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.

Prerequisites