International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Event date: 16 August to 18 August 2023
Submission deadline: 16 May 2023
Notification: 3 July 2023

Dfns is seeking Ph.D. students with a strong research background and an interest in applied cryptography for short-term (10-12 weeks), remote research internships. Areas of research interest include threshold cryptography, secure computation, zero-knowledge proofs, and blockchain security. Research internships will be available year-round, beginning in the summer of 2023 . We encourage applicants with different backgrounds who can offer unique perspectives to apply.
What You'll Do:

Pursue fundamental and applied research in collaboration with the research team

Work with the engineering team on technical problems that arise

Contribute to academic publications and blog posts

Contribute to the company's research roadmap

Our Ideal Candidate Will:

Be enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Computer Science or related technical field.

Have an understanding of theoretical and practical aspects of cryptography.

Have familiarity with publishing in peer-reviewed conferences and journals.

Be passionate and knowledgeable about blockchains/web3 and their underlying technologies.

Have excellent written and verbal communication skills

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Please send your CV to research-jobs@dfns.co Contact Xianrui Meng (xm@dfns.co) and Jon Katz (jkatz@dfns.co) for more information.

iTrust is a Cyber Security Research Center in SUTD and a National Satellite of Excellence in Singapore for securing critical infrastructure. iTrust hosts the world-class cyber-physical system (CPS) testbeds which are used for research, education, training, live-fire exercise, and technology validation.

We are looking for postdocs / research fellows with expertise on cybersecurity in general and CPS security in particular. The candidates should meet the following requirements.

A PhD in any computer science, computer engineering or related field.

Demonstrated expertise in computer networks and/or software testing and/or software security and/or applied cryptography and/or applied machine learning.

Have track record of strong R&D capability, with publications at leading cybersecurity conferences.

Working knowledge of the C/C++ or Python programming language.

Working knowledge in binary analysis and code reverse engineering is preferred.

Familiar with shipboard OT systems is preferred.

Fresh PhD graduates are welcome to apply. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interview. Successful candidates will be offered internationally competitive remuneration.

Interested candidates please send your CV to Prof. Jianying Zhou. Email: jianying_zhou (at) sutd.edu.sg. Home: http://jianying.space/

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Prof. Jianying Zhou [jianying_zhou@sutd.edu.sg]

More information: http://jianying.space/

Event date: 10 September 2023
Submission deadline: 1 June 2023
Notification: 31 July 2023

Event date: 25 March to 27 March 2024

We seek to hire an outstanding PhD candidate. The successful candidate will participate in the activities of the CRISES research group, which focuses on theoretical advances for computer security and privacy. The University offers a 4-year PhD scholarship to work in an exciting international environment located at the sunny and mediterranean city of Tarragona, Spain.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Dr. Rolando Trujillo

More information: https://rolandotr.bitbucket.io/open-positions.html

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate for a PhD or post-doctoral research position in quantum safe cryptography.

The aim of the project is to make strides towards the real-world usage of cryptographic schemes based on the difficulty of computing isogenies between elliptic curves or higher-dimensional Abelian varieties. In the past decade, through ups and downs, isogenies have emerged as an important foundation for cryptography, both pre- and post-quantum. Schemes for key exchange, digital signature, and even more advanced primitives are being consider today for real-world deployment, but there are still many gaps to close before the field can be considered mature. The project will shrink those gaps by researching the mathematical and algorithmic aspects of elliptic curves and Abelian varieties, as well as their secure and efficient implementation.

The successful candidate will be employed by the SNSF-funded project "CryptonIs: Advanced Cryptography Based on Isogenies", and will join the very dynamic Foundations of Cryptography group at IBM Research in Zurich, under the mentorship of Dr. Luca De Feo. The starting date can be any time between April 2023 and March 2024.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Luca De Feo

More information: https://www.zurich.ibm.com/careers/2023_007.html

The hardness of solving the quadratic residuosity problem is the basis for establishing the security of many cryptographic schemes. Two of these are the public key encryption scheme and the identity-based encryption scheme proposed by Cocks. In this paper, we introduce a new computational problem: the problem of distinguishing between the Jacobi symbols of the solutions of a quadratic congruence modulo an RSA integer. We show that the security of the two encryption schemes is equivalent to the hardness of this problem, while the quadratic residuosity problem reduces to this new problem. We then specialize the problem to roots of quadratic residues and establish several computational indistinguishability relationships.

