PhD student - Cryptography - Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics

We are offering 2 PhD student position in the area of cryptography in the Cryptography and Data Security Group at the Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics at University of Warsaw.

The position is supported by a grant "Cryptographic Defence Against Malicious Hardware Manufacturers".

The goal of this project is to design methods for preventing attacks by malicious hardware manufacturers.
Such attacks are possible because manufacturing of integrated circuits is frequently outsourced to external companies. Due to the complexity of these devices it is practically impossible to inspect them in order to check that they were manufactured correctly. Hence, a malicious manufacturer can alter the device's design, by introducing the so-called "hardware Trojan horses". Such devices can later cause significant damage to their users by malfunctioning, or leaking users' secrets to the adversary. This is very worrying, especially given a tremendous dependence of modern society on the electronic devices.
Another threat associated with the third-party manufacturing is the intellectual property theft and piracy, as the manufacturer gets full access to the device's specification. In this project we address these problems by applying state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques.

After initial screening of applications we will contact selected candidates for an interview.