18 Jun 2026
Job Information
- Organisation/Company
CNRS- Department
Laboratoire lorrain de recherche en informatique et ses applications- Research Field
Physics- Researcher Profile
First Stage Researcher (R1)- Application Deadline
8 Jul 2026 - 23:59 (UTC)- Country
France- Type of Contract
Temporary- Job Status
Full-time- Hours Per Week
35- Offer Starting Date
1 Sep 2026- Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?
Not funded by a EU programme- Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?
No
Offer Description
The thesis will take place within the PESTO team at LORIA. This team has extensive experience in electronic voting, having studied numerous systems in France and abroad (e.g., the Geneva canton system, Scytl, SwissPost), and worked on theoretical aspects such as selecting and designing appropriate security definitions and detecting vulnerabilities. More broadly, the PESTO team focuses on developing formal methods to prove protocol security and has contributed to the development of many tools for this purpose, including ProVerif, Tamarin, Jasmin, DeepSec, Sapic+, and, of course, the Squirrel Prover.
In recent years, electronic voting protocols have been increasingly used in sensitive contexts, such as union and political elections, and even national elections in some countries. Given these high-stakes situations, it is important to ensure the security of the underlying cryptographic protocols.
Two main families of models exist for proving protocol security: symbolic models, where messages are abstracted as terms, and computational models, which are more precise, treating messages as arbitrary bitstrings. The former have enabled the development of automated tools for security proofs, while the latter provide stronger security guarantees but are harder to automate.
One solution is to rely on interactive provers to perform security proofs in computational models, with a computer then confirming the validity of the proof. However, such strong-guarantee proofs remain rare in the context of electronic voting. The Squirrel interactive prover—a protocol prover we are developing in the team—offers the prospect of making such proofs feasible on a larger scale. This thesis will therefore focus on using the Squirrel prover to develop proofs for increasingly complex electronic voting protocols.
This research field is still young, with only a first security proof in Squirrel for an older electronic voting protocol. To advance further, this thesis may include developing innovative extensions to its underlying logic or to the tool itself.
Finally, faced with the threat quantum computers pose to classical cryptography in the coming decades, this thesis would aim to verify the everlasting privacy of votes, or even verifiability against quantum attackers. Note that Squirrel already provides guarantees against quantum attacks and is therefore suitable for this specific use case.
Where to apply
- Website
- https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR7503-MELTHI-004/Default.aspx
Requirements
- Research Field
- Physics
- Education Level
- Master Degree or equivalent
- Languages
- FRENCH
- Level
- Basic
- Research Field
- Physics
- Years of Research Experience
- None
Additional Information
- Website for additional job details
https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR7503-MELTHI-004/Default.aspx
Work Location(s)
- Number of offers available
- 1
- Company/Institute
- Laboratoire lorrain de recherche en informatique et ses applications
- Country
- France
- City
- VANDOEUVRE LES NANCY
Contact
- City
VANDOEUVRE LES NANCY- Website
http://www.loria.fr/
STATUS: EXPIRED
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