This is the archive of news previously and currently shown on our main page. Seminars are posted on the seminar page. Our latest publications are posted on the publications page.

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2018

Dr. Gaj gave presentations at FPT 2018

Dr. Gaj attended the 2018 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, FPT 2018, held in Naha, Okinawa, Japan, on December 10-14, 2018. Dr. Gaj gave an oral presentation entitled "A High-Speed Constant-Time Hardware Implementation of NTRUEncrypt SVES," based on the paper co-authored with Farnoud Farahmand, Malik Umar Sharif, and Kevin Briggs. He also gave a poster presentation, entitled "Face-off between the CAESAR Lightweight Finalists: ACORN vs. Ascon," based on the paper co-authored with William Diehl, Farnoud Farahmand, Abubakr Abdulgadir, and Jens-Peter Kaps. After the main conference, Dr. Gaj attended the half-day workshop entitled "Embedded Machine Learning: Technology and Opportunities," organized by David Boland and Philip Leong from the University of Sydney in Australia. (12/15/2018)


Ahmed Ferozpuri gave a presentation at ReConFig 2018

Ahmed Ferozpuri attended the 2018 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs - ReConFig 2017, held in Cancun, Mexico, on December 3-5, 2018. He gave an oral presentation entitled "High-speed FPGA Implementation of the NIST Round 1 Rainbow Signature Scheme," based on the paper co-authored with Kris Gaj. In the same session, Michael Tempelmeier from Technical University of Munich gave a talk entitled "Performance Evaluation of CAESAR Hardware Finalists," based on the paper co-authored with Jens-Peter Kaps from CERG, GMU and Georg Sigl from Technical University of Munich. (12/06/2018)


Matthew Ryan Carter defended his Master's Thesis

Matthew Ryan Carter defended his Master's Thesis entitled "Enabling a Control System Approach to Side-Channel and Fault Attacks," on December 5, 2018. Members of his Committee included: Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Lorie. (12/06/2017)


Michael Lyons passed the Research Qualifying Exam

Michael Lyons passed the PhD Research Qualifying Exam (RQE) on December 3, 2018. As a part of the exam, he presented his paper entitled "Efficient Reduction Modulo 3 in FPGAs". The members of his RQE Committee included Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Sasan. (12/04/2018)


Duc Nguyen earned the 4th place in the International Students' Olympiad in Cryptography NSUCRYPTO-2018

Duc Nguyen earned the 4th place in the International Students' Olympiad in Cryptography, NSUCRYPTO-2018, held on October 14-22, 2018. Duc participated in Round 2 for Professionals as a member of the team, including two of his colleagues from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Quan Doan and Quoc Bao Nguyen. The results of the competition were announced on December 3, 2018. That was Duc's third start in the Olympiad. His teams earned the third place in both 2016 and 2017. (12/04/2018)


Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps awarded NSF grant for research on Side-Channel Attack Countermeasures for Post-Quantum Cryptography

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for their project "SaTC: CORE: Medium: Collaborative: Countermeasures Against Side-Channels Attacks Targeting Hardware and Embedded System Implementations of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms". The period of performance is October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2022. The first year funding is $105,571, and the anticipated total funding $450,000. This project is a joint effort with the research groups of Dr. Reza Azarderakhsh and Dr. Mehrdad Nojoumian from Florida Atlantic University, and of Dr. Mehran Mozaffari Kermani from University of South Florida. GMU serves a lead organization for this effort. The total anticipated funding for all three universities is $1.2M. (09/08/2018)


Dr. Kaps and Dr. Gaj awarded NIST grant for research on Lightweight Cryptography

Dr. Kaps and Dr. Gaj were awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce (NIST) for their project "Lightweight Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems". The period of performance is September 1, 2018 through August 31, 2021. The first year funding is $164,694, and the anticipated total funding $499,970. This project is a joint effort with the research group of Dr. William Diehl from Virginia Tech. (09/02/2018)


Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps awarded NIST grant for research on Post-Quantum Cryptography

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps were awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce (NIST) for their project "Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems". The period of performance is September 1, 2018 through August 31, 2021. The first year funding is $161,918, and the anticipated total funding $500,000. (09/02/2018)


CERG becomes a part of CHEST

CERG has joined CHEST: Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust, developed as a part of the NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program. CHEST, launched in May 2018, includes research groups from the following six universities: George Mason University, Northeastern University, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Connecticut, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Virginia. The research activities of CHEST will cover security and trust at the following levels: systems/application, architectural and board, embedded-device, FPGA and ASIC, and circuit (including analog, RF, and digital). At GMU, the following research groups have become a part of CHEST: Accelerated, Secure, and Energy-Efficient Computing Lab (ASEEC), led by Dr. Homayoun; Green, Accelerated, and Trustworthy Engineering (GATE) Lab, led by Dr. Sasan, and Cryptographic Engineering Research Group (CERG), led by Drs. Gaj and Kaps. The planning meeting of CHEST took place on August 23-24, 2018, at George Mason University, with the participation of all collaborating universities, as well as representatives of National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Lab, and about 30 companies and industry/government labs. During the planning meeting Dr. Gaj gave the project proposal presentation entitled "Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems," and student members of CERG presented two posters about recent research activities of CERG. (2018/09/02)


