IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
24 March 2020
Cybernetica AS, Information Security Research Institute, Tartu, Estonia
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: Jan Willemson, PhD - jan.willemson@cyber.ee
More information: https://cyber.ee/careers/vacancies/#researcher-in-remote-electronic-voting
University of Exeter, UK
Job PostingTwo fully funded PhD scholarships for EU/UK applicants are available in the Security and Trust of Advanced Systems Group (Prof. Achim Brucker and Dr. Diego Marmsoler) at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Exeter, UK.
We are looking for enthusiastic and outstanding Computer Science or Mathematics students with a strong background in some of the following topics:
- safety or security of (software) systems,
- formal modelling or formal reasoning/verification,
- program analysis or program verification,
- language-based security
- semantics of programming languages,
- theorem proving, model checking,
- cryptographic protocols,
- distributed systems (e.g., blockchain),
- specification-based testing, and
- design and implementation of security architectures.
This award provides annual funding to cover UK/EU tuition fees and a tax-free stipend. For students who pay UK/EU tuition fees the award will cover the tuition fees in full, plus at least £15,009 per year tax-free stipend. The studentship will be awarded on the basis of merit for 3.5 years of full-time study.
For more details, please consult the official advertisement. The closing date for applications is midnight on 1 May 2020.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Achim Brucker (http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/staff/ab1185)
More information: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/studying/funding/award/?id=3887
University of Exeter, UK
Job PostingAs part of the expansion of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Exeter [1], we are recruiting for a Lecturer in Cybersecurity. The lecturer will be part of the newly formed Security and Trust of Advanced Systems Group [2].
We are looking for a candidate with an outstanding research record in any area related to cyber security (information security) such as (but not limited to):
- access control
- usable security
- software/application security
- formal methods for security
- language-based security/privacy
- secure programming
- information flow
- security protocols
- network security
- security of distributes systems
- human aspects of security
- hardware security
- security economics
- security-by-design
- applied cryptography
- privacy-enhancing technologies
- threat hunting, security analytics
- threat modelling
- forensics, reverse engineering
- trustworthy AI/ML
- security/penetration testing
You will have a PhD or equivalent in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering or a related area. Please refer to the job description for full details.
We understand security and safety entangled concepts: in most modern systems one cannot be achieved without the other. Hence, we encourage also candidates working in related domains such as safety, dependability, resilience, or reliability to apply.
Please apply by 8th of April 2020! See the full announcement and application details at
https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=803965SHQd&WVID=3817591jNg&LANG=USA
We are happy to do online/remote interviews. Feel free to contact me for informal inquiries about the post.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Achim Brucker (http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/staff/ab1185)
More information: https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=803965SHQd&WVID=3817591jNg&LANG=USA
Lochau, Austria, 6 October - 9 October 2020
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 15 May 2020
Notification: 24 June 2020
Singapore, Singapore, 22 September - 25 September 2020
Event CalendarSubmission deadline: 5 June 2020
Notification: 22 July 2020
London, United Kingdom, 21 May 2020
Event Calendar22 March 2020
Estuardo Alpirez Bock, Alexander Treff
ePrint ReportDaniel J. Bernstein, Luca De Feo, Antonin Leroux, Benjamin Smith
ePrint ReportOnur Gunlu, Efe Bozkir, Wolfgang Fuhl, Rafael F. Schaefer, Enkelejda Kasneci
ePrint Report20 March 2020
George Teseleanu
ePrint Report19 March 2020
UC Berkeley
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: raluca.popa@berkeley.edu
Daniel Escudero, Satrajit Ghosh, Marcel Keller, Rahul Rachuri, Peter Scholl
ePrint ReportOur edaBits are similar to the daBits technique introduced by Rotaru et al. (Indocrypt 2019). However, our main observations are that (1) applications that benefit from daBits can also benefit from edaBits in the same way, and (2) we can generate edaBits directly in a much more efficient way than computing them from a set of daBits. Technically, the second contribution is much more challenging, and involves a novel cut and choose technique that may be of independent interest, and requires taking advantage of natural tamper-resilient properties of binary circuits that occur in our construction to obtain the best level of efficiency. Finally, we show how our edaBits can be applied to efficiently implement various non-linear protocols of interest, and we thoroughly analyze their correctness for both signed and unsigned integers.