STARK is a widely used transparent proof system that uses low-degree tests for proving the correctness of a computer program. STARK consumes an intermediate representation known as AIR that is more appropriate for programs with a relatively short and structured description. However, an AIR is not able to succinctly express non-equality constraints, leading to the incorporation of unwanted polynomials. We present the eSTARK protocol, a new probabilistic proof that generalizes the STARK family through the introduction of a more generic intermediate representa- tion called eAIR. We describe eSTARK in the polynomial IOP model, which com- bines the optimized version of the STARK protocol with the incorporation of three arguments into the protocol. We also explain various techniques that enhance the vanilla STARK complexity, including optimizations applied to polynomial computa- tions, and analyze the tradeoffs between controlling the constraint degree either at the representation of the AIR or inside the eSTARK itself.

Computationally sound protocol verification tools promise to deliver full-strength cryptographic proofs for security protocols. Unfortunately, current tools lack either modularity or automation.

We propose a new approach based on a novel use of information flow and refinement types for sound cryptographic proofs. Our framework, Owl, allows type-based modular descriptions of security protocols, wherein disjoint subprotocols can be programmed and automatically proved secure separately.

We give a formal security proof for Owl via a core language which supports standard symmetric and asymmetric primitives, Diffie-Hellman operations, and hashing via random oracles. We also implement a type checker for Owl along with a prototype extraction mechanism to Rust, and evaluate it on 14 case studies, including (simplified forms of) SSH key exchange and Kerberos.

Blockchain security relies on incentives to ensure participants, called miners, cooperate and behave as the protocol dictates. Such protocols have a security threshold – a miner whose relative computational power is larger than the threshold can deviate to improve her revenue. Moreover, blockchain participants can behave in a petty compliant manner: usually follow the protocol, but deviate to increase revenue when deviation cannot be distinguished externally from the prescribed behavior. The effect of petty compliant miners on the security threshold of blockchains is not well understood. Due to the complexity of the analysis, it remained an open question since Carlsten et al. identified it in 2016. In this work, we use deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) to analyze how a rational miner performs selfish mining by deviating from the protocol to maximize revenue when petty compliant miners are present. We find that a selfish miner can exploit petty compliant miners to increase her revenue by bribing them. Our method reveals that the security threshold is lower when petty compliant miners are present. In particular, with parameters estimated from the Bitcoin blockchain, we find the threshold drops from the known value of 25% to only 21% (or 19%) when 50% (or 75%) of the other miners are petty compliant. Hence, our deep RL analysis puts the open question to rest; the presence of petty compliant miners exacerbates a blockchain’s vulnerability to selfish mining and is a major security threat.

An aggregate signature scheme allows multiple signatures generated by different people for different messages to be aggregated into a compact aggregate signature. We propose the first signature aggregation scheme that (1) grows the size of the aggregate signature only logarithmically in the number of signatures to be aggregated, (2) is many-time, (3) supports non-interactive aggregation, (4) its security is based on the standard lattice assumption in the random oracle model. To obtain the result, we construct a new compact non-interactive batch argument (BARG) for NP. Our BARG has a very compact proof and its security is based on the standard modulo lattice assumptions in the random oracle model.

Password Authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE) have become a key building block in many security products as they provide interesting efficiency/security trade-offs. Indeed, a PAKE allows to dispense with the heavy public key infrastructures and its efficiency and portability make it well suited for applications such as Internet of Things or e-passports. With the emerging quantum threat and the effervescent development of post-quantum public key algorithms in the last five years, one would wonder how to modify existing password authenticated key exchange protocols that currently rely on Diffie-Hellman problems in order to include newly introduced and soon-to-be-standardized post-quantum key encapsulation mechanisms (KEM). A generic solution is desirable for maintaining modularity and adaptability with the many post-quantum KEM that have been introduced.

