In the field of cryptography, two important focus areas of our research are symmetric crypto and post-quantum crypto, both from a design and engineering perspective.
In our research on symmetric crypto we aim to design new cryptographic primitives and constructions that have lower energy consumption and processing time than the state of the art. This is important both in small devices (to extend battery life or to run on energy harvesting in RFID tags) as in high-bandwidth applications (to reduce heat production). Furthermore we investigate methods to implement them such that they offer resistance against side channel attacks and fault attacks.
The research on post-quantum crypto investigates new forms of asymmetric cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. If functioning large scale quantum computers can be built, all current public-key crypto standards would be broken, so then we need alternatives for electronic signatures and key establishment.
All security assurances ultimately rely on hardware to ensure confidentiality and integrity of important data. Our research in hardware security focusses on side-channel analysis at the most potent attack vectors on hardware, where computation time, power consumption, electromagnetic emanations or faults are used to extract key material from devices.
Over the years we have increasingly used AI (or Machine Learning) techniques for side channel analysis, which has led to more research at the crossroads of AI & security.
Our research on software security aims to develop techniques for developing and testing software in more robust ways to improve security, also leveraging the power of formal models. Our research on mobile network security focuses on 5G networks.
In the area of privacy, our research not only looks at the purely technical challenges of making privacy-enhancing technologies, but also legal implications and the challenges of desiging usable human-computer interfaces. Much of this work is carried out at the Radboud iHUB, the interdisciplinary research hub on digitalisation and society, that also involves researchers from other faculties, incl. the humanities, law, and social sciences.
Legal aspects of IT have become an important driving force for privacy, notably through the EU's GDPR regulation, but law and regulation, as well as ethical concerns, are also more becoming more important for applications of AI. Here we also collaborate with the Data Science group of ICIS.
On the more technical side, we investigate design patterns to practice Privacy-by-Design and the web tracking technologies that are used on the web and the Internet-of-Things (IoT), as well as anonymity solutions such as Tor.
To showcase privacy-friendly alternatives, we design and implement more specific privacy-friendly solutions for identity and data management, such as IRMA for privacy-friendly identity management using anonymous credentials (aka attributes) and PEP for storage of privacy-sensitive data, developed in collaboration with the Radboud UMC as solution for storing and distributing medical research data in the Personalized Parkinson Project. Some of these solutions are spun out to the Privacy by Design foundation.