IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
21 January 2020
Goatstown, Ireland, 25 August - 28 August 2020
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 15 March 2020
Notification: 18 May 2020
Copenhagen, Denmark, 24 August - 27 August 2020
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 23 March 2020
Notification: 8 May 2020
20 January 2020
TU Darmstadt, Germany
Job PostingThe Cryptography and Privacy Engineering Group (ENCRYPTO) at Technische Universität Darmstadt offers a position for a Doctoral Researcher (Research Assistant/PhD Student) in the project “Privacy-preserving Services on The Internet” (PSOTI) funded via an ERC Starting Grant. We develop techniques and tools for protecting privacy in applications.
Job Description
The fully funded position is for up to 4.5 years with starting date latest on August 1, 2020. In our project, we will build privacy-preserving services on the Internet. This includes protocols for privately outsourcing, searching and processing data among untrusted service providers using secure multi-party computation, and building a scalable secure multi-party computation framework. You will do research, build prototype implementations, and publish and present the results at top conferences and journals. We provide an open and international working environment for excellent research in a sociable team and give the opportunity for further qualification (doctoral/PhD degree). TU Darmstadt is ranked as a top university for IT security and cryptography in Europe and computer science in Germany. The position is based in the “City of Science” Darmstadt, which is very international and livable, and well-connected in the Rhine-Main area around Frankfurt.
- You have a completed Master degree (or equivalent) from a top university with excellent grades in IT security, computer science, applied mathematics, electrical engineering, or a similar field.
- Extensive knowledge in IT security/applied cryptography and excellent software development skills are required.
- Additional knowledge in cryptographic protocols (ideally secure multi-party computation) is a plus.
- You are self-motivated, reliable, creative, able to discuss/write/present scientific results in English, and able to conduct excellent research on challenging scientific problems with practical relevance.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Thomas Schneider (schneider@encrypto.cs.tu-darmstadt.de)
More information: https://encrypto.de/PSOTI-PHDSTUDENT
Aarhus University, Department of Engineering; Aarhus, Denmark
Job PostingThe Postdoc will perform research to construct use cases for blockchain technologies in these application domains. The developed material will be used both for research publications and other educational activities, related to training Danish industry professionals and technical managers in securely adopting blockchain technology.
The project is a collaboration between researchers from many institutions in Denmark: the Departments of Engineering and Computer Science at Aarhus University (AU), the Concordium Blockchain Research Center (COBRA) at AU, the DIGIT Centre for Digitalisation, Big Data and Data Analytics at AU, the Alexandra Institute and other partners in Copenhagen (IT University and Institute for Futures Studies). The project is funded by the Danish Industry Foundation, at a total of 1 million euros.
Qualifications: We are looking for dedicated and enthusiastic applicants, with a PhD in Computer Science/Engineering, Mathematics or related discipline. Previous experience in cryptography for blockchains is fundamental. Further requirements are fluency in English, good reporting/organization skills, ability to collaborate in groups and with industry, and being able to work independently.
To Apply: Send a cover letter, Curriculum Vitae with at least two references to contacts below.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Diego F. Aranha, Assistant Professor of Engineering, dfaranha (at) eng.au.dk
Bas Spitters, Associate Professor of Computer Science, spitters (at) cs.au.dk
More information: https://alexandra.dk/dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2019/industriens-fond-st-tter-blockchain-uddannelser-til-virksomhedsledere
TU Darmstadt, Germany
Job PostingThe Cryptography and Privacy Engineering Group (ENCRYPTO) at Technische Universität Darmstadt offers a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher in the project “Privacy-preserving Services on The Internet” (PSOTI) funded via an ERC Starting Grant. We develop techniques and tools for protecting privacy in applications.
Job Description
The fully funded position is for up to 2.5 years with starting date as soon as possible. In our project, we will build privacy-preserving services on the Internet. This includes protocols for privately outsourcing, searching and processing data among untrusted service providers using secure multi-party computation, and building a scalable secure multi-party computation framework. You will co-advise PhD students, be involved in the project management, do research, build prototype implementations, and publish the results at top venues in IT security / applied cryptography. We provide an open and international working environment for excellent research in a sociable team. TU Darmstadt is ranked as a top university for IT security and cryptography in Europe and computer science in Germany. The position is based in the “City of Science” Darmstadt, which is very international and livable, and well-connected in the Rhine-Main area around Frankfurt.
- You have a completed PhD degree (or equivalent) from a top university in IT security, computer science, applied mathematics, electrical engineering, or a similar area.
- Publications at top venues for IT security/applied cryptography (e.g., S&P, CCS, NDSS, USENIX SEC, EUROCRYPT), ideally on cryptographic protocols and secure computation, are required.
- Experience in software development, project management, and supervising students is needed.
