Secure electronic circuits and systems [ LELEC2760 ]

Prerequisites and evaluation.  This course is open to any student following a master in electrical engineering, electromechanical engineering, computer engineering and mathematical engineering.  The only prerequisites are basic courses from the bachelor in engineering (mathematics, statistics, programming, ...).  The evaluation combines a project work and a written examination

More details : http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/~fstandae/teaching.html

Identical to the contents of the course

This course aims to analyze the different implementation issues that are raised by the design of cryptographic circuits and systems (hardware and software).  It is part of the option in "Cryptography and Information Security", as a complementary to courses in cryptography (MAT2450) and computer system security (INGI2347).

Cryptography generally assumes the existence of certain basic primitives acting as perfect black boxes in order to prove the security of advanced functionalities (identification, signature, voting, ...).  On the other hand, the more general field of information security exploits cryptographic protocols and their implementations in order to secure any computer-based application such as e-mails, Internet, payment systems, ...  And these applications also imply different constraints on the "efficiency" of the cryptographic implementations.  This course on secure electronic circuits and systems studies the resulting tradeoff between security and performance.  It discusses how to select algorithms and implementations that satisfy application constraints from these two points of view.  Additionally, a significant attention will be paid in showing that implementation issues are not only related to performances, but also to the so-called physical security of cryptographic devices.  That is, adversaries against cryptographic systems can sometimes take advantage of alternative information channels (e.g. the time or energy need to perform a computation) in order to recover secret data.  Such problems are essential for the deployment of small embedded devices such as smart cards, RFIDs, ...

Contents :

- black box assumptions for cryptographic algorithms,

- efficient implementation of cryptosystems,

- mathematical cryptanalysis issues (statistical, algebraic, ...)

- physical attacks exploiting side-channels (e.g. power assumption, electromagnetic radiation, ...) or fault insertion,

- random number generation, biometrics and physically unclonable functions,

- integration of cryptographic hardware devices in secure systems and applications,

- ...

Prerequisites and evaluation.  This course is open to any student following a master in electrical engineering, electromechanical engineering, computer engineering and mathematical engineering.  The only prerequisites are basic courses from the bachelor in engineering (mathematics, statistics, programming, ...).  The evaluation combines a project work and a written examination

More details : http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/~fstandaert/teaching