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2019

Dr. Gaj and Duc Tri Nguyen visited Tsinghua University in Beijing, China

On December 18, 2019, Dr. Gaj and Duc Tri Nguyen visited the Institute of Microelectronics of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Their hosts included Dr. Liji Wu and Dr. Guoqiang Bai. Both of them serve as General Chairs of CHES 2020 and CHES 2021. Dr. Gaj gave a presentation titled "Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems: Toward Choosing the Most Efficient and Flexible New Public Key Cryptography Standards." (12/19/2019)


Dr. Gaj and Duc Tri Nguyen gave presentations at FPT 2019

Dr. Gaj and Duc Tri Nguyen attended the 2019 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology - FPT 2019, held in Tianjin, China, on December 9-13, 2019. Dr. Gaj gave an oral presentation titled "Implementing and Benchmarking Three Lattice-based Post-Quantum Cryptography Algorithms Using Software/Hardware Codesign," based on the paper co-authored with Viet B. Dang, Farnoud Farahmand, and Michal Andrzejczak. Duc Tri Nguyen presented a poster titled "A High-Level Synthesis Approach to the Software/Hardware Codesign of NTT-based Post-Quantum Cryptography Algorithms," based on the paper co-authored with Viet B. Dang and Kris Gaj. (12/14/2019)


Abubakr Abdulgadir and Michal Andrzejczak attended ReConFig 2019

Abubakr Abdulgadir and Michal Andrzejczak attended the 2019 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs, ReConFig 2019, held in Cancun, Mexico, on December 9-11, 2019. Abubakr Abdulgadir gave an oral presentation titled "An Open-Source Platform for Evaluation of Hardware Implementations of Lightweight Authenticated Ciphers," based on the paper co-authored with William Diehl and Jens-Peter Kaps. Michal Andrzejczak presented a poster titled "Full hardware implementation of the Post-Quantum Public-Key Cryptography Scheme Round5," based on the paper co-authored with Farnoud Farahmand and Kris Gaj. Additionally, Abubakr presented the newly released FOBOS 2 during the Demo Night held on December 9. (12/12/2019)


Members of CERG gave talks at the Third Lightweight Cryptography Workshop

Five members of CERG, Abubakr Abdulgadir, Farnoud Farahmand, Michael X. Lyons, Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Gaj attended the Third Lightweight Cryptography Workshop, held on the NIST Campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on November 4-6, 2019. Dr. Kaps gave a talk titled "A Comprehensive Framework for Fair and Efficient Benchmarking of Hardware Implementations of Lightweight Cryptography," and Abubakr Abdulgadir delivered a presentation titled "An Open-Source Platform for Evaluating Side-Channel Countermeasures in Hardware Implementations of Lightweight Authenticated Ciphers." (11/07/2019)


Release of the Lightweight Cryptography Benchmarking Framework

On October 14, 2019, Cryptographic Engineering Research Group at GMU, Signatures Analysis Lab at Virginia Tech, Michael Tempelmeier from Technische Universität München, Germany and Ekawat Homsirikamol (an Independent Researcher) have jointly released major components of the Comprehensive Framework for Fair and Efficient Benchmarking of Hardware Implementations of Lightweight Cryptography, version 1.0. This framework includes an overview paper, Hardware API, Development Package, and Implementer's Guide. All components of the framework are intended to support fair ranking of candidates in the NIST Lightweight Cryptography (LWC) standardization process. (10/14/2019)


Viet Dang gave presentations at FPL 2019

Viet Dang attended the 29th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2019, held in Barcelona, Spain, on September 9-11, 2019. Viet gave a short oral presentation entitled "Software/Hardware Codesign of the Post Quantum Cryptography Algorithm NTRUEncrypt Using High-Level Synthesis and Register-Transfer Level Design Methodologies," and presented a poster based on the paper with the same title, co-authored with Farnoud Farahmand, Duc Tri Nguyen, Ahmed Ferozpuri and Kris Gaj. He also attended two co-located events: the workshop "FPGAs for Software Programmers, FSP 2019," held on September 12, and the tutorial entitled "Hardware Design in the 21st Century with the Object Oriented and Functional Language Chisel," held on September 13. The tutorial on Chisel was given by Martin Schoeberl from Technical University of Denmark. The tutorial was based on the free eBook "Digital Design with Chisel," and the related materials. (09/14/2019)