In this paper, we propose two new generic and natural constructions proven in the Universal Composability (UC) model to transform, in a black-box manner, a KEM into a PAKE with very limited performance overhead: one or two extra symmetric encryptions. Behind the simplicity of the designs, establishing security proofs in the UC model is actually non-trivial and requires some additional properties on the underlying KEM like fuzziness and anonymity. Luckily, post-quantum KEM protocols often enjoy these two extra properties. As a demonstration, we prove that it is possible to apply our transformations to Crystals-Kyber, a lattice-based post-quantum KEM that will soon be standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

In a nutshell, this work opens up the possibility to securely include post-quantum cryptography in PAKE-based real-world protocols.

We study the use of symmetric cryptography in the MTProto 2.0 protocol, Telegram's equivalent of the TLS record protocol. We give positive and negative results. On the one hand, we formally and in detail model a slight variant of Telegram's "record protocol" and prove that it achieves security in a suitable bidirectional secure channel model, albeit under unstudied assumptions; this model itself advances the state-of-the-art for secure channels. On the other hand, we first motivate our modelling deviation from MTProto as deployed by giving two attacks – one of practical, one of theoretical interest – against MTProto without our modifications. We then also give a third attack exploiting timing side channels, of varying strength, in three official Telegram clients. On its own this attack is thwarted by the secrecy of salt and id fields that are established by Telegram's key exchange protocol. We chain the third attack with a fourth one against the implementation of the key exchange protocol on Telegram's servers. This fourth attack breaks the authentication properties of Telegram's key exchange, allowing a MitM attack. More mundanely, it also recovers the id field, reducing the cost of the plaintext recovery attack to guessing the 64-bit salt field. In totality, our results provide the first comprehensive study of MTProto's use of symmetric cryptography, as well as highlight weaknesses in its key exchange.

Internet of Things (IoT) has become an established part of our daily lives by interconnecting billions of devices in diverse areas such as health care, smart home technologies, agriculture, etc. However, IoT devices are limited in memory, energy and computational capabilities. This creates a great potential for security issues, since being constrained prevents producers from implementing mostly complex cryptographic algorithms in IoT devices. In this study, we propose a novel method to provide a low-cost and secure communication for constrained IoT devices. The proposed method is based on an $n$-out-of-$n$ secret sharing scheme and mimicks the idea of visual cryptography in a digital setup. Whenever an IoT device communicates with an outer party, it establishes the communication by itself or through a mediary such as a central hub or gateway; in which the latter mostly leads to a single point of failure. Our proposed method aims for a distributed environment in which IoT devices within a secure network collaborate with each other in order to send a message to a master device over an insecure channel.

Secure 2-party computation (2PC) of floating-point arithmetic is improving in performance and recent work runs deep learning algorithms with it, while being as numerically precise as commonly used machine learning (ML) frameworks like PyTorch. We find that the existing 2PC libraries for floating-point support generic computations and lack specialized support for ML training. Hence, their latency and communication costs for compound operations (e.g., dot products) are high. We provide novel specialized 2PC protocols for compound operations and prove their precision using numerical analysis. Our implementation BEACON outperforms state-of-the-art libraries for 2PC of floating-point by over $6\times$.

The position is funded by the Norwegian Research Council in the projects: “Lightweight Cryptography for Future Smart Networks” and “OffPAD - Optimizing balance between high security and usability. An innovative approach to endpoint security”.

The NIST Post Quantum Cryptography Standardization is expected to end in 2024, and post-quantum cryptography will be required to secure all sensitive information in the years to come shortly after, e.g., in protocols such as TLS, SSH, FIDO and other systems. Additionally, NIST has announced a new call for quantum secure digital signature algorithms.

This project aims to conduct research on lightweight post-quantum protocols and primitives, including symmetric key primitives, and improve upon the frameworks used today regarding communication size, computation complexity and secure and efficient implementation of long-term security cryptographic primitives.

