IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
07 February 2023
Carsten Baum, James Hsin-yu Chiang, Bernardo David, Tore Kasper Frederiksen
Dmitrii Koshelev
Adam Caulfield, Nabiha Raza, Peizhao Hu
Akin Ünal
Concretely, against PRGs $F : \mathbb{Z}_q^{n} \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}_q^{m}$ that are computed by polynomials of degree $d$ over a field $\mathbb{Z}_q$ and have a stretch of $m = n^{1+e}$ we give an attack with space and time complexities $n^{O(n^{1 - \frac{e}{d-1}})}$ and noticeable advantage $1 - {O(n^{1 - \frac{e}{d-1}}/{q})}$, if $q$ is large. If $F$ is of constant locality $d$ and $q$ is constant, we construct a second attack that has a space and time complexity of $n^{O(\log(n)^{\frac{1}{(q-1)d-1}} \cdot n^{1 - \frac{e}{(q-1)d-1}})}$ and noticeable advantage $1-O((\log(n)/n^e)^{\frac{1}{(q-1)d-1}})$.
Chloé Gravouil
06 February 2023
University of North Texas, Denton, USA
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Please contact Drs. Stephanie Ludi (stephanie.ludi@unt.edu) or Kirill Morozov (kirill.morozov@unt.edu) for any inquiries.
More information: https://jobs.untsystem.edu/postings/68591
Inria and ENS, Paris, France
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Phong Nguyen ( Phong.Nguyen at inria.fr )
More information: https://jobs.inria.fr/public/classic/en/offres/2022-05411
01 February 2023
Aarhus, Denmark, 9 June 2023
Submission deadline: 28 February 2023
Notification: 31 March 2023
Virtual event, Anywhere on Earth, 28 February - 2 March 2023
KASTEL — Institute of Information Security and Dependability, KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany
A solid background in provable security is required (for PhD students: successfully attended courses or a master’s thesis on the subject). Experiences with secure multi-party computation or UC-based security are a plus. For PostDocs, a track record in research on privacy-preserving protocols is expected, including publications at reputable conferences such as Crypto, Eurocrypt, ACM CCS, PETS, etc.
You will be a member of the KASTEL Security Research Labs (https://zentrum.kastel.kit.edu). Your research will be dealing with privacy-preserving cryptographic building blocks and protocols for important application scenarios and result in both theoretical security concepts (protocol designs, security models and proofs, etc.) and their efficient implementation. You will have the opportunity to regularly visit other reputable research institutions for IT security and cryptography such as the University of Luxembourg.
As the positions should be filled as soon as possible, your application will be evaluated promptly. If you are interested, please send an email including your CV and a list of publications (for PostDocs) to andy.rupp@partner.kit.edu.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Andy Rupp (andy.rupp@partner.kit.edu, PI at KASTEL)
University of Bergen, Department of Informatics
There is a vacancy for up to 2 positions as PhD Research Fellow in Informatics – Cryptology at the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. Both positions are funded by the university and are for a fixed-term period of 4 years.
Potential work tasks include:
- Statistical and algebraic cryptanalysis of modern block and stream ciphers
- Cryptanalysis of lattice-based postquantum cryptography protocols
- Construction of cryptographically optimal functions and related objects
The working environment for this position will be at the Selmer Center in Secure Communication. The Selmer Center is one of the top ICT research groups with main research in areas of sequence design, coding theory, cryptology, Boolean functions, information security, and quantum information theory.
The candidate should have the following qualifications:
- A master's degree or equivalent education in mathematics, computer science, or a related area
- Experience with general-purpose programming languages
- Knowledge of discrete mathematics, linear algebra and probability theory
- Knowledge of cryptographic schemes and protocols
- Proficiency in both written and oral English
We can offer:
- a good and professionally stimulating working environment
- salary as PhD research fellow (code 1017) in the state salary scale
- enrolment in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
- good welfare benefits
Application deadline: March 1, 2023
To apply and for more information: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/236961/phd-research-fellow-in-informatics-cryptology-up-to-2-positions
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Nikolay Kaleyski, Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway (firstname.surname@uib.no)
More information: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/236961/phd-research-fellow-in-informatics-cryptology-up-to-2-positions
Manjeet Kaur, Tarun Yadav, Manoj Kumar, Dhananjoy Dey
Diego Castejon-Molina, Dimitrios Vasilopoulos, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez
Eike Kiltz, Jiaxin Pan, Doreen Riepel, Magnus Ringerud
We also introduce CorrCRGapCDH, a stronger Challenge-Response variant of our assumption. Unlike standard GapCDH, CorrCRGapCDH implies the security of the popular AKE protocol HMQV in the eCK model, tightly and without rewinding. Again, we prove hardness of CorrCRGapCDH in the generic group model, with (almost) optimal bounds.
Our new results allow implementations of NAXOS, X3DH, and HMQV without having to adapt the group sizes to account for the tightness loss of previous reductions. As a side result of independent interest, we also obtain modular and simple security proofs from standard GapCDH with tightness loss, improving previously known bounds.
31 January 2023
University of Birmingham, UK
This is an exciting opportunity to join the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Cyber Security and Privacy on the exciting projects "User-controlled hardware security anchors: evaluation and designs" and "SIPP - Secure IoT Processor Platform with Remote Attestation".
