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.

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.

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