Robert Primas

Dipl.-Ing. BSc

Secure Systems, PhD Candidate

Robert Primas is a PhD student, supervised by Stefan Mangard, in the Secure Systems (SESYS) group at the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications (IAIK) in Graz, Austria. His current research is focused on implementation security and symmetric/post-quantum cryptography. He received his MSc in Computer Science at Graz University of Technology with focus on IT Security.
+43 316 873 - 5504
robert.primas@iaik.tugraz.at
https://rprimas.github.io/
Robert Primas

Research

My research interests include practical aspects of information security such as constructing and attacking cryptographic implementations as well as more theoretic aspects such as designing cryptographic schemes that feature robustness against physical attacks in addition to cryptanalytic security. I co-designed ISAP, a lightweight authenticated cipher that is currently competing in the 2nd round of the NIST lightweight crypto standardization process and gives out-of-the-box strong guarantees against various kinds of physical attacks like fault injection and power analysis.

Teaching

I currently teach a graduate course that focuses on implementing, as well as attacking cryptographic implementations. The hardware part of this course covers power analysis (DPA,SPA), fault attacks (DFA,SIFA), and corresponding countermeasure techniques such as redundant computation and masking. Students receive real hardware for conducting all these experiments.

Looking for a bachelor’s thesis, master’s thesis, or project in symmetric/post-quantum cryptography, and/or implementation security? Let us know, we’re always happy to discuss open topics!

Service

Conference refereeing

Conference refereeing

  • 2020: CHES, CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, FDTC, USENIX
  • 2019: AFRICACRYPT, CHES, FDTC
  • 2018: AFRICACRYPT, CHES, EuroS&P

Journal refereeing

  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security (TIFS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD)

Publications

A Fast and Compact RISC-V Accelerator for Ascon and Friends

Steinegger S., Primas R.
Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications - 19th International Conference, CARDIS 2020, Revised Selected Papers, 19th International Conference, CARDIS 2020, Virtual Event, November 18–19, 2020, Revised Selected Papers, CARDIS 2020, 53-67, (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); vol. 12609 LNCS)

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Coco: Co-Design and Co-Verification of Masked Software Implementations on CPUs

Gigerl B., Hadzic V., Primas R., Mangard S., Bloem R.
Proceedings of the 30th USENIX Security Symposium, 30th USENIX Security Symposium

ISAP v2.0

Dobraunig C., Eichlseder M., Mangard S., Mendel F., Mennink B., Primas R., Unterluggauer T.
IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology, Vol. 2020(Special Issue 1), 390-416

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Protecting against Statistical Ineffective Fault Attacks

Daemen J., Dobraunig C., Eichlseder M., Groß H., Mendel F., Primas R.
IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, Vol. 2020(3), 508-543

Fault Attacks on Nonce-based Authenticated Encryption: Application to Keyak and Ketje

Dobraunig C., Mangard S., Mendel F., Primas R.
Selected Areas in Cryptography – SAC 2018, The 33rd ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing, 257-277, (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 11349)

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