follow best engineering processes and practices and should demonstrate a working knowledge of a functional programming language (preference is for Haskell), and system languages (preferably Rust or C).
Skills & Requirements:
Skills and Knowledge – - A solid understanding of cryptography: basic theory & use. System programming experience. Ability to translate specifications (e.g. cryptography research papers, RFCs) into working code. Know when and how to use basic cryptographic primitives. Can reason about complex & abstract problems
Responsibilities - Read & review cryptographic research papers and implement them as a prototype. Improve existing implementations of common cryptographic primitives and/or interface/translate them to a different programming language. Transform prototypes into production level projects. Interact and coordinate with research, engineering and product management teams
Completion of a relevant degree such as Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics or a related technical discipline.
Desired competencies - We are particularly interested in at least one of them having the following profile: Familiarity and/or experience with privacy enhancing cryptographic technologies, e.g., zero-knowledge proofs and/or SNARKs, multi-party computation, and differential privacy. Functional programming experience (Preferably Scala or Haskell)
When you apply… Please include an up-to-date resume. We also strongly encourage you to include a cover letter explaining why you’re interested in working at IOHK.
Closing date for applications: 1 July 2019
Contact: David Rountree
david.rountree (at) iohk.io
More information: https://iohk.io/careers/#op-286193-specialized-cryptography-engineer-
Providence, USA, 10 June - 14 June 2019
Cryptography, Security, and Privacy Research Group, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
- For applying online, and questions about the application-process for M.Sc. and Ph.D. positions, visit
https://gsse.ku.edu.tr/en/admissions/application-requirements/
All applications must be completed online. Deadline is 7 June 2019.
- For postdoctoral researcher positions, contact Assoc. Prof. Alptekin Küpçü directly, including full CV, sample publications, a research proposal, and 2-3 reference letters sent directly by the referees.
http://home.ku.edu.tr/~akupcu
Dates are flexible.
Applications with missing documents will not be considered.
Closing date for applications: 15 September 2019
Contact: gsse (at) ku.edu.tr
More information: https://crypto.ku.edu.tr/work-with-us/
Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey
Members of the institute are expected to pursue a vigorous research program, attract external research funding, and contribute strongly to the institute\'s teaching program at graduate level. Interested candidates are invited to submit an application online with following documents:
- Curriculum Vitae;
- Research Statement;
- Teaching Statement;
- Name and address of three references.
Closing date for applications: 15 June 2019
More information: https://iam.metu.edu.tr/open-faculty-positions
University of Rennes, France
The position is for 1 year, renewable twice.
Requirements:
- PhD degree in computer sciences or mathematics
- good programming skill
- publications in top IACR conferences
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Patrick Derbez: patrick.derbez (at) irisa.fr
University of Surrey
Salary: 32,236 to 95,462 GBP, depending on Qualifications, Experience and Role applied for.
The Department of Computer Science wishes to appoint up to SIX posts to support its ambitious strategic growth in student numbers, strengthening of its research directions and collaborations with industry. We are looking to attract talented individuals who will inspire, lead, and make a significance impact in research and on the student experience. There is an opportunity for posts to be aligned in new research areas to increase diverse research activity within the Department.
The Department has an international reputation for research and teaching. Research in the department is currently focused on two main areas - Nature Inspired Computing and Engineering (NICE), and Secure Systems, with expertise in security by design, cryptography, authentication, verification, distributed ledger technologies, trusted systems, IoT security, program analysis and cloud security. Surrey is recognised by NCSC as an ACE-CSR: Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research.
The teaching posts offer an opportunity to contribute to teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The Department is launching a new MSc in Data Science which includes a year in industry. The Department is also building a new 200 seater computer science teaching lab to support student growth and this offers exciting opportunities to innovate in teaching and pedagogical approaches to teaching.
The academic posts aim to strengthen the research of our existing research, especially at the interface between security and machine learning and in data science. We are also looking to diversify our research directions, for example in the areas of software engineering and programming language principles. There is an opportunity for posts to be aligned together to drive forward new research directions.
Closing date for applications: 9 June 2019
Contact: Dr Helen Treharne (h.treharne (at) surrey.ac.uk),
Head of Department
Professor Steve Schneider (s.schneider (at) surrey.ac.uk)
Director, Surrey Centre for Cyber Security
More information: https://jobs.surrey.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=024919
10 May 2019
Cas Cremers, Britta Hale, Konrad Kohbrok
In this work we highlight a previously unexplored difference between the pairwise and group-key based approaches. We show that without additional mechanisms, both ART and MLS Draft-04 offer significantly lower PCS guarantees than those offered by groups based on pairwise PCS channels. In particular, for MLS Draft-04, it seems that the protocol does not yet meet the informal PCS security guarantees described in the draft.
We explore the causes of this problem and lay out the design space to identify solutions. Optimizing security and minimizing overhead leads us to a promising solution based on (i) global updates and (ii) post-compromise secure signatures. While rotating signatures had been discussed before as options for both MLS and ART, our work indicates that combining specific update patterns for all groups with a post-compromise secure signature scheme, may be strictly necessary to achieve any reasonable PCS guarantee.
Muhammad ElSheikh, Ahmed Abdelkhalek, Amr M. Youssef
Dennis Hofheinz, Bogdan Ursu
Here, we provide a generic construction of dual-mode NIZK systems for all of NP. The public parameters of our scheme can be set up in one of two indistinguishable ways. One way provides unconditional soundness, while the other provides unconditional zero-knowledge. Our scheme relies on subexponentially secure indistinguishability obfuscation and subexponentially secure one-way functions, but otherwise only on comparatively mild and generic computational assumptions. These generic assumptions can be instantiated under any one of the DDH, k-LIN, DCR, or QR assumptions.
As an application, we reduce the required assumptions necessary for several recent obfuscation-based constructions of multilinear maps. Combined with previous work, our scheme can be used to construct multilinear maps from obfuscation and a group in which the strong Diffie-Hellman assumption holds. We also believe that our work adds to the understanding of the construction of NIZK systems, as it provides a conceptually new way to achieve dual-mode properties.