Ahmed Ferozpuri passed the Research Qualifying Exam

Ahmed Ferozpuri passed the PhD Research Qualifying Exam (RQE) on August 31, 2018. As a part of the exam, he presented his paper entitled "High-Speed FPGA Implementation of the Rainbow Signature Scheme". The members of his RQE Committee included Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Sasan. (2018/09/01)


Ted Winograd defended his PhD Thesis Proposal

Ted Winograd defended his PhD Thesis Proposal, entitled "A New Approach to the Development of Cryptographic Hardware Based on Specialized Computer-Aided Design Tools," on August 21, 2018. Members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Homayoun (co-Chair), Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Ammann. (2018/08/22)


Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps gave presentations at CryptArchi 2018

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps attended CryptArchi 2018, held in Guidel-Plages near Lorient, France, on June 17-20, 2018. Dr. Gaj gave a talk entitled "Post-Quantum Cryptography in Reconfigurable Hardware: Challenges, Opportunities, and State-of-the-Art ," and Dr. Kaps delivered a presentation entitled "Evaluation of DPA Protected Implementations of CAESAR Finalists ACORN and Ascon and other Candidates". (06/21/2018)


Dr. Gaj organized a special session and spoke at GLSVLSI 2018

Dr. Gaj attended the 28th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI - GLSVLSI 2018, held in Chicago, IL, on May 23-25, 2018. He served as an organizer of the special session on "Implementing and Benchmarking Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware," and gave a talk entitled "Challenges and Rewards of Implementing and Benchmarking Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware". (05/26/2018)


Student members of CERG received special departmental awards

During the ECE Departmental Awards Ceremony held on May 17, 2018, several members of CERG were recognized with the following awards: William Diehl received the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award for Ph.D. students, Ahmad Salman, Rabia Shahid, Malik Umar Sharif, and Panasayya Yalla received Chairman's Awards, and Ahmed Ferozpuri received the Special Recognition Award. (05/18/2018)


Ahmed Ferozpuri spoke at ICMC 2018

Ahmed Ferozpuri spoke at the International Cryptographic Module Conference, held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on May 8-11, 2018. He delivered an oral presentation entitled "Using FPGAs in the Cloud for Decentralized Trusted Execution". He also attended the pre-conference workshops, held on Tuesday, May 8. (05/11/2018)


Farnoud Farahmand spoke at FCCM 2018

Farnoud Farahmand spoke at the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines, held in Boulder, CO, on April 29 - May 1, 2018. He delivered an oral presentation entitled "Improved Lightweight Implementations of CAESAR Authenticated Ciphers," co-authored with William Diehl, Abubakr Abdulgadir, Jens-Peter Kaps, and Kris Gaj. (05/02/2018)


William Diehl defended his PhD Thesis

William Diehl defended his PhD Thesis, entitled "Comparing Costs of Protecting Secret Key Ciphers Against Differential Power Analysis," on April 24, 2018. The members of his dissertation committee included Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, Dr. Sasan, and Dr. Ammann. The thesis was co-advised by Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps. In March 2018, William accepted the tenure-track assistant professor position at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. (04/25/2018)


CERG Team gave two demos and one poster presentation at HOST 2018

CERG Team, including Abubakr Abdulgadir, Ryan Carter, William Diehl, Raghurama Velagala, Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Gaj, attended the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2018, held in McLean, VA, on April 30-May 4, 2018. During this conference, our team gave two demos entitled: Flexible, Opensource workBench fOr Side-channel analysis (FOBOS) and eXtended eXternal Benchmarking eXtension (XXBX). Additionally, William Diehl gave the poster presentation entitled "Comparison of Cost of Protection Against Differential Power Analysis of Selected Authenticated Ciphers," co-authored with Abubakr Abdulgadir, Farnoud Farahmand, Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Gaj. Finally, Michael Tempelmeier from Technical University of Munich (TUM) gave the talk entitled "The CAESAR-API in the Real World - Towards a Fair Evaluation of Hardware CAESAR Candidates," co-authored with Dr. Kaps. (04/20/2018)


CERG Team attended CBC 2018, PQCrypto 2018, and First PQC Standardization Conference

CERG Team, including Viet Dang, Ahmed Ferozpuri, Duc Nguyen, Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Kaps, attended a sequence of the following three conferences: The Sixth Code-Based Cryptography Workshop, CBC 2018, held on April 5-6, 2018; The Ninth International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography, PQCrypto 2018, held on April 9-11, 2018, and First PQC Standardization Conference, held on April 11-13, 2018. All conferences were located in Fort Lauderdale, FL. During the CBC 2018 workshop, Viet Dang gave a talk entitled "Hardware Implementation of the Code-based Key Encapsulation Mechanism using Dyadic GS Codes (DAGS)," co-authored with Dr. Gaj. During the Recent Results Session at the PQCrypto 2018 conference, Dr. Gaj, Ahmed Ferozpuri, and Viet Dang gave three short talks entitled, respectively, "PQC Hardware API & Fair Benchmarking of PQC," "High-Speed HW Implementation of the Multivariate Signature Schemes Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar (UOV), and Rainbow," and "Hardware Implementation of DAGS". (04/14/2018)