PhD thesis – Advanced Post-Quantum Signatures F/M

Job title:

PhD thesis – Advanced Post-Quantum Signatures F/M

Company:

Orange

Job description

about the roleYour role is to carry out a thesis work on the design of advanced post-quantum signatures.Context.Authentication in the digital world relies on electronic signatures that has proved both efficient and secure but that are often criticized for their lack of privacy. Indeed, a signature often leaks unnecessary information and enables to trace its owner.This led to the introduction of advanced signatures, addressing these privacy concerns by design, which are now standardized and deployed in billions of chips. In the meantime, new features, such as the ability to compactly aggregate signatures, were identified as very suitable for practical use-cases.Unfortunately, all these mechanisms are vulnerable to quantum computing and thus require to be replaced by so-called “post-quantum” counterparts. In this area, some recent works, part of which led by Orange, have shown that it was possible to design post-quantum solutions with rather good efficiency, but some obstacles remain to overcome.Scientific Objective.The objective of this thesis is overcome all or part of the following scientific obstacles:

• Improvements of Lattice-based Advanced Signatures. The recent advances in this area are still insufficient to envision real-world deployments. The first goal of this thesis will be to improve the most recent constructions from the state-of-the-art, potentially by adding new features.
• SNARK-based Constructions. Advanced signatures suffer from their reliance on zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs whose complexity is high and hard to improve. A second goal of this thesis will be to investigate alternatives based on SNARKs whose potential in this area has been demonstrated by several recent works.
• Interoperability with standards. The imminent deployment of post-quantum standards calls for compatible mechanisms, including ZK proofs. Unfortunately, the latter are usually hard to combine with standards and thus require adaptations whose design constitutes the third goal of this thesis.
• Constructions without lattices. Lattices have proved suitable for post-quantum cryptography but yet suffer from inherent limitations that reverberate throughout advanced signatures. A last goal of this thesis will be to investigate symmetric-based constructions, such as those following the MPC-in-the-head paradigm, to circumvent these limitations.

about youTechnical and Personal Skills.Applicants should have strong mathematical and cryptographic skills. They must be autonomous and rigorous and able to explain their results at an appropriate level to both experts and non-experts.English will be mandatory for reading, writing and presenting papers in workshops and conferences. French is not mandatory but may facilitate integration inside and outside the company.Education.Applicants must hold a master’s degree (or equivalent) with a major in mathematics or cryptography.Desired experience.Ideally, candidates will have some research experience (e.g. internship in a research lab).additional informationWhat is the added value of this offer?The PhD student will join a cryptographic team that authored several of the best results in this area. His/her contributions will be exploited through academic publications, patents and (ideally) inclusion in international standards.He/She will evolve within a big, international telecommunication company and will be involved in the security issues of Orange. He/She could contribute to collaborative projects and will benefit from the discussions within ACG and with academic labs, in particular those from the Rennes area.departmentOrange Innovation brings together the research and innovation activities and expertise of the Group’s entities and countries. We work every day to ensure that Orange is recognized as an innovative operator by its customers and we create value for the Group and the Brand in each of our projects. With 720 researchers, thousands of marketers, developers, designers and data analysts, it is the expertise of our 6,000 employees that fuels this ambition every day.Orange Innovation anticipates technological breakthroughs and supports the Group’s countries and entities in making the best technological choices to meet the needs of our consumer and business customers.Within Orange Innovation, you will be part of the Data Privacy Innovation team in charge of cryptographic, privacy and security topics. You will be a member of the Applied Cryptography Group (ACG, ) that gathers several researchers and PhD students in this area.contractThesis

Expected salary

Location

Cesson-Sévigné, Ille-et-Vilaine

Job date

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 23:26:23 GMT

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