The postdoc will be part of the NTNU Applied Cryptology Lab, a multidisciplinary research group consisting of members from the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology and the Department of Mathematical Sciences at NTNU.

A list of possible, but not limited to, post-quantum cryptography research topics for the postdoctoral position are:

• Usability of lightweight primitives and protocols
• Low communication key exchange and encryption
• Lightweight ZKP and digital signatures
• Efficient implementations in HW and SW
• Side-channel security analysis

As a Postdoctoral Fellow you are normally paid from NOK 563 500 per annum before tax, depending on qualifications and seniority. The period of employment is 3 years.

Your hosts will be Professor Danilo Gligoroski, Professor Stig Frode Mjølsnes and/or Associate Professor Tjerand Silde at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Tjerand Silde (email: tjerand.silde@ntnu.no)

More information: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/243244/postdoctoral-fellow-in-lightweight-post-quantum-cryptography

The Applied Cryptography Group at Technical University of Darmstadt offers a fully funded Ph.D. position as part of the ERC project CRYPTOLAYER. The goal of this project is to develop cryptographic tools to improve the privacy, scalability and security of next-generation blockchain protocols. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) threshold cryptography, second-layer protocols, cryptographic wallets, multiparty computation, zero-knowledge and more. You will conduct research and publish/present the results at top venues for research in cryptography and IT Security. The position is to be filled as soon as possible for initially 3 years with the possibility of an extension.

Your profile:

• Completed Master's degree (or equivalent) with excellent grades in computer science, mathematics, or a similar area.
• Strong mathematical and/or algorithmic/theoretical CS background
• Good knowledge in one of the topics mentioned above is a plus.
• Fluent in English

Your application should contain a CV, record of grades, a short motivation letter and at least one contact for a reference letter.

TU Darmstadt is a top research university for IT Security, Cryptography, and Computer Science in Europe. We offer an excellent working environment in the heart of the Frankfurt Metropolitan Area, which is internationally well-known for its high quality of life. The review of applications starts immediately until the position is filled.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Sebastian Faust (sebastian.faust@tu-darmstadt.de)

In this paper, we introduce $\mathsf{SparsePIR}$, a single-server keyword private information retrieval (PIR) construction that enables querying over sparse databases. At its core, $\mathsf{SparsePIR}$ is based on a novel encoding algorithm that encodes sparse database entries as linear combinations while being compatible with important PIR optimizations including recursion. $\mathsf{SparsePIR}$ achieves response overhead that is half of state-of-the art keyword PIR schemes without requiring long term client storage of linear sized mappings. We also introduce two variants, $\mathsf{SparsePIR}^g$ and $\mathsf{SparsePIR}^c$, that further reduces the size of the serving database at the cost of increased encoding time and small additional client storage, respectively. Our frameworks enable performing keyword PIR with, essentially, the same costs as standard PIR. Finally, we also show that $\mathsf{SparsePIR}$ may be used to build batch keyword PIR with halved response overhead without any client mappings.

Ring-Learning-with-Errors (RLWE) has emerged as the foundation of many important techniques for improving security and privacy, including homomorphic encryption and post-quantum cryptography. While promising, these techniques have received limited use due to their extreme overheads of running on general-purpose machines. In this paper, we present a novel vector Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and microarchitecture for accelerating the ring-based computations of RLWE. The ISA, named B512, is developed to meet the needs of ring processing workloads while balancing high-performance and general-purpose programming support. Having an ISA rather than fixed hardware facilitates continued software improvement post-fabrication and the ability to support the evolving workloads. We then propose the ring processing unit (RPU), a high-performance, modular implementation of B512. The RPU has native large word modular arithmetic support, capabilities for very wide parallel processing, and a large capacity high-bandwidth scratchpad to meet the needs of ring processing. We address the challenges of programming the RPU using a newly developed SPIRAL backend. A configurable simulator is built to characterize design tradeoffs and quantify performance. The best performing design was implemented in RTL and used to validate simulator performance. In addition to our characterization, we show that a RPU using 20.5mm2 of GF 12nm can provide a speedup of 1485x over a CPU running a 64k, 128-bit NTT, a core RLWE workload