This is the archive of news previously and currently shown on our main page. Seminars are posted on the seminar page. Our latest publications are posted on the publications page.

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2015

Brian Loop presented his Research Project

Brian Loop presented the results of his Research Project, ECE 798, entitled "Hardware/Software Analysis of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms on Zynq/Linux," on December 10, 2015. His research project, together with an earlier work by Ahmed Ferozpuri became the basis of the presentation, entitled "A Framework for Evaluating Software/Hardware Implementations of Post-Quantum Public-Key Algorithms using Zynq SoC," accepted for the Hot Topic Session at the 7th International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography, PQCrypto 2016. (12/11/2015)

Sangamitrareddy Katamreddy defended her MS Thesis

Sangamitrareddy Katamreddy defended her MS Thesis entitled "Electro-Magentic Analysis," on December 9, 2015. Members of her Committee included: Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Berry. (12/10/2015)

Upendarreddy Mamidi defended his MS Thesis

Upendarreddy Mamidi defended his MS Thesis entitled "Lightweight Authenticated Encryption in Hardware," on December 9, 2015. Members of his Committee included: Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Berry. (12/10/2015)

Brian Jarvis defended his MS Thesis

Brian Jarvis defended his MS Thesis entitled "Choice of Optimal Error Correcting Code for Physical Unclonable Functions," on December 9, 2015. Members of his Committee included: Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Homayoun. (12/10/2015)

Ahmed Ferozpuri attended ReConFig 2015

Ahmed Ferozpuri represented CERG at the 2015 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs, ReConFig 2015, held in Mayan Riviera, Mexico, on December 7-9, 2015. He delivered the talk entitled "A Universal Hardware API for Authenticated Ciphers". (12/09/2015)

Dr. Gaj attended ICMC 2015

Dr. Gaj attended the third International Cryptographic Module Conference (ICMC), held in Washington D.C., on November 4-6, 2015. (11/07/2015)

Rabia Shahid defended her PhD Thesis Proposal

Rabia Shahid defended her PhD Thesis Proposal, entitled "A New Approach to the Development of Coprocessors for Pairing-Based Cryptosystems," on October 16, 2015. The members of her dissertation committee include Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, Dr. Homayoun, and Dr. Albanese. (10/17/2015)

Malik Umar Sharif defended his PhD Thesis Proposal

Malik Umar Sharif defended his PhD Thesis Proposal, entitled "Hardware-Software Codesign Approaches to Public Key Cryptosystems," on October 6, 2015. The members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Kaps, Dr. Homayoun, and Dr. Simon. (10/07/2015)

CERG presentations at DIAC 2015

Members of CERG were co-authors of four talks presented at DIAC 2015: Directions in Authenticated Ciphers workshop, held in Singapore on September 28-29, 2015. Dr. Gaj delivered two talks, entitled "GMU Hardware API for Authenticated Ciphers," and "C vs. VHDL: Benchmarking CAESAR Candidates Using High-Level Synthesis and Register-Transfer Level Methodologies". Prof. Josef Pieprzyk, from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, gave the talk "ICEPOLE v2.0," and Panasayya Yalla delivered the talk entitled "eXtended eXternal Benchmarking eXtension (XXBX)," based on the Master’s Thesis of John Pham, supervised by Dr. Kaps. Ekawat Homsirikamol ("Ice") also attended the workshop and took active part in the workshop discussions. (09/30/2015)

Dr. Kaps attended CHES 2015

Dr. Kaps attended the Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems 2015 (CHES 2015), held in Saint Malo, France on September 13th-16th, 2015. (09/18/2015)

Exchange student from the Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne, France, visits CERG

Cédric Marchand, an exchange PhD student from Laboratoire Hubert Curien at the Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne, France, is visiting CERG in the period from August 31, 2015 to November 30, 2015. He is working on his PhD Thesis devoted to protecting integrated circuits against counterfeiting and theft of intellectual property. His dissertation work is a part of a larger funded project called SALWARE (SALutary hardWARE design to fight against integrated circuit counterfeiting and theft). His supervisor is Dr. Lilian Bossuet. (08/31/2015)

