International Association
for Cryptologic Research

PATRIOT (PUFs: Anchors of Trust in Resource-Constrained Environments)

Electr. Engin. Departm., TU/e, 1.0 FTE, 2 years, Start: October 2015

Description

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is situated in the heart of one of Europe’s largest high-tech innovation ecosystems. Research at TU/e is characterized by a combination of academic excellence and real-world impact. This impact is often obtained via close collaboration with regional high-tech institutes and enterprises. TU/e collaborates with Intrinsic ID through PATRIOT, a EuroStars project. There is a vacancy in PATRIOT for a PostDoc appointed by TU/e, focusing on hardware-based security.

Passwords are not secure and not user-friendly. The PATRIOT project provides an alternative for outdated password-based security and costly secure elements. The solution is 2-factor authentication using unclonable hardware. For this, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) that provide unique fingerprints for chips will be ported to resource-constrained devices, e.g. mobile phones, where they will provide strong authentication and key storage.

Three signal-processing steps will be investigated within PATRIOT. The first two techniques are entropy extraction and error correction. In mobile phone settings there are typically many applications that each need their own secret key. Multi-key extraction is therefore the third signal-processing method that needs to be addressed. The PostDoc will focus on these three signal-processing steps, and will also be active in the dissemination of the scientific results and project outcomes.

Candidates should have a PhD degree in Hardware-Based Security or a related field. We particularly mention Signal Processing Theory, Coding Theory, and Information Theory, as research areas that the PostDoc should be familiar with. Strong analytic and simulation skills are required. Since the project involves collaboratio