Welcome to my personal homepage!
I currently work in the Secure Microcontrollers Division of STMicroelectronics in Diegem, Belgium and I teach cryptography at the École Supérieure d'Informatique in Brussels.
I got a Physics Engineer degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in 1998 and then between 2000 and 2005, in parallel with my job at ST, I worked on a PhD thesis at the Center for Quantum Information and Communication of the ULB.
My current research interests include symmetric cryptography, after working for several years in quantum cryptography and information theory.
Quantum cryptography and information theory
My PhD thesis was directed by Pr. Nicolas Cerf, thanks to whom I discovered the field of classical and quantum information theory, and more specifically quantum key distribution (QKD) and related classical information theory problems such as secret-key distillation, reconciliation and privacy amplification. My thesis was then expanded into a book, Quantum Cryptography and Secret-Key Distillation published by Cambridge University Press.
My subsequent current research interests did not allow me to remain active in this field, though.
Symmetric cryptography
Starting in 1999 with the design of Noekeon, I have been also working in (classical) symmetric cryptography, mainly in collaboration with Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters and, since 2006, Guido Bertoni. This collaboration (a.k.a. the Keccak team) spans several nice projects, such as the design of the RadioGatún hash function and stream cipher, the introduction of the concept of cryptographic sponge functions and the design of the Keccak sponge function, which was selected for the upcoming SHA-3 standard in 2012, after an intense five-year contest.
I am also interested in side-channel attacks, which were explicitly taken into account from the start of the design of Noekeon and Keccak. These functions make use of low algebraic-degree operations that favor efficient countermeasures against these implementation attacks.
Contact information
| Postal address: | Gilles Van Assche STMicroelectronics Green Square Building B Lambroekstraat 5 1831 Diegem Belgium |
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| Phone: | +32-2-724-5063 |
| E-mail: | gilles -dot- van -dot- assche -at- noekeon -dot- org |