Postdoc in Attacks, Countermeasures & Eavesdropping on Quantum Key Distribution

Are you passionate about keeping communications networks secure and trustworthy? Are you eager to explore attacks and countermeasures for QKD systems and to help ensure they can deliver the promised security advantages? Join us to work on QKD for quantum safe communications in future networks.

Information
The security of modern communications is threatened by advances in quantum computing which have the potential to break common methods for establishing and distributing cryptographic keys. Unless networks can be upgraded to new, quantum safe methods the trust in communications networks which modern society so heavily relies on for all aspects of life cannot be maintained. Post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution have been shown to be viable options to provide key agreement and distribution that is safe against attackers enabled by quantum computers. However, the implementations of QKD may introduce weaknesses not accounted for in security proofs, leaving systems vulnerable to side-channel and other types of attacks.

In this PostDoc position you will explore existing and novel attacks on QKD systems and develop countermeasures and analyze their security implications. You will create a simulation and analysis framework to validate and evaluate existing and novel attacks and countermeasures, and you will work on establishing standardized protocols for QKD security testing as well as attach and countermeasure evaluation. You will further develop hardware attack systems designed to eavesdrop on or otherwise compromise security of existing QKD implementations. In short, this PostDoc focuses on evaluating attacks and countermeasures for QKD systems and developing a hardware attack system to evaluate existing QKD implementations.

In this PostDoc you will become part of the quantum communications team at TU/e and will work very closely with industrial partners. You will be embedded in the Quantum & Terahertz Systems (QTS) team within the Electro-Optical Communications (ECO) group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at TU/e. Within QTS you will work within a dynamic team of approximately thirty researchers and as part of ECO will be part of one of the leading groups on optical communications and networking with more than one hundred researchers. You will have the opportunity to work with and in the extensive laboratory facilities of the ECO group as well as the Quantum Communications Testbed NL (QuCT NL).