- You are self-motivated, reliable, creative, able to discuss/write/present scientific results in English, and can conduct excellent research on challenging scientific problems with practical relevance.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Thomas Schneider (schneider@encrypto.cs.tu-darmstadt.de)
More information: https://encrypto.de/PSOTI-POSTDOC
Alejandro Cabrera Aldaya, Billy Bob Brumley
ePrint ReportWe analyze the security of some use cases of this algorithm in this library, resulting in the discovery of a new vulnerability in the ECDSA code path that allows a single-trace attack against this implementation. This vulnerability is three-fold interesting:
* It resides in the implementation of a countermeasure which makes it more dangerous due to the false state of security the countermeasure currently offers.
* It reduces mbedTLS ECDSA security to an integer factorization problem.
* An unexpected GCD call inside the ECDSA code path compromises the countermeasure.
We also cover an orthogonal use case, this time inside the mbedTLS RSA code path during the computation of a CRT parameter when loading a private key. The attack also exploits the binary GCD implementation threat, showing how a single vulnerable primitive leads to multiple vulnerabilities. We demonstrate both security threats with end-to-end attacks using 1000 trials each, showing in both cases single-trace attacks can be achieved with success rates very close to 100%.
Wen Wang, Shanquan Tian, Bernhard Jungk, Nina Bindel, Patrick Longa, Jakub Szefer
ePrint ReportYasuhiko Ikematsu, Shuhei Nakamura
ePrint Report17 January 2020
University of California, Berkeley
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: tcs-postdoc-inquiries@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu
More information: http://theory.cs.berkeley.edu/postdoc.html
Mohamed Tolba, Muhammad ElSheikh, Amr M. Youssef
ePrint ReportPascal Sasdrich, Begül Bilgin, Michael Hutter, Mark Marson
ePrint ReportPratyush Mishra, Ryan Lehmkuhl, Akshayaram Srinivasan, Wenting Zheng, Raluca Ada Popa
ePrint ReportWe design, implement, and evaluate Delphi, a secure prediction system that allows two parties to execute neural network inference without revealing either party's data. Delphi approaches the problem by simultaneously co-designing cryptography and machine learning. We first design a hybrid cryptographic protocol that improves upon the communication and computation costs over prior work. Second, we develop a planner that automatically generates neural network architecture configurations that navigate the performance-accuracy trade-offs of our hybrid protocol. Together, these techniques allow us to achieve a 22x improvement in online prediction latency compared to the state-of-the-art prior work.
Erdem Alkim, Hülya Evkan, Norman Lahr, Ruben Niederhagen, Richard Petri
ePrint ReportChangshe Ma, Yiping Gu, Hongfei Li
ePrint ReportTianshuo Cong, Ximing Fu, Xuting Zhou, Yuli Zou, Haining Fan
ePrint ReportOrhun Kara, Muhammed F. Esgin
ePrint ReportHaibat Khan, Benjamin Dowling, Keith M. Martin
ePrint ReportAlexander Chepurnoy, Amitabh Saxena
ePrint ReportIn this work, we propose a concrete example of such a mechanism which is using collateralized smart contracts. Our approach allows miners to bypass non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work schemes if the underlying blockchain platform supports smart contracts in a sufficiently advanced language. In particular, the language should allow access to the PoW solution.
At a high level, our approach requires the miner to lock collateral covering the reward amount and protected by a smart contract that acts as an escrow. The smart contract has logic that allows the pool to collect the collateral as soon as the miner collects any block reward. We propose two variants of the approach depending on when the collateral is bound to the block solution. Using this, we show how to bypass previously proposed non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work schemes (with the notable exception for strong non-outsourceable schemes) and show how to build mining pools for such schemes.
Jan Camenisch, Manu Drijvers, Anja Lehmann, Gregory Neven, Patrick Towa
ePrint Report16 January 2020
CYBERCRYPT: Copenhagen, Zurich or Munich
Job PostingWe are an international company with branches in Copenhagen, Zurich and Munich. We are looking to strengthen our team of in-house cryptographic experts in either of our locations.
The right person will work on internal and external high-end projects in the area of cryptology. This will involve cutting-edge cryptographic design, cryptanalysis, software development, contributions to product development, customer trainings, security evaluations, etc.
A PhD degree in symmetric-key cryptology (block ciphers, stream ciphers, MACs or hash functions) or a closely related area is a requirement. Proficiency in the efficient software implementations of cryptographic algorithms for such platforms as modern Intel or ARM CPUs is a plus. Postdoctoral research experience in symmetric-key cryptology as well as teaching experience is also an advantage.
We expect that our new Senior Cryptographer can generate value for the company and for our customers. An important part of your job is to take technical responsibility for projects and to be a great team player who is a pleasure to work with. You take the initiative, provide high quality and always deliver on time.
We offer a highly attractive compensation, a permanent contract, a dynamic international working environment, a conference travel package, relocation benefits, an employee success participation plan, as well as significant time and budget to conduct cryptologic research.
Applications will be reviewed on the ongoing basis. Planned target date for employment is 1 April 2020 or sooner.
Please send your CV incl. the list of publications and a motivational letter to jobs@cyber-crypt.com. You can also use this email address if you have any questions about the position.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Dr. Andrey Bogdanov
More information: https://www.cyber-crypt.com/company/#team