Project description
Enhancing cryptographic implementation and verification methods
Cryptography is crucial for safeguarding communications and record integrity, but when applied to embedded devices, cryptographic schemes can be vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Countermeasures’ current security level is insufficient, and opinions differ on cryptographic application assessment security. The EU-funded AMAskZONE project aims to develop a toolbox for designing and verifying practical cryptographic implementations with improved security. The project will create new compilers to convert high-level algorithms into secure implementations for specific devices and expand formal verification’s boundaries for industrial use with device characterisation and polynomial complexity. The project seeks to enhance the security of embedded devices through improved cryptographic implementations and verification methods.
Objective
Cryptography is everywhere in our daily life to ensure the confidentiality and authentication of our communications and the integrity of our records. Although there are strong expectations regarding the security of cryptographic schemes against black-box attackers whose knowledge is restricted to a few inputs or outputs, the security of their implementations is less challenged. However, once implemented on embedded devices, cryptographic schemes become vulnerable to powerful side-channel attacks. The latter additionally exploit the physical leakage (e.g. power consumption) released by the device to recover the manipulated secrets. With cheap equipment, side-channel attacks may yield tremendous damage (e.g. full key recovery) within seconds. Nevertheless, the current security level of countermeasures is not yet close to that achieved in the black-box model.
The community is divided on how to assess the security of cryptographic implementations. From practitioners’ perspective, they need to be confronted with concrete side-channel attacks directly on embedded devices. Conversely, theorists consider that such an empirical approach is not portable and does not yield concrete security levels (e.g. not all attacks can be tested). Therefore, they instead investigate security proofs based on abstract leakage models, although the latter are often too far removed from reality to yield practical security.
In this project, I plan to combine the advantages of both worlds with a toolbox to generate and verify cryptographic implementations with practical security. Namely, I aim to:
(i) design new compilers to turn any high-level algorithm into an efficient implementation proven secure for identified concrete devices,
(ii) push the limits of formal verification with device characterization and polynomial complexity for industrial use.
The main challenge of AMAskZONE is to design and verify cryptographic implementations so that they achieve measurable practical security.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
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75002 Paris
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
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