The position has scope for a variety of research activities, spanning trusted execution, hardware and embedded security, binary analysis, protocol design/analysis, and formal modelling. We are hence looking for a candidate with a PhD (or equivalent industry experience) in at least one of these areas.
The post-doc will be based at the Birmingham Centre for Cyber Security and Privacy, which was originally founded in 2005 as the Security and Privacy group and is now recognised as a Centre by the university since 2018. The Centre is a core part of the School of Computer Science, which was ranked 3rd in the UK-wide REF2021 for computer science research. Three out of the four REF2021 impact case studies came from the security group; all four were awarded the maximum grade of 4*. The centre currently has 12 permanent academics as well as approximately 20 postdocs/PhD students. We are recognised by the UK NCSC in partnership with EPSRC as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research. We are part of the Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems funded by NCSC and EPSRC.
Full time starting salary is normally in the range £32,348 to £42,155, with potential progression once in post to £44,737 (Grade 7). The position comes with budget for travel and equipment.
Fixed term contract up to July 2024. We will encourage and support the successful candidate to apply for follow-up funding after the end of the fixed term.
Apply until 19th February 2023 using the following link: https://tinyurl.com/uobpostdoc
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Informal enquiries can be sent to Mark Ryan (m.d.ryan@bham.ac.uk) and David Oswald (d.f.oswald@bham.ac.uk). Full applications must be submitted via the above link, we cannot accept applications via email.
More information: https://edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_6001/requisitions/preview/1170/?lastSelectedFacet=TITLES&selectedTitlesFacet=RES
University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
- Development and implementation of concepts and research results, both individually and in collaboration with researchers and PhD students,
- Run of experiments and simulation of realistic conditions to test the performance of developed algorithms and protocols,
- Development, maintenance and organization of software,
- Support to BSc, MSc and PhD students, postdocs and researchers who use the lab,
- Responsibility for day routines in the lab, for example purchases, installations, bookings, inventory,
- Demonstrations and lab tours for external visitors,
- Producing media content for our group web page and social media platforms.
- We are looking for a strongly motivated and self-driven person who is able to work and learn new things independently.
- Good command of English is required.
- You should have a good academic track record and well developed analytical and problem solving skills.
- Excellent programming skills and familiarity with cryptographic libraries.
- Previous experience in implementation projects with C++, Matlab/Simulink, Python is desired.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
Eriane Breu, eriane.breu@unisg.ch (Administrative matters)
Prof. Katerina Mitrokotsa, katerina.mitrokotsa@unisg.ch (Research related questions)
More information: https://jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stellen/cryptography-engineer-m-w-d/61aac880-209c-41c9-b2dd-fb4fb4074ebe
Visa Research, Palo Alto, CA
The Digital Currency Research team at Visa Research is looking for outstanding research interns as part of our growing team in Palo Alto, California.
Our team is building the next generation of financial systems that rely on digital currencies, including decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and semi-decentralized digital currencies like stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and tokenized commercial bank deposits. Compared to traditional financial systems, these networks have significantly stronger resilience against cyberattacks, achieved by minimizing trust in various system components.
Past intern projects have included:
- Blockchain scalability, e.g., sharding (RapidChain) and light clients (FlyClient)
- Layer 2 scalability solutions, e.g., hub-based payment channels (UPC) and offline payments (OPS)
- Blockchain privacy, e.g., private smart contract transactions (Zether)
- Privacy-preserving auditability of large payment graphs (SPA)
- Privacy-preserving fraud detection using federated learning and multi-party computation
Basic Qualification
- Pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, graduating December 2023 or later
Preferred Qualifications
- Research experience in one or more research areas related to blockchain, cryptography, and/or systems security
- Strong track record in research publications and impact in the research community
- Strong ability to collaborate
- Good team player and excellent interpersonal skills
- Good analytical and problem-solving skills
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
- Mahdi Zamani mzamani@visa.com
- Panos Chatzigiannis pchatzig@visa.com
More information: https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/ni/Visa/3f9f072f-3f93-43c4-af03-ed492d9daf4b-phd-intern
Meta, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Challenges and intern projects include incorporating approaches such as multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption, trusted execution environments, differential privacy, and federated learning to develop privacy-focused solutions while maintaining performance at massive scale, including cryptographic protocols, algorithms & tooling for machine learning or analytics. Research projects may include developing new or improving existing privacy-preserving solutions for areas such as: private record linkage, privacy-preserving ML and analytics.
For more details and to apply: https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/881989909611952/
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Gaven Watson
More information: https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/881989909611952/
30 January 2023
Tarun Chitra, Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Kshitij Kulkarni
Luciano Freitas, Andrei Tonkikh, Adda-Akram Bendoukha, Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni, Renaud Sirdey, Oana Stan, Petr Kuznetsov
Homomorphic Sortition relies on Threshold Fully Homomorphic Encryption (ThFHE) and is tailored to proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains, with several important optimizations with respect to prior proposals. In particular, unlike most existing SSLE protocols, it works with arbitrary stake distributions and does not require a user with multiple coins to be registered multiple times. Our protocol is highly parallelizable and can be run completely off-chain after setup.
Some blockchains require a sequence of rounds to have non-repeating leaders. We define a generalization of SSLE, called Secret Leader Permutation (SLP) in which the application can choose how many non-repeating leaders should be output in a sequence of rounds and we show how Homomorphic Sortition also solves this problem.