The results of this work can be applied to any corruption threshold, although they seem best suited to dishonest majority protocols such as SPDZ. We implement and benchmark our constructions, and experimentally verify that our technique yield a substantial increase in efficiency. Our edaBits save in communication by a factor that lies between 2 and 170 for secure comparisons with respect to a purely arithmetic approach, and between 2 and 60 with respect to using daBits. Improvements in throughput per second are more subdued but still as high as a factor of 47. We also apply our novel machinery to the tasks of biometric matching and convolutional neural networks, obtaining a noticeable improvement as well.
18 March 2020
Nicholas Genise, Daniele Micciancio, Chris Peikert, Michael Walter
ePrint ReportIn this work we present a modular framework for analyzing linear operations on discrete Gaussian distributions. The framework abstracts away the particulars of Gaussians, and usually reduces proofs to the choice of appropriate linear transformations and elementary linear algebra. To showcase the approach, we establish several general properties of discrete Gaussians, and show how to obtain all prior convolution theorems (along with some new ones) as straightforward corollaries. As another application, we describe a self-reduction for Learning With Errors~(LWE) that uses a fixed number of samples to generate an unlimited number of additional ones (having somewhat larger error). The distinguishing features of our reduction are its simple analysis in our framework, and its exclusive use of discrete Gaussians without any loss in parameters relative to a prior mixed discrete-and-continuous approach.
As a contribution of independent interest, for subgaussian random matrices we prove a singular value concentration bound with explicitly stated constants, and we give tighter heuristics for specific distributions that are commonly used for generating lattice trapdoors. These bounds yield improvements in the concrete bit-security estimates for trapdoor lattice cryptosystems.
Santosh Ghosh, Michael Kounavis, Sergej Deutsch
ePrint ReportWestfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Job PostingThe Institut for Geoinformatics (ifgi) at the Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster is seeking candidates for this post subject to the release of the project funds by the funding agency. The three-year position is part of a joint project on the “sovereign and intuitive management of personal location information (SIMPORT)”. The project aims to develop approaches, guidelines and software components that enable users to reclaim sovereignty over their personal location information.
Detailed information about the position is available at the included link.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
More information: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Rektorat/Stellen/ausschreibungen/st_20201303_sk6.html
SHIELD Crypto Systems, Toronto, Canada
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: Alhassan Khedr (CTO)
Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Job PostingPlease send your application via e-mail as a single pdf containing a CV, list of publications, and copies of transcripts and certificates.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: amir (dot) moradi (at) rub (dot) de
Australian Payments Network, Sydney, Australia
Job PostingClosing date for applications:
Contact: Arthur Van Der Merwe - avande22@myune.edu.au
Villanova University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Job Posting2. Research area. Post quantum cryptography hardware, fault detection/attack, and cryptanalysis.
3. Qualification. Preferred to have research experience in the areas of cryptographic engineering, fault detection, cryptanalysis, and VLSI design. Students from electrical/computer engineering, computer science, and cryptography (applied mathematics) or other related majors are WARMLY welcome! Programming skills such as HDL, C++, Python will be more favorable.
4. Application process. Interested students can directly send the CV/resume to Dr. Jiafeng Harvest Xie's email: jiafeng.xie@villanova.edu.
5. Application information. The detailed application requirement is available at https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/engineering/grad/admission/departmentalRequirements.html
6. Additional information. Villanova University is a private research university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. U.S. News & World Report ranks Villanova as tied for the 46th best National University in the U.S. for 2020.
7. PI introduction. Dr. Jiafeng Harvest Xie is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Villanova University. His research interests include cryptographic engineering, hardware security, and VLSI digital design. He is the Best Paper Awardee of IEEE HOST 2019. He is also the Associate Editor for Microelectronics Journal, IEEE Access, and IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems II.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Dr. Jiafeng Harvest Xie, email: jiafeng.xie@villanova.edu
Tampere University
Job PostingThe Network and Information Security Group is currently looking for up to 2 motivated and talented researchers (Postdoctoral Researchers) to contribute to research projects related to applied cryptography, security and privacy. The successful candidates will be working on the following topics (but not limited to):
- Searchable Encryption and data structures enabling efficient search operations on encrypted data;
- Restricting the type of access given when granting access to search over one's data;
- Processing of encrypted data in outsourced and untrusted environments;
- Applying encrypted search techniques to SGX environments;
- Revocable Attribute-Based Encryption schemes and their application to cloud services;
- Functional Encryption;
- Privacy-Preserving Analytics;
- IoT Security.
Programming skills is a must.
The positions are strongly research-focused. Activities include conducting both theoretical and applied research, design of secure and/or privacy-preserving protocols, software development and validation, reading and writing scientific articles, presentation of the research results at seminars and conferences in Finland and abroad, acquiring (or assisting in acquiring) further funding.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Antonis Michalas