IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
04 March 2022
QPQ Global
What do we give you?
• A stimulating, Socratic intellectual environment.
• Hybrid office approach – we have been a distributed workforce from the start. This role is centred around our European axis, so we expect you to live within +/- 3 hours of CET. We get together a complete team every quarter, so you must be willing to travel and embrace being part of a diverse team drawn from many walks of life and cultures.
• Good salary, travel expense budget and many future opportunities to participate in the company’s growth.
• The mother of all intellectual challenges!
Responsibilities.
• implement and embed in products cryptographic protocols in the privacy space.
• Working with a multi-faceted team of practitioners on a set of blockchain-based privacy protocols interacting with the DeFi space and providing compliance with financial regulations.
• Focus on zero knowledge schemes which provide privacy and compliance.
Requirements.
• MSc or multi-year experience in cryptography or a closely related field.
• Knowledge of modern cryptographic primitives.
• Be able to productize protocols/schemes/algorithms in at least one relevant programming language (C++ or Rust desirable).
• General understanding of full-stack system architecture.
• Have a thorough approach and be committed to high quality output. Have prior research/code already published in the space.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: opportunities@qpq.io
University of Amsterdam
Are you fascinated by security? Are you willing to take on the challenge of securing the next generation of computer systems and networks? Do you like to work in a team of young researchers? We are seeking a PhD candidate who is interested in interdisciplinary research on side-channel attacks against quantum devices used in quantum networks and beyond.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Christian Schaffner
More information: https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/PhD-Position-on-Side-Channel-Attacks-on-Quantum-Devices-Used-in-Quantum-Networks/742058802/
QuSoft / University of Amsterdam
Full details: https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/ivi/742510202/
https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/QuSoft/742509902/
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Christian Schaffner
More information: https://www.qusoft.org/jobs/
02 March 2022
Virtual event, Anywhere on Earth, 27 July - 29 July 2022
Submission deadline: 18 March 2022
Notification: 15 April 2022
Matsue, Japan, 10 August - 12 August 2022
Submission deadline: 25 April 2022
Notification: 15 June 2022
Guanajuato, Mexico, 17 October - 21 October 2022
Submission deadline: 22 May 2022
Notification: 25 July 2022
The University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science, Manchester, UK
Project 1: (A*STAR) Developing Privacy Enhancing Digital Health Data Sharing
Supervision team: Dr M Mustafa (UoM), Dr LC Cordeiro (UoM), Dr Khin Mi Mi Aung (I²R)
Project 2: (A*STAR) Secure Sharing of Dynamic Data via Privacy-Preserving Distributed Learning Framework
Supervision team: Dr M Mustafa (UoM), Dr LC Cordeiro (UoM), Dr Teo Sin Gee (I²R)
Both projects will advance the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques by developing advanced privacy enhancing technologies utilising the properties of differential privacy, secure multiparty computation and homomorphic encryption. They are part of the joint PhD programme between University of Manchester (UoM) and A*STAR institutions in Singapore, e.g., Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R). The successful applicants will be hosted by both organisations: Year 1 & 4 at UoM in the UK and Year 2 & 3 at I²R in Singapore.
Application Deadline: 01 April 2022
How to Apply : To be considered for these project you MUST submit a formal online application form - full details on how to apply can be found on the BBSRC DTP website www.manchester.ac.uk/bbsrcdtpstudentships
International applicant eligibility requirements: We aim to support the most outstanding applicants from outside the UK. Funding will cover tuition fees and stipend only. This scheme is open to both UK and international applicants. However, we are only able to offer a limited number of studentships to applicants outside the UK. Therefore, full studentships will only be awarded to exceptional quality candidates due to the competitive nature of this scheme.
