Open positions
- SPIRS: research assistant
- Junior Machine Learning Engineer for the automatic detection and characterization of disinformation campaigns
- Junior Django Developer
- Junior blockchain developer
Who we are
GiCSI members’ research activities are devoted to advancement of tools and techniques to ensure safe transmission and storage of electronic information as well as their security, authenticity, integrity and privacy. In the educational field, and as part of an active collaboration with the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) of Spain and several Spanish universities, the members of the GiCSI participate in master’s programs and postgraduate and undergraduate courses in cryptography, cybersecurity and information assurance. The group is also involved in interdisciplinary work in the human security and information privacy domain. Specifically, the study of the legal and policy implications of emerging digital technologies (e.g. Internet-of-Things; Intelligent Transport Systems; smart health devices; etc.); users’ technology adoption; users’ resistance and product boycotting; implementation of legal requirements (e.g. General Data Protection Regulation; NIS Directive, etc.) in product/service design.
1. SPIRS: research assistant
The Research group on Cryptology and Information Security (GiCSI) of the Spanish National Research Council is seeking highly motivated professionals in conducting research in the area of cryptographic privacy-enhancing technologies, blockchain-based protocols and security protocols.
The project
The selected candidate will part of GiCSI’s team in the context of the H2020 SPIRS (Secure Platform for Ict systems Rooted at the Silicon manufacturing process) project.
Our society is continuously demanding more and more intelligent devices, along with network infrastructures and distributed services that make our daily lives more comfortably. However, the frantic adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has led to widespread implementations without a deep analysis about security matters. This project encompasses the complete design of a platform, so-called SPIRS platform, which integrates a hardware dedicated Root of Trust (RoT) and a processor core with the capability of offering a full suite of security services. Furthermore, the SPIRS platform will be able to leverage this capability to support privacy-respectful attestation mechanisms and enable trusted communication channels across 5G infrastructures. RoT is implemented in hardware with a dedicated circuitry to extract a unique digital identifier for the SPIRS platform during its entire lifetime. To build a complete solution, the project also features a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), secure boot, and runtime integrity. Furthermore, resilience and privacy protection are major concerns in this project, and it endeavors to the design of a decentralized trust management framework targeted to minimize the impact of Single Point of Failure (SPOF) risks and achieve adequate security and privacy tradeoffs. To facilitate the tasks of validation and testing, SPIRS platform is conceived as an open platform that can easily integrate other building blocks and facilities upgrades. The project goes beyond the construction of the SPIRS platform and it provides solutions to integrate it in the deployment of cryptographic protocols and network infrastructures in a trustworthy way, leveraging the RoT provided by the platform. To validate SPIRS results, the project considers two different scenarios: Industry 4.0 and 5G Technologies.
Who we look for
Ideal candidates have earned (or are in their last year of) a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related discipline, with an interest in cryptography and security.
Interested candidates are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.
Contact: David Arroyo, david.arroyo (at) csic.es
2. Junior Machine learning engineer for the automatic detection and characterisation of disinformation campaigns in the context of the Project XAI-Disinfodemics
The project
In this project we aim to build a holistic socio-technical strategy to fight infodemics. We adopt a human-in-the-loop approach to increase false information detection accuracy, while also improving users’ digital literacy. To address the challenges of disinformation, we need interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of tools that private and public entities can use. EXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) could provide these tools addressing the problem of disinformation detection from a multimodal perspective going beyond the analysis of textual information. We aim to counter disinformation and conspiracy theories on the basis of fact checking of scientific information. Moreover, we aim to be able to explain not only the AI models in their decision-making but also the persuasion and psychographics techniques that are employed to trigger emotions in the readers and make disinformation and conspiracy theories believable and propagate among the social network users. The final AI tool should also help users to spot in documents those parts whose aim is to grab readers’ attention by emotional appeals and that alert about a poor quality of the information. The AI tool will provide a complete picture of the piece of information that allows the user to know which kind of content is consuming. The tool is thought for the general public and its use will allow media and information platforms to be rated based on the quality of their health information, providing criteria for developing search engines that specifically prioritise the information that fulfils these quality standards.
