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
SL-DRT-24-0659
Direction
DRT
Thesis topic details
Category
Technological challenges
Thesis topics
Formalization and Analysis of Countermeasures Against Fault Injection Attacks on Open-source Processors
Contract
Thèse
Job description
Join our dynamic research team at CEA-List within the DSCIN division for a PhD opportunity in the field of hardware security and formal analysis of processor micro-architectures. The focus of this research is the formalization and analysis of countermeasures against fault injection attacks on open-source processors. Operating at the cutting edge of cyber-security for embedded systems, we aim to build formal guarantees for the robustness of these systems in the face of evolving security threats, particularly those arising from fault injection attacks.
As a PhD candidate, you will contribute to advancing the understanding of fault injection attacks and their impact on both hardware and software aspects of open-source processors. The scientific challenge lies in devising methods and tools that can effectively analyze the robustness of embedded systems under fault injection. You will work on jointly considering the RTL model of the target processor and the executed program, addressing the limitations of current methods (be it simulation or formal analysis), and exploring innovative approaches to scale the analysis to larger programs and complex processor microarchitectures. The experimental work will be based on RTL simulators such as Verilator or QuestaSim, the formal analysis tool µARCHIFI developped at CEA-List, and open-source implementations of secured processors such as the RISC-V processor CV32E40S.
Upon the successful completion of this PhD thesis, you will have contributed to the development of formalized countermeasures against fault injection attacks. This research not only aligns with the broader goals of enhancing cyber-security for embedded systems but also has practical implications, such as contributing to the security verification of realistic secured architectures. Additionally, your work will pave the way for the design of efficient techniques and tools that have the potential to streamline the evaluation of secured systems, impacting fields like Common Criteria certification and reducing time-to-market during the design phase of secure systems.
University / doctoral school
Mathématiques, Sciences et Technologies de l’Information, Informatique (MSTII)
Université Grenoble Alpes
Thesis topic location
Site
Grenoble
Requester
Position start date
01/10/2024
Person to be contacted by the applicant
COUROUSSE Damien damien.courousse@cea.fr
CEA
DRT/DSCIN/DSCIN/LFIM
Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives
MINATEC Campus | 17 rue des Martyrs | 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9
+33 (0)4 38 78 04 66
Tutor / Responsible thesis director
COUROUSSE Damien damien.courousse@cea.fr
CEA
DRT/DSCIN/DSCIN/LFIM
Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives
MINATEC Campus | 17 rue des Martyrs | 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9
+33 (0)4 38 78 04 66
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