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps received funding from McQ Inc and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps received $125K from McQ Inc. and the Department of Defense for their project entitled "Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for Unique and Robust Encryption Key Generation (Phase II)." The period of performance is July 1, 2015 through August 8, 2016. (08/28/2015)

William Diehl passed the Research Qualifying Exam

William Diehl passed the PhD Research Qualifying Exam (RQE) on August 27, 2015. As a part of the exam, he presented his paper entitled "RTL Implementation of a Boolean Masking Scheme for the SCREAM Authenticated Cipher". The members of his RQE Committee included Dr. Gaj, Dr. Kaps, and Dr. Homayoun. (08/28/2015)

Members of CERG attended HOST 2015

Dr. Gaj, Dr. Kaps, Bilal Habib, and William Diehl attended HOST 2015, the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, held in Washington D.C., on May 5-7, 2015. (05/08/2015)

Ahmad Salman defended his PhD Thesis Proposal

Ahmad Salman defended his PhD Thesis Proposal entitled "Public Key Cryptography Using Hardware/Software Co-design for the Internet of Things," on July 31, 2015. The members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, Dr. Homayoun, and Dr. Stavrou. (08/01/2015)

John Pham defended his MS Thesis

John Pham defended his MS Thesis entitled "Development and Benchmarking of Cryptographic Implementations on Embedded Platforms," on July 31, 2015. Members of his Committee included: Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Lorie. After graduation, John will pursue a career as a Software Engineer at Orbital ATK. (08/01/2015)

Harsh Vachharajani defended his MS Thesis

Harsh Vachharajani defended his MS Thesis entitled "Implementation and Simulation of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) in Windows Presentation Foundation," on July 30, 2015. Members of his Committee included: Dr. Gaj (Chair), Dr. Jones, and Dr. Simon. After graduation, Harsh will pursue a career as an Application Security Software Consultant at Deloitte in Arlington, Virginia. (07/31/2015)

Yamini Ravishankar defended her MS Thesis

Yamini Ravishankar defended her MS Thesis entitled "PUFs - An Extensive Survey," on July 28, 2015. Members of her Committee included: Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, and Dr. Berry. After graduation, Yamini will pursue a career at Intel in Folsom, California. (07/29/2015)

Dr. Kaps served as a Panelist at the Lightweight Cryptography Workshop 2015

Dr. Kaps attended the Lightweight Cryptography Workshop 2015, organized by NIST on July 20-21, 2015, where he served as one of the panelists during the discussion on Lightweight Crypto Standardization. The other panelists included: Matt Robshaw (Impinj), Dan Shumow (Microsoft Research), and Douglas Shors (NSA). The discussion was moderated by Meltem Sonmez Turan (NIST). (07/22/2015)

Dr. Kaps gave a seminar at WPI

Dr. Kaps gave a seminar, entitled "Comparison of Multi-Purpose Cores of Keccak and AES on FPGAs" at Worcester Polytechnic Institute on July 3, 2015. The talk was part of the Seminar Series of the Vernam Group which is a cryptographic research group comprised of 5 faculty and several students. (7/8/15)

Dr. Gaj spoke at CryptArchi 2015

Dr. Gaj gave two talks at the 13th CryptArchi workshop on cryptographic architectures embedded in reconfigurable devices, held in Leuven, Belgium on June 28-July 1, 2015. His talks were entitled "Toward a Universal High-Speed Interface for Authenticated Ciphers," and "C vs. VHDL: Comparing Performance of CAESAR Candidates Using High-Level Synthesis on Xilinx FPGAs". (07/01/2015)

Dr. Gaj gave an invited talk at IRISA in Rennes, France

Dr. Gaj gave an invited talk, entitled "From C to Hardware: Toward Using High-Level Synthesis for Hardware Benchmarking of Candidates in Cryptographic Contests," at IRISA (Institute for Research in IT and Random Systems) in Rennes, France, on June 26, 2015. The talk was a part of a series of Seminars on Security of Embedded Electronic Systems, hosted by Dr. Arnaud Tisserand (CNRS, IRISA) and Dr. Benoît Gérard (DGA-MI, IRISA). (06/27/2015)

