IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
06 January 2024
Virginia Tech
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Sarah McDearis, sworl9@vt.edu
More information: https://jobs.vt.edu
ETH, Department of Computer Science; Zurich, Switzerland
The Post-Quantum Cryptography group is looking for a motivated PhD candidate on the topic of lattice-based cryptography. In particular, the candidate will work with dr. Cecilia Boschini and prof. Dennis Hofheinz on lattice-based distributed authentication (threshold and multi- signatures), from constructing and analyzing protocols to more foundational work in lattice theory. Besides research, the candidate is expected to do a small amount of teaching each semester, in accordance with ETH regulations.
The position is fully funded for 4 years with a competitive salary (rate 5 according to ETH rules), and available already from Spring 2024; the exact starting date is negotiable. To be eligible, the candidate should have a master's (or equivalent) degree in Computer Science or Mathematics (or other relevant field), and already have some basic knowledge of cryptography and/or lattices.
ETH has a large and diverse community of cryptographers, with strong researchers in both theoretical and applied areas, and ties to the many other cryptography groups present in Switzerland. As a nice bonus, the department of Computer Science is located in the center of Zurich, a dynamic and international city where everything can be reached by public transport, including the Alps.
To apply, please send via email the following:
- your CV (max 2 pages)
- transcripts
- contact information of 2 references
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Dr. Cecilia Boschini (cecilia.boschini@inf.ethz.ch)
University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
Key Responsibilities:
- The post-doctoral fellow is expected to perform exciting and challenging research in the area of information security and cryptography including the design of provably secure cryptographic protocols.
- The post-doctoral fellow shall be involved in the supervision of PhD and master students
- The post-doctoral researcher is expected to have a PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering or Mathematics and a strong background in theoretical computer science and cryptography
- Have an excellent publication record in top venues Competitive research record in cryptography or information security
- Strong mathematical and algorithmic CS background
- Good skills in programming is beneficial
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
Please apply asap through the job link.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
Eriane Breu (Administrative matters)
Prof. Katerina Mitrokotsa (Research related questions)
More information: https://jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stellen/postdoc-fellow-in-cryptography-information-security-m-f-d-m-w-d/831c6e8a-e191-48ec-92d5-320b2822a9ab
University of St.Gallen
The student is expected to work on topics that include security and privacy issues in authentication. More precisely, the student will be working on investigating efficient and privacy-preserving authentication that provides: i) provable security guarantees, and ii) rigorous privacy guarantees.
Key Responsibilities:
- Perform exciting and challenging research in the domain of information security and cryptography.
- Support and assist in teaching computer security and cryptography courses.
- The PhD student is expected to have a MSc degree or equivalent, and strong background in cryptography, network security and mathematics.
- Experience in one or more domains such as cryptography, design of protocols, secure multi-party computation and differential privacy is beneficial.
- Excellent programming skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
Please apply asap through the job link. Applications will be evaluated continuously.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
Eriane Breu (Administrative matters)
Prof. Katerina Mitrokotsa (Research related questions)
More information: https://jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stellen/funded-phd-student-in-applied-cryptography-privacy-preserving-authentication-m-f-d-m-w-d/6ce1d454-47ca-4710-a9f2-33429243b4ac
Copper.co
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Clara Luna
More information: https://boards.eu.greenhouse.io/copperco/jobs/4248039101
05 January 2024
Yaroslav Balytskyi, Yevgen Kotukh, Gennady Khalimov, Sang-Yoon Chang
Sedigheh Khajouei-Nejad, Hamid Haj Seyyed Javadi, Sam Jabbehdari, Seyed Mohammad Hossein Moattar
Zhenkai Hu, Kang Yang, Yu Yu
In this paper, we present an unconditionally secure MPC protocol for Boolean circuits in the honest-majority setting, which has constant online communication complexity and the offline communication complexity linear to the number $n$ of parties. We first describe the semi-honest MPC protocol and then show how to extend it to achieve malicious security, where the maliciously secure protocol has the same communication cost as the semi-honest protocol. In particular, our protocol achieves the amortized communication cost $36$ bits per AND gate in the online phase and $30n+24$ bits per AND gate in the offline phase.
