International Association
for Cryptologic Research

COSIC is looking for a motivated researcher who fit into the following profile: PhD candidate to work on Hardware implementations secured against physical attacks.

Job Description : The position is funded by Flemish Research Funds (FWO). The PhD candidate will work in collaboration with the research group of Prof. Amir Moradi from University of Darmstadt. The research program is defined in a joint research project jointly funded by FWO (Belgium) and DFG (Germany). The title of the project is MatSec – Maturing Physical Security Models in Realistic Scenarios. The PIs of the project in COSIC are Dr. Svetla Nikova and Prof. Vincent Rijmen.

Security models for side-channel analysis and combined attacks for HW implementations exist, but they often make unrealistic assumptions or are inaccurate in modeling physical effects. This results in countermeasures that are either overdesigned, unnecessarily increasing the costs, or still vulnerable to attacks when deployed. The main objective of this project is to provide security models that accurately abstract attacks against cryptographically secured physical devices and that allow for the creation of efficient countermeasures on hardware guaranteeing security in practice.

We are looking for people to work on the following topics: (1) Realistic side-channel models capturing the circuit’s real behavior and achieving a balance between security and efficiency and providing improved countermeasures. (2) Security models and randomness generation: to develop procedures for constructing masked HW/SW implementations with low randomness requirements (3) Combined security models extending known fault/combined adversaries.

Specific Skills Required: For the PhD position: The candidates should hold a master’s degree in Engineering, Mathematics or Computer Science with very good grades, very good knowledge and experience with programing with C/C++ and Verilog/VHDL. Preferably to have passed courses in Cryptography and/or Computer Security.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Dr. Svetla Nikova

More information: https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/PhD-position_FWO-DFG.pdf