''Postdoctoral position in the Quantum Information Group Télécom ParisTech ­ CNRS, Laboratoire Traitement et Communication de l'Information''

Experimental study of side-channel attacks in quantum key distribution systems

''Background and Description''

Telecom ParisTech (formerly Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications) is one of France's leading graduate engineering schools and is considered the leading school in the field of Information Technologies. Our team, the Quantum Information Team at Telecom ParisTech (www.iq.enst.fr), is conducting research on several aspects of quantum information. We have in particular an important activity, both at a theo- retical and experimental level, linked to quantum cryptographic protocols and quantum key distribution (QKD).

In the past years, our team has participated to several national or international research projects on QKD, including the FP6 European project SECOQC, that led to the first European demonstration of a quantum key distribution network, demonstration in which we were strongly involved, and recently to the French ANR project SEQURE that was centered around the technology of continuous variable QKD, its improvement and its integration and deployment in the context of secure link encryption (see www.demo-sequre.com).

This postdoctoral work will tackle the crucial question of the practical security of QKD systems. Indeed, while QKD can theoretically be proven absolutely secure, practical implementations may suffer from technological and protocol-operational imperfections that an attacker could exploit in order to compromise the security of the key establishment. Effectively addressing these threats, called side-channels, is a major step towards bringing QKD systems to a maturity level suitable for industrial development and commercial use, and is now a topic raising a lot of attention in the QKD community.

The goal of the present postdoctoral project is to study side-channel attacks in QKD systems implementing both discrete and continuous-variable protocols. In particular, we will pursue the identification of side-channels in the systems under function in our laboratory in Telecom ParisTech, implement some attacks enabled by the identified side-channels, and development suitable countermeasures. The work will be primarily experimental, and will be conducted in the framework of the FP7 project Q-CERT, a EU-funded cooperation project that unites two academic partners (Telecom ParisTech, and University of Geneva) and two start-ups involved in QKD (IdQuantique and SeQureNet). The postdoctoral researcher will thus benefit from the active exchanges of knowledge between the academic partners and the start-ups of the consortium, at a local level in Paris, but also between Paris and Geneva.

''Conditions and Requirements''

This is a 1-year position, with a possibility of a 1-year extension. It is immediately available. Gross Salary ~ 65 k

Candidates should hold a PhD in Physics, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline and have demon- strated solid achievements in experimental quantum cryptography or quantum optics. Experience in fiber optics, digital electronics but also cryptography or hardware security will be an advantage.

Apart from a CV (incl. description of interests and a list of publications) applications (sent to romain.alleaume (at) telecom-paristech.fr, eleni.diamanti (at) telecom-paristech.fr) should include names of 3 senior scientists who could provide letters of recommendation.