Some restrictions apply to applicants from certain Asian countries. In general, students from Europe, the Americas, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan are eligible to apply for the programme. Unfortunately, we cannot accept applications from south-east Asian countries such as Singapore, China and Malaysia.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
For informal enquiries, please contact Dr Mustafa A. Mustafa - mustafa.mustafa[at]manchester.ac.uk
More information: https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/research/astar/projects/
Université de Lyon, Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France
Your tasks:
Your profile:
If you are interested, please send an email including your detailed CV to vincent.grosso@univ-st-etienne.fr and pierre.louis.cayrel@univ-st-etienne.fr. Applications will be reviewed continuously until the position is filled.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Vincent Grosso (vincent.grosso@univ-st-etienne.fr) and Pierre-Louis Cayrel (pierre.louis.cayrel@univ-st-etienne.fr)
University of Birmingham
Applicants should have a PhD, or be close to completing a PhD, in a relevant subject (crypto, computer algebra, maths, etc.). Prior track record on post-quantum cryptography and/or cryptanalysis is a plus.
Please contact Christophe Petit (C.Petit.1 at bham dot ac dot uk) for informal enquiries. You can apply online until April 3d, 2022.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Contact: Christophe Petit C.Petit.1 at bham dot ac dot uk https://christophe.petit.web.ulb.be/
More information: https://bham.taleo.net/careersection/external/jobdetail.ftl?job=2200009O&tz=GMT%2B00%3A00&tzname=Europe%2FLondon
Zama, Paris, France
We believe this experience will train the candidate both on the research and the implementation side, since he/she/they will work with a team of cryptographers and will implement the results in an open source library that is used by the community.
Preferred experience. He / She / They should:
- already be a PhD student,
- have a solid background in cryptography, possibly with some knowledge in FHE,
- have some development experience, possibly with a background in Rust,
- be passionate about privacy, open source and willing to learn,
- have a problem-solving attitude,
- have good communication skills.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: To know more about the job offer and to apply, visit https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/companies/zama/jobs/intern-research-and-concrete-lib-summer_paris?q=62533b0c4028334941d506e9b41b0004&o=918987&e=companies_jobs
Zama, Paris, France
- discovering new cryptographic techniques to compute on encrypted data,
- working with the engineering and product teams to implement his/her/their research into our products,
- design robust tests and benchmarks to validate his/her/their research and its implementation,
- review the latest published research, and inform the team on potential new applications,
- work with the entire team to define the research and product roadmaps,
- publishing papers, filing patents and presenting his/her/their work at academic conferences.
Preferred experience. We are looking for different experience profiles for this position, from young researchers (right after the end of the PhD) to more senior ones. He/she/they should:
- have a PhD in cryptography or equivalent,
- have deep knowledge of homomorphic encryption,
- have (optionally) knowledge of LWE hardness and security,
- have (optionally) knowledge of machine learning,
- be passionate about privacy and open source software,
- have good written and oral communication skills.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: To know more about the job offer and to apply, visit https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/companies/zama/jobs/senior-researcher-cryptography_paris?q=62533b0c4028334941d506e9b41b0004&o=341359&e=companies_jobs
More information: https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/companies/zama/jobs/senior-researcher-cryptography_paris?q=62533b0c4028334941d506e9b41b0004&o=341359&e=companies_jobs
University College Cork, Ireland
The Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Researcher position in the area of Security/Privacy and Data Analytics. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Dr Paolo Palmieri, Lecturer in Cyber Security, and Prof. Barry O’Sullivan, Professor of Computer Science, in the School of Computer Science & Information Technology, University College Cork, Ireland.
The Post-Doctoral Researcher will work primarily on an industry project with a leading industry partner in the area of privacy and security. The position is initially for an 18-month fixed-term period, and may subsequently lead to other research opportunities with industry/academic partners. Funding for conferences and equipment is available as part of the project.
The ideal applicant holds a PhD in Computer Science or related disciplines and has experience in cyber security and privacy research. He/She has a good track record in relevant conferences and journals and has research experience in one or more of the following research areas: differential privacy, anonymity, re-identification, secure composition and/or cryptography. Previous experience in working with industry partners is an asset.
