IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
16 December 2019
Linköping University, Sweden
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: Prof Jeff.Yan@liu.se
Barcelona, Espanya, 20 April - 22 April 2020
Event CalendarBin Wang, Xiaozhuo Gu, Yingshan Yang
ePrint ReportD. Papachristoudis, D. Hristu-Varsakelis, F. Baldimtsi, G. Stephanides
ePrint ReportThomas Plantard, Arnaud Sipasseuth, Willy Susilo, Vincent Zucca
ePrint ReportEshan Chattopadhyay, Jesse Goodman, Vipul Goyal, Xin Li
ePrint ReportA weak source $\mathbf{X}$ of the form $\mathbf{X}_1,...,\mathbf{X}_N$, where each $\mathbf{X}_i$ is on $n$ bits, is an $(N,K,n,k)$-source of locality $d$ if the following hold:
(1) Somewhere good sources: at least $K$ of the $\mathbf{X}_i$'s are independent, and each contains min-entropy at least $k$. We call these $\mathbf{X}_i$'s good sources, and their locations are unknown. (2) Bounded dependence: each remaining (bad) source can depend arbitrarily on at most $d$ good sources.
We focus on constructing extractors with negligible error, in the regime where most of the entropy is contained within a few sources instead of across many (i.e., $k$ is at least polynomial in $K$). In this setting, even for the case of $0$-locality, very little is known prior to our work. For $d \geq 1$, essentially no previous results are known. We present various new extractors for adversarial sources in a wide range of parameters, and some of our constructions work for locality $d = K^{\Omega(1)}$. As an application, we also give improved extractors for small-space sources.
The class of adversarial sources generalizes several previously studied classes of sources, and our explicit extractor constructions exploit tools from recent advances in extractor machinery, such as two-source non-malleable extractors and low-error condensers. Thus, our constructions can be viewed as a new application of non-malleable extractors. In addition, our constructions combine the tools from extractor theory in a novel way through various sorts of explicit extremal hypergraphs. These connections leverage recent progress in combinatorics, such as improved bounds on cap sets and explicit constructions of Ramsey graphs, and may be of independent interest.
David Butler, David Aspinall, Adria Gascon
ePrint ReportJohann Heyszl, Katja Miller, Florian Unterstein, Marc Schink, Alexander Wagner, Horst Gieser, Sven Freud, Tobias Damm, Dominik Klein, Dennis Kügler
ePrint Report14 December 2019
University of Kent, Canterbury
Job PostingKirCCS is calling for applications for three batches of PhD studentships (2+3+20). Five of these studentships for KirCCS academics will be funded by the University of Kent. There are up to 20 more studentships for all academics of the University of Kent, to be funded jointly by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and the University of Kent.
The 5 University of Kent funded studentships provide full funding for 3 years with an annual stipend at the EPSRC rate (£15,009 p.a. for 2019-20), and a waiver of the home student fees (£4,327 p.a. for 2019-20), totaling £19,336 p.a. (based on 2019-20 figures). The full funding is for "home" students only (eligibility and detailed fees regulations in the UK can be found at https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/Information--Advice/Fees-and-Money/England-fee-status). Candidates who do not meet the "home student" criteria are still eligible to apply, but will need to bring additional funding to cover the difference between the overseas fees (£19,000 p.a. for 2019-20) and the home fees.
The 20 CSC funded studentships provide full funding for (Chinese) applicants who are eligible for PhD studentships from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) only. The full funding for CSC funded (Chinese) students include a stipend of £1,200 per month (£14,400 p.a. for 2019-20) provided by CSC and a waiver of full overseas fees (£19,000 p.a. for 2019-20) by the University of Kent, totaling £33,400 p.a. (based on 2019-20 figures). The CSC will also cover a return flight ticket from China to the UK, medical insurance, and one-off UK visa costs.
