Secure hardware implementation of CRYSTALS-Dilithium H/F

Vacancy details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

2024-33340  

Description de l'unité

Le département Système opère un service en charge de la Sécurité des Systèmes Electroniques et des Composants (SSSEC), acteur majeur de l'activité et de l'offre sécurité globale du CEA-Leti. Ce service intervient en particulier sur l'évaluation des vulnérabilités et la conception de technologies et de systèmes sécurisés, sur des domaines applicatifs en très forte croissance. Au sein de ce service, le Laboratoire Sécurité des Composants (LSCO) développe des briques technologiques innovantes pour les composants sécurisés dans les contraintes de performances, de consommation et de sécurité face aux attaques physiques. Il s'articule selon 3 thématiques : la génération d'aléa (TRNG et PUF), la cryptographie (classique, post-quantique et quantique), et, la sécurisation des processeurs.

Position description

Category

Electronics components and equipments

Contract

Internship

Job title

Secure hardware implementation of CRYSTALS-Dilithium H/F

Subject

CRYSTALS-Dilithium was recently standardized (on August 2024) by the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) as a Post-Quantum digital signature algorithm. However, its adoption in embedded systems presents several implementation challenges, including the need for countermeasures against physical Side-Channel Attacks (SCAs) and the resulting performance degradation due to them. The use of secure hardware accelerators can help to overcome these limitations, providing both security and performance.

Contract duration (months)

6

Job description


During this internship, the candidate will evaluate existing protected software implementations of Dilithium and will propose secure and efficient hardware blocks to accelerate its main bottlenecks.

The trainee's tasks will be to:

- Analyze software implementations of Dilithium with countermeasures against physical attacks

- Analyze state-of-the-art secure hardware implementations of Dilithium

- Design at RTL level secure hardware accelerators for Dilithium

- Integrate the hardware accelerators on System-on-Chips based on RISC-V microcontrollers

- Implement the system on FPGA

- Perform leakage assessment of the designed blocks

Applicant Profile

The candidate should have strong knowledge of digital design, in particular:

- Design at the abstraction level RTL (Register Transfer Level)

- Knowledge of Verilog or VHDL language

- Knowledge of C language

- Knowledge of FPGA

Position location

Site

Grenoble

Job location

France

Location

  Grenoble

Candidate criteria

Languages

English (Intermediate)

Requester

Position start date

03/03/2025