Who we look for
Ideal candidates have earned (or are in their last year of) a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related discipline, with an interest in machine learning and deep learning.
The selected candidate will be working on the improvement of the following works:
The bottom line is on the characterisation of the complex problem of information operations and disinformation campaigns.
Interested candidates are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.
Contact: David Arroyo, david.arroyo (at) csic.es
3. Junior Django developer to maintain and improve TRESCA MsW in the context of the Project XAI-Disinfodemics
The project
In this project we aim to build a holistic socio-technical strategy to fight infodemics. We adopt a human-in-the-loop approach to increase false information detection accuracy, while also improving users’ digital literacy. To address the challenges of disinformation, we need interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of tools that private and public entities can use. EXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) could provide these tools addressing the problem of disinformation detection from a multimodal perspective going beyond the analysis of textual information. We aim to counter disinformation and conspiracy theories on the basis of fact checking of scientific information. Moreover, we aim to be able to explain not only the AI models in their decision-making but also the persuasion and psychographics techniques that are employed to trigger emotions in the readers and make disinformation and conspiracy theories believable and propagate among the social network users. The final AI tool should also help users to spot in documents those parts whose aim is to grab readers’ attention by emotional appeals and that alert about a poor quality of the information. The AI tool will provide a complete picture of the piece of information that allows the user to know which kind of content is consuming. The tool is thought for the general public and its use will allow media and information platforms to be rated based on the quality of their health information, providing criteria for developing search engines that specifically prioritise the information that fulfils these quality standards.
Who we look for
Ideal candidates have earned (or are in their last year of) a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related discipline, with an interest in Django backend web development
The selected candidate will be working on the improvement of the following works:
The bottom line is on the characterisation of the complex problem of information operations and disinformation campaigns.
Interested candidates are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.
Contact: David Arroyo, david.arroyo (at) csic.es
4. Junior blockchain developer to implement blockchain-based protocols for identity management
The project
In the context of the H2020 SPIRS project, we are designing, implementing and validating an AAAA (Audit Authorisation Audit Accountability) framework to gather and treat digital evidencies in Industry 4.0 and 5G. This framework will be based in DLT (Distribuited Ledger Technologies) and blockchain, and will include a specific layer for identity management according to the new version of the European framework for digital identity, eIDAS.
In June 2021, the European Commission adopted an amendment to the eIDAS regulation, i.e. the European digital identity regulation. From a cryptographic cryptographic point of view, this modification is associated with the need to develop authentication protocols that enable the validation of user attributes without the need for full authentication of the users. Indeed, by differentiating authentication procedures for traceability with respect to those for linkability, it is feasible to enable the use of services and platforms in a pseudonymous way. Functional cryptography is a branch of cryptography that enables the design and implementation of privacy-respectful authentication procedures and, therefore, can be used as the basis for the necessary interfaces to support the modifications of eIDAS. Blockchain and distributed registry technologies have a number of properties that are of interest for the collection of digital evidence for further processing. In the context of digital identity, these technologies can be used to monitor the lifecycle of digital identities, as well as the attributes associated with those entities. The ESSIF framework promulgated by the European Commission proposes a blockchain-based reference framework for recording and monitoring the events associated with the creation, use, management and destruction of attributes linked to digital identities.
The objectives of this position will be:
- To implement a library of group signatures and functional cryptography in coherence with eIDAS 2.0. This will be based on the libgroupsig library: https://github.com/IBM/libgroupsig.
- Design of cryptographic protocols for selective disclosure of information.
- Activity logging and lifecycle monitoring of digital identity attributes using blockchain. digital identities by means of blockchain. The following works will be considered for this purpose:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X21001576
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166361520306278
- https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/9/11/1865
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20005-3_20
These three objectives will be covered in accordance with the work plan and the use cases of the European SPIRS project.
Who we look for
Ideal candidates have earned (or are in their last year of) a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a related discipline, with an interest in blockchain and applied cryptography.
Interested candidates are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.
Contact: David Arroyo, david.arroyo (at) csic.es