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps received funding from NIST

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps received $500K from the Department of Commerce (NIST) for their project "Post-Quantum Public Key Cryptosystems." The period of performance is June 1, 2015 through May 31, 2018. (06/23/2015)

Bilal Habib defended his PhD Thesis Proposal

Bilal Habib defended his PhD Thesis Proposal, entitled "Design, Implementation and Analysis of Efficient FPGA based Physical Unclonable Functions,” on June 22, 2015. The members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Gaj (co-Chair), Dr. Kaps (co-Chair), Dr. Homayoun, and Dr. Rangwala. (06/23/2015)

Dr. Gaj is a member of the Program Committees of CHES 2015 and LightSec 2015

Dr. Gaj is a member of the Program Committees for the following workshops:

Majority of student members of CERG have contributed their time and expertise serving as sub-reviewers for the aforementioned workshops.(06/01/2015)

Dr. Gaj serves as a co-chair of the special track at ReConFig 2015

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Tim Güneysu from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, are co-chairs of the special track on Reconfigurable Computing for Security and Cryptography at the 2015 International Conference on ReConFigurable Computing and FPGAs, ReConFig 2015, to be held at Mayan Riviera, Mexico, on Dec. 7-9, 2015. (05/15/2015)

Ekawat Homsirikamol and Dr. Gaj spoke at ARC 2015

Ekawat Homsirikamol ("Ice") and Dr. Gaj attended the 11th International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing, ARC 2015, hosted by Ruhr-Universität Bochum on April 13-17, 2015. Ekawat gave the presentation entitled "Hardware Benchmarking of Cryptographic Algorithms Using High-Level Synthesis Tools: The SHA-3 Contest Case Study," and Dr. Gaj gave the talk "Efficient SR-Latch PUF." Additionally, as a part of this conference, Ekawat and Dr. Gaj attended Xilinx workshop entitled: Advanced Embedded System Design on Zynq using Vivado. (04/17/2015)

Dr. Gaj and Ahmed Ferozpuri attended Workshop on Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World

Dr. Gaj and Ahmed Ferozpuri attended Workshop on Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World, organized by NIST in Gaithersburg, MD, on April 2-3, 2015. (04/04/2015)

Dr. Kaps gave a seminar at Fraunhofer AISEC

Dr. Kaps gave a seminar, entitled "Comparison of Multi-Purpose Cores of Keccak and AES on FPGAs" at Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC) in Munich, Germany on March 16, 2015. The presentation was also attended by students of the Institute for Security in Information Technology of the Technische Universität München. The institute is chaired by Dr. Sigl. (03/17/2015)

Dr. Kaps attended DATE 2015

Dr. Kaps will attend the 18th Design Automation and Test in Europe conference, DATE 2015, held in Grenoble, France, on March 9 - 13, 2015. As a part of this conference, he gave an interactive presentation, entitled "Comparison of Multi-purpose Cores of Keccak and AES," based on the paper co-authored with Panasayya Yalla and Ekawat Homsirikamol. (03/17/2015)

Rajesh Velegalati defended his PhD Thesis

Rajesh Velegalati defended his PhD Thesis entitled "Developing an Integrated Environment for Detecting and Mitigating Side-channel and Fault attacks on Hardware Platforms," on February 2nd, 2015. The members of his dissertation committee included Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, Dr. Nelson, and Dr. Stavrou. (02/21/2015)

Panasayya Yalla defended his PhD Thesis Proposal

Panasayya Yalla defended his PhD Thesis Proposal entitled "Methodology for Developing Lightweight Architectures for FPGAs," on January 9, 2015. The members of his dissertation committee include Dr. Kaps (Chair), Dr. Gaj, Dr. Mark, and Dr. Simon. (02/21/2015)

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps attended SaTCPI 2015

Dr. Gaj and Dr. Kaps attended the National Science Foundation Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Principal Investigators' Meeting, SaTCPI 2015, held on January 5-7, 2015, in Arlington, VA. (02/21/2015)