This position is part of the Science Foundation Ireland newly launched Empower Spoke which is a new €10 million academic and industry research programme, designed to future proof EU data flows and drive innovations in data protection internationally.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Informal inquiries can be made in confidence to Dr. Paolo Palmieri, at: p.palmieri@cs.ucc.ie
Applications should be submitted through the University portal at https://ore.ucc.ie/ (search for reference number: 054451)
Deadline: March 18, 2022 at 12:00 (noon) Irish time.
More information: http://security.ucc.ie/vacancies.html
Aldo Gunsing
We next demonstrate how the negative effects on the security bound of the construction by Daemen et al. can be resolved. Instead of only allowing a truncated output, we generalize the construction to allow for any finalization function and investigate the security of this for five different types of finalization. Our findings, among others, show that the security of the SHA-2 mode does not degrade if the feed-forward is dropped and that the modern BLAKE3 construction is secure in principle but that its use of the extendable output requires its counter used for random access to be public. Finally, we introduce the tree sponge, a generalization of the sequential sponge construction with parallel absorbing and squeezing.
Adi Akavia, Craig Gentry, Shai Halevi, Margarita Vald
We present a CPA-secure encryption scheme that is completely insecure in this setting. We define a new notion of security, called funcCPA, that we prove is sufficient. Additionally, we show:
- Homomorphic encryption schemes that have a certain type of circuit privacy -- for example, schemes in which ciphertexts can be ``sanitized''-- are funcCPA-secure.
- In particular, assuming certain existing HE schemes are CPA-secure, they are also funcCPA-secure.
- For certain encryption schemes, like Brakerski-Vaikuntanathan, that have a property that we call oblivious secret key extraction, funcCPA-security implies circular security -- i.e., that it is secure to provide an encryption of the secret key in a form usable for bootstrapping (to construct fully homomorphic encryption).
In summary, funcCPA-security lies strictly between CPA-security and CCA2-security (under reasonable assumptions), and has an interesting relationship with circular security, though it is not known to be equivalent.
Shafik Nassar, Ron D. Rothblum
\item Second, we give a barrier for obtaining succinct IOPs for more general NP relations. In particular, we show that if a language has a succinct IOP, then it can be decided in \textit{space} that is proportionate only to the witness length, after a bounded-time probabilistic preprocessing. We use this result to show that under a simple and plausible (but to the best of our knowledge, new) complexity-theoretic conjecture, there is no succinct IOP for CSAT. \end{itemize}
Jung Hee Cheon, Wootae Kim, Jai Hyun Park
In this work, we introduce domain extension polynomials (DEPs) that extend the domain interval of functions by a factor of $k$ while preserving the feature of the original function on its original domain interval. By repeatedly iterating the domain-extension process with DEPs, we can extend with $O(\log{K})$ multiplications the domain of given function by a factor of $K$ while the feature of the original function is preserved on its original domain interval.
By using DEPs, we can efficiently evaluate in encrypted state a function that converges at infinities. To uniformly approximate the function on $[-R,R]$, our method exploits $O(\log{R})$ multiplications and $O(1)$ memory. This is more efficient than the current best approach, the minimax approximation and Paterson-Stockmeyer algorithm, which uses $O(\sqrt{R})$ multiplications and $O(\sqrt{R})$ memory for the evaluation. As another application of DEPs, we also suggest a method to manage the risky outliers from a wide interval $[-R,R]$ by using $O(\log{R})$ additional multiplications.
As a real-world application, we exploit our uniform approximation of the logistic function on wide intervals to logistic regression. We trained the model on large public datasets in encrypted state using the polynomial approximation of the logistic function on $[-7683,7683]$.
Tron Omland, Pantelimon Stanica
Iftach Haitner, Noam Mazor, Jad Silbak
We advance towards a better understating of this notion, showing that a k-incompressible distribution has (k−2) bits of next-block pseudoentropy, a refinement of pseudoentropy introduced by Haitner, Reingold, and Vadhan [SICOMP ’13]. We deduce that a samplable distribution X that is (H(X) + 2)-incompressible, implies the existence of one-way functions.