CERG welcomed a new member

At the beginning of September 2019, CERG welcomed a new member: Javad Bahrami, who completed his MS degree in Electronics Engineering at University of Tehran in 2016, and BS degree in Electronics Engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in 2012. Javad will pursue his PhD degree under the supervision of Dr. Gaj, with the focus on the area of post-quantum cryptography digital signature schemes. (09/13/2019)


Members of CERG attended Second PQC Standardization Conference

Dr. Gaj, Dr. Kaps, Farnoud Farahmand, and Viet Dang attended the Second PQC Standardization Conference, organized by NIST at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on August 22-24, 2019. As a part of this conference, Dr. Gaj gave a talk entitled "Implementing and Benchmarking Seven Round 2 Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanisms Using Software/Hardware Codesign Approach," and Dr. Kaps delivered a presentation entitled "Feasibility and Performance of PQC Algorithms on Microcontrollers". (08/25/2019)


Dr. Gaj and Michal Andrzejczak gave talks at CryptArchi 2019

Dr. Gaj and Michal Andrzejczak attended the 17th International Workshop on Cryptographic Architectures Embedded in Logic Devices, CryptArchi 2019, held in Pruhonice near Prague, Czech Republic, on June 23-26, 2019. Dr. Gaj gave a talk entitled "Toward Efficient and Fair Software/Hardware Codesign and Benchmarking of Candidates in Round 2 of the NIST PQC Standardization Process," and Michal Andrzejczak delivered a presentation entitled "Lattice sieving acceleration in FPGAs". (06/27/2019)


Dr. Kaps gave a talk at NIST

On June 4, 2019, Dr. Kaps met with members of the Cryptographic Technology Group at NIST, on the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD, gave a presentation entitled "Lightweight Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems," and discussed the status of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography standardization process. (06/05/2019)


Farnoud Farahmand presented a poster at the DAC 2019 Work-in-Progress Session

Farnoud Farahmand attended the Design Automation Conference, DAC 2019, held in Las Vegas, NV, on June 2-6, 2019. He presented a poster in the DAC 2019 Work-in-Progress Session, entitled "Software/Hardware Codesign of the Post Quantum Cryptography Algorithm NTRUEncrypt Using High-Level Synthesis and Register-Transfer Level Design Methodologies," based on his joint work with Duc Tri Nguyen, Viet Ba Dang, Ahmed Ferozpuri, and Kris Gaj. (06/07/2019)


Ted Winograd gave a talk at RAW 2019

Ted Winograd attended the 26th Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop, RAW 2019, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 20, 2019. Ted gave an oral presentation entitled "An Automated Scheduler-based Approach for the Development of Cryptoprocessors for Pairing-Based Cryptosystems," based on the paper co-authored with Rabia Shahid and Kris Gaj. (05/21/2019)


Farnoud Farahmand's internship at Google

Farnoud Farahmand has qualified for an internship at Google in Mountain View, CA, to be conducted in Summer and Fall 2019. (05/20/2019)


Dr. Gaj gave talks at the Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities in Shanghai, China

Dr. Gaj visited the Cryptography and Information Security Lab at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, on May 16, 2019. One of his hosts, Dr. Yunlei Zhao, is a primary designer of one of the candidates in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process KCL - Key Consensus from Lattice. His other hosts included Dr. Yiming Zhao and Dr. Yuedong Xu. Dr. Gaj gave two presentations entitled "From AES to Post-Quantum & Lightweight Cryptography: Battles of Cryptographic Algorithms in Hardware" and "Post-Quantum Cryptography in Hardware and Embedded Systems: Toward Choosing the Most Efficient and Flexible New Public Key Cryptography Standards". The following day, on May 17, 2019, Dr. Gaj visited the Lab of Cryptology and Computer Security in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). His hosts at SJTU included Dr. Lei Wang, Dr. Zhiqiang Liu, and Dr. Dawu Gu. Dr. Wang is the designer of SHELL - an authenticated cipher which competed in the CAESAR contest. At SJTU, Dr. Gaj gave a talk entitled "Battles of Cryptographic Algorithms in Hardware and Software: Toward Choosing the Most Efficient and Flexible Post-Quantum Cryptography Standard". (05/18/2019).