Ahmet Ramazan Ağırtaş, Oğuz YAYLA
Zhengjun Cao, Lihua Liu
Behnam Zahednejad, Gao Chong-zhi
We prove the security of our scheme under standard assumptions such as Discrete Logarithms (DL) and q-strong Diffie-Hellman(q-sDH) assumption in ID-eCK model. Finally, we conduct a proof-of-concept implementation of our scheme vs. previous single pairing-based schemes and show that our scheme imposes the least computation cost and stands in the middle of previous scheme regarding communication cost.
Daniel Noble, Brett Hemenway Falk, Rafail Ostrovsky
This comes as a surprise, since the Goldreich-Ostrovsky lower bound shows that the related problem of Oblivious RAMs requires logarithmic overhead in the number of memory locations accessed. It was shown that this bound also applies in the multi-server ORAM setting, and therefore also applies in the DORAM setting. Achieving sub-logarithmic communication therefore requires accessing and using $\Omega(\log(n) \cdot d)$ bits of memory, without engaging in communication for each bit accessed. Techniques such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption and Function Secret Sharing allow secure selection of the relevant memory locations with small communication overhead, but introduce computational assumptions.
In this paper we show that it is possible to avoid a logarithmic communication overhead even without any computational assumptions. Concretely, we present a 3-party honest-majority DORAM that is secure against semi-honest adversaries. The protocol has communication cost $$\Theta\left((\log^2(n) + d) \cdot \frac{\log(n)}{\log(\log(n)}\right)$$ For any $d = \Omega(\log^2(n))$ the overhead is therefore $\Theta(\log(n)/\log(\log(n)))$. Additionally, we show a subtle flaw in a common approach for analyzing the security of Oblivious Hash Tables. We prove our construction secure using an alternative approach.
Sulaiman Alhussaini, Craig Collett, Serge˘ı Sergeev
Aviad Ben Arie, Tamir Tassa
Alessandro Budroni, Isaac A. Canales-Martínez, Lucas Pandolfo Perin
Sabyasachi Dutta, Partha Sarathi Roy, Reihaneh Safavi-Naini, Willy Susilo
Ran Canetti, Claudio Chamon, Eduardo Mucciolo, Andrei Ruckenstein
We start by formulating a new (and relatively weak) obfuscation task regarding the ability to obfuscate random circuits of bounded length. We call such obfuscators random input & output (RIO) obfuscators. We then show how to construct indistinguishability obfuscators for all (unbounded length) circuits given only an RIO obfuscator --- under a new assumption regarding the pseudorandomness of sufficiently long random reversible circuits with known functionality, which in turn builds on a conjecture made by Gowers (Comb. Prob. Comp. '96) regarding the pseudorandomness of bounded-size random reversible circuits. Furthermore, the constructed obfuscators satisfy a new measure of security - called random output indistinguishability (ROI) obfuscation - which is significantly stronger than IO and may be of independent interest.
We then investigate the possibility of constructing RIO obfuscators using local, functionality preserving perturbations. Our approach is rooted in statistical mechanics and can be thought of as locally ``thermalizing'' a circuit while preserving its functionality. We provide candidate constructions along with a pathway for analyzing the security of such strategies.
Given the power of program obfuscation, viability of the proposed approach would provide an alternative route to realizing almost all cryptographic tasks under hardness assumptions that are very different from standard ones. Furthermore, our specific candidate obfuscators are relatively efficient: the obfuscated version of an n-wire, m-gate (reversible) circuit with security parameter k has n wires and poly(n,k)m gates. We hope that our initial exploration will motivate further study of this alternative path to cryptography.
Tamir Tassa, Avishay Yanai
Fredrik Meisingseth, Christian Rechberger, Fabian Schmid
Alex Kampa
To illustrate the concept, a concrete application of this method to a simple binary voting scheme is then described in detail.