Post-Doc position at CEA Grenoble


Posted on February 24, 2015

Duration : 12 months fixed-term contract

Start date : 2015, October 1st

Location: CEA Grenoble

Context

We are looking for a new Post-Doctoral Research Engineer in Embedded Software and Security, in the DACLE division (Design Architectures & Embedded Software Division) of CEA-LIST. The position is a 12 months fixed term contract, part of the ANR project COGITO, in collaboration with the SAS and ISCOD teams at Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne and the XLIM laboratory of Limoges University.

The CEA DACLE is spread over two sites, one at Grenoble and one near Paris at Saclay. It is a key software systems and technology research centre working in the area of embedded systems with strong societal and economic implications. The embedded systems research covers architecture and design of systems, methods and facilities for software and system dependability. CEA DACLE is able to perform research work in partnership with the major industrial players in nuclear, automotive, aeronautical, defence, and medical fields, and thus investigate and develop innovative solutions corresponding to their requirements. CEA DACLE, which is actively engaged in research work extending from conceptual design of systems to pre-industrial prototypes, contributes to the transfer of technology and encourages innovation, particularly by assisting the emergence of new businesses and startups.

Our laboratory is developing a technology for runtime code generation around a tool called deGoal, for the design and execution of runtime code generators on a large panel of computing architectures, including constrained embedded devices such as microcontrollers.

In the context of COGITO, we are looking at the perspective of runtime code generation to increase the safety of secured applications, supported by the tool deGoal. We call polymorphism the capability to modify the form and the behaviour of a program with runtime code generation, while keeping unchanged its functional properties. This property is likely to increase the difficulty to perform several families of physical attacks. Furthermore, its overhead is affordable and low as compared to state-of-the-art software protections. This research work will bring interesting applications to secured objects, which typically embed very few computing resources, and where traditional runtime code generation approaches cannot be applied.

Preliminary developments have been carried out to achieve the objectives of the project: the deGoal framework has been extended so that code polymorphism could be applicable to embedded constrained platforms such as microcontrollers; a preliminary validation of our approach has been performed on AES and experimental measures have been carried out.

Objectives

The objectives of this position are to undertake the main part of software design and developments in the code generation framework, to carry out experimental validations in collaboration with the project partners, and to contribute to project deliverables.

Skills and academia

Doctorate in computer engineering, computer science or electrical engineering.

Skills:

  • Strong background on compilation / code generation, in particular of backend techniques.
  • Background on security and/or cryptography, especially physical attacks.
  • C, with the ability to understand low-level programming
  • Python
  • Strong ability to publish and disseminate the project results

Contact

Damien Couroussé (damien dot courousse arobase cea point fr)

The application should include an extended Curriculum Vitae with a list of publications, a cover letter, and a copy of the diploma already obtained with transcripts (courses + grades).

Have a look at the publication page on the project’s website.