Michael Tempelmeier from TUM, Germany, visited CERG

On May 10, 2019, CERG hosted Michael Tempelmeier from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. Michael gave a talk entitled "Using Hardware Software Codesign for Optimized Implementations of High-Speed and Defense in Depth CEASAR Finalists". Short talks were given by Dr. William Diehl, and several members of CERG, including Dr. Kaps, Farnoud Farahmand, Viet Ba Dang, Duc Tri Nguyen and Kamyar Mohajerani. (05/11/2019)


Dr. Gaj gave a talk at PQCrypto 2019

Dr. Gaj attended the 10th International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography, PQCrypto 2019, held in Chongqing, China, on May 8-10, 2019. Dr. Gaj gave an oral presentation entitled "Evaluating the Potential for Hardware Acceleration of Four NTRU-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanisms Using Software/Hardware Codesign," based on the paper co-authored with Farnoud Farahmand, Viet Ba Dang, and Duc Tri Nguyen. Before the main conference, Dr. Gaj also attended the half-day Summer School on Post-Quantum Cryptography, including lectures by Drs. Daniel Smith-Tone, Nicolas Sendrier, and Jean-Francois Biasse. (05/11/2019)


CERG students attended HOST tutorials

Several members of CERG, including Abubakr Abdulgadir, Viet Ba Dang, Farnoud Farahmand, Michael X. Lyons, Kamyar Mohajerani, and Duc Tri Nguyen, as well as the visiting student Michal Andrzejczak, attended tutorials at the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2019, held on May 6, 2019. (05/07/2019)


CERG at the NIST PQC Hardware Day

Several members of CERG, including Dr. Gaj, Dr. Kaps, Abubakr Abdulgadir, Viet Ba Dang, Ahmed Ferozpuri, Michael X. Lyons, and Duc Tri Nguyen, as well as the visiting student Michal Andrzejczak, attended the NIST PQC Hardware Day, held on the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD, on May 2, 2019. Dr. Gaj gave a presentation entitled "Hardware and Software/Hardware Benchmarking of PQC Schemes" and Dr. Kaps delivered a talk "Evaluation of PQC Candidates using FOBOS and XXBX". Other speakers of the NIST PQC Hardware Day included Dr. Dustin Moody from NIST, Dr. Reza Azarderakhsh from Florida Atlantic University, Dr. James Howe from the University of Bristol, UK, Matthias Kannwischer from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Dr. Kanad Basu from the New York University. (05/03/2019)


Farnoud Farahmand defended his Ph.D. Thesis Proposal

Farnoud Farahmand defended his PhD Thesis Proposal, entitled "Comprehensive Hardware Evaluation of Cryptographic Algorithms from Authenticated Ciphers to Post-Quantum Cryptography: Implementation Methods, Benchmarking Platforms, Analysis Tools, and Resistance to Side-Channel Attacks," on April 8, 2019. Members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Diehl, Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Sasan. (04/09/2019)


Visiting student from the Military University of Technology in Warsaw

In the period from January 22 to May 24, 2019, CERG is hosting Michal Andrzejczak, a Ph.D. student from the Institute of Mathematics and Cryptology in the Faculty of Cybernetics at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw, Poland. Michal's research interests include hardware implementations of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms and methods of breaking them. In particular, his Ph.D. research involves the implementation of the NIST PQC candidate Round5, as well as the lattice sieving algorithms, which are believed to be the most efficient known algorithms for solving the shortest vector problem (SVP) in lattices. SVP is one of the primary hard mathematical problems underlying the security of lattice-based PQC schemes. (02/01/2019)


CERG paper accepted to PQCrypto 2019

The CERG paper entitled "Evaluating the Potential for Hardware Acceleration of Four NTRU-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanisms Using Software/Hardware Codesign," co-authored by Farnoud Farahmand, Viet B. Dang, Duc Tri Nguyen, and Kris Gaj has been accepted for an oral presentation at the Tenth International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography, PQCrypto 2019, to be held at the Chongqing University, in Chongqing, China, on May 8-10, 2019. (01/13/2019)