The smart card lab is a laboratory tailored for master students who want to expand their theoretical knowledge in side-channel analysis. Using the lessons learned in SIKA (Secure Implementation of Cryptographic Algorithms), students explore first-hand how to perform a correlation power analysis and break cryptographic implementations themselves. Howevel, the lab, is not only limited to just breaking implementations, but also covers a variety of approaches to secure implementations.

Given the broad scope of this lab, I am looking for a tutor (6-8 hours per week) to support my students, while working together with me to develop new ideas and refine existing exercises.

To give you a glimpse into potential tasks, on the hardware side you can

• assemble new smart cards, logic analyzers and debug adapter PCBs
• repair existing hardware if a malfunction can be seen
• drive the development of a new hardware revision

But you are not limited to the hardware aspects, we also strive to

• improve the existing smart card firmware to make it even more secure
• experiment with new ways to make the exercises more exciting. For example to give the students the opportunity to compete in a CTF-like scenario
• create a solution to automatically test and evaluate the code submitted by the students

If you are interested in embedded systems and hardware-software co-design, this could be the student job for you. I do not have the prerequesite of you having taken the course already.

The smart card lab draws expertise from several different areas, so your requirements will vary depending on which area you want to work in. From a hardware perspective, you should be able to read schematics and have some initial practice in soldering. If you strive to develop software, basic knowledge in embedded C and Python is required.

Do you have hardware experience? We are looking for you!

• You are looking for a thesis, research internship or student assistant position?
• You know how to draw an orderly schematic?
• You know a thing or two about electronic component selection?
• You know op-amps not just from textbooks?
• You have laid out your own PCBs before?
• You are no stranger to soldering?
• You know not just SMD, but lots of other three-letter acronyms, too: ESL, FR-4, C0G, NP0, UJT, QFN, DFN, BGA ... ?
• You prefer to talk to microcontrollers (at the register level)?
• You can tell components apart from the smell of their magic smoke?

If you can at least tick a few boxes here and want to help us improve our lab and measurement for various hardware attacks, please contact us! We will ?nd a hardware-oriented security-adjacent topic together.