All successful candidates are expected to start in September 2020.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: For academic queries (like identifying research topics or supervisors) please contact Prof Shujun Li (s.j.li@kent.ac.uk). For queries on the admission procedure, please contact Dr Laura Bocchi, L.Bocchi@kent.ac.uk).
More information: https://cyber.kent.ac.uk/calls.html#PhDs
Rome, Italy, 22 June -
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 22 January 2020
Notification: 22 March 2020
Barcelona, Espanya, 20 April - 22 April 2020
Event CalendarQualcomm, Sophia Antipolis (France)
Job PostingQualcomm is a company of inventors that unlocked 5G, ushering in an age of rapid acceleration in connectivity and new possibilities.
In this position you will join the team responsible for the security architecture of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. The team works at a system level spanning across hardware, software and infrastructure while striving for industry-leading solutions.
In this position you will perform tasks like these:
- Architecture of Security and Cryptographic HW/SW IP blocks that contribute to the overall SoC Security Architecture
- Design of countermeasures to state of the art physical attacks
- Competitive analysis of security systems and features
Minimum Qualifications:
MS degree preferred with 5+ years industry experience required in one or more of the following areas
- Design of HW/SW security blocks and modules such as HW cryptographic engines
- HW/SW threat analysis, security analysis, risk analysis
- Cryptography and protocols using cryptography
- Smart Card HW/SW Security Technologies
Preferred Qualifications Additional skills in the following areas are a plus:
- Security Certification Process and Requirements
- Research background (Publications, Conference)
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills required
- Leadership & management background is required
Education Requirements Required: Bachelor's, Computer Engineering and/or Electrical Engineering
Preferred: Master's, Computer Engineering and/or Electrical Engineering
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Aymeric Vial
More information: https://jobs.qualcomm.com/public/jobDetails.xhtml?requisitionId=1975590
12 December 2019
Christian Paquin, Douglas Stebila, Goutam Tamvada
ePrint ReportIn this work, we develop and make use of a framework for running such experiments in TLS cheaply by emulating network conditions using networking features of the Linux kernel. Our testbed allows us to independently control variables such as link latency and packet loss rate, and then examine the impact on TLS connection establishment performance of various post-quantum primitives, specifically hybrid elliptic curve/post-quantum key exchange and post-quantum digital signatures, based on implementations from the Open Quantum Safe project. Among our key results, we observe that packet loss rates above 3-5% start to have a significant impact on post-quantum algorithms that fragment across many packets, such as those based on unstructured lattices. The results from this emulation framework are also complemented by results on the latency of loading entire web pages over TLS in real network conditions, which show that network latency hides most of impact from algorithms with slower computations (such as supersingular isogenies).
Claude Carlet, Pierrick Méaux
ePrint ReportBali, Indonesia, 1 November - 5 November 2020
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 28 June 2020
Copenhagen, Denmark, 18 May - 22 May 2020
SchoolMadura A Shelton, Niels Samwel, Lejla Batina, Francesco Regazzoni, Markus Wagner, Yuval Yarom
ePrint ReportKostis Karantias, Aggelos Kiayias, Nikos Leonardos, Dionysis Zindros
ePrint ReportIn this work, we measure the distribution of superblocks in the Bitcoin blockchain. We find that the superblock distribution within the blockchain follows expectation, hence we empirically verify that the distribution of superblocks within the Bitcoin blockchain has not been adversarially biased. NIPoPoWs require that each block in a blockchain points to a sample of previous blocks in the blockchain. These pointers form a data structure called the interlink. We give efficient ways to store the interlink data structure. Repeated superblock references within an interlink can be omitted with no harm to security. Hence, it is more efficient to store a set of superblocks rather than a list. We show that, in honest executions, this simple observation reduces the number of superblock references by approximately a half in expectation. We then verify our theoretical result by measuring the improvement over existing blockchains in terms of the interlink sizes (which we improve by $79\%$) and the sizes of succinct NIPoPoWs (which we improve by $25\%$). As such, we show that deduplication allows superlight clients to synchronize $25\%$ faster.