Welcome to the Finse winter school 2020

The COINS Research School of Computer and Information Security organizes a research course in Information Security at Finse, May 3 – 8, 2020. The course is open for Ph.D. students in information security as well as for researchers in academia, government and industry in Norway needing an advanced knowledge of information security. The research course has been organized annually since 2008, previously supported by NISNet and FRISC.

The lecturers are leading international researchers in their field and they provide the participants with a unique opportunity to listen to world famous keynote speakers and to interact with international experts in information security.

Important dates:

Winter school: Sunday 3/5 to Friday 8/5


The event has been cancelled.

Location

Finse is a very beautiful and scenic area close to the Hardangerjøkulen glacier. The winter school will be held at the hotel Finse 1222 (located at the railway station Finse) between Bergen and Oslo, 1222 meters above sea level. Finse is located 2.5 hours from Bergen (or 4 hours from Oslo) and can only be reached by train. During the winter school, even if this is in the beginning of May, there is still winter season and excellent cross-country skiing conditions. We plan to have talks in the morning and early in the evening with time for skiing in between.

Lecturers

• Andrey Bogdanov, UiB – TBA
• Alexandra Boldyreva, Georgia Tech – Searchable Encryption
• Britta Hale, Naval Postgraduate School – Secure Messaging
• Tor Helleseth, UiB/Selmersenteret – The past and future of the Finse Winter School
• Mihaela Ion, Google – On privacy at Google
• Mariana Raykova, Google – On privacy at Google
• Christian Rechberger, TU Graz – TBA

Schedule

Sunday 3/5 Travel to Finse by train (skiing is also an option, technically)
2100 Common dinner

Monday 4/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-0905 Øyvind Ytrehus: Welcome
0905-1015 Tor Helleseth: The past and future of the Finse Winter School
1015-1030 Coffee break
1030-1230 Alexandra Boldyreva: Searchable Encryption
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1900 Britta Hale: Secure Messaging
1900-2030 Dinner

Tuesday 5/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1030 Alexandra Boldyreva: Searchable Encryption
1030-1100 Coffee break
1100-1230 Britta Hale: Secure Messaging
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1840 Presentations by the participants (I)
Each presentation 20-30 min., incl. questions
1900-2030 Dinner
2030-2150 Presentations by the participants (II)

Wednesday 6/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1045 Christian Rechberger: TBA
1045-1115 Coffee break
1115-1215 Andrey Bogdanov: TBA
1230-1400 Lunch
1600-1700 COINS steering committee meeting
1700-1840 Presentations by the participants (III)
Each presentation 20-30 min., incl. questions
1900-2030 Dinner
2030-2150 Presentations by the participants (IV)

Thursday 7/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1100 Christian Rechberger: TBA
1100-1130 Coffee break
1130-1230 Mihaela Ion and Mariana Raykova: On privacy at Google
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1900 Mihaela Ion and Mariana Raykova: On privacy at Google
1900-2030 Dinner

Friday 8/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1030 TBA: TBA
1030-1100 Coffee break
1100-1228 TBA: TBA
1228-1230 Øyvind Ytrehus: Conclusion/farewell
1230-1400 Lunch
Departure

Programme committee

Øyvind Ytrehus, UiB (chair)

IMT6002 3 ECTS

Participants can register for the IMT6002 COINS Winter School course at NTNU. Successful completion is documented with 3 ECTS that can be used towards the taught component of a Ph.D. programme. COINS students can register free of charge for IMT6002. Students outside of COINS might be subject to an administrative fee. Please contact us if you are interested.

Students enrolling in IMT6002 need to actively participate in the winter school and document this participation. This comprises:

• A presentation of the student’s own research. Depending on the stage of the student, the presentation should focus on research questions, research methods, and/or results. Students need to be able to discuss their presentation with the audience. Before the presentation, students need to provide an extended abstract of their presentation, 2 pages A4, submitted as pdf to [email protected] no later than Tuesday 2020-04-28T2359.
• Students need to ask at least one question per day and need to document the question and answer in a reflection report.
• A report on the winter school, summarizing all sessions, establishing connections between the topics of the session and the impact on the student’s own Ph.D. project. Minimum 6 pages A4, submitted as pdf to [email protected] no later than Monday 2020-05-25T2359.

Contributions will be graded on a pass/fail basis.

Practical information

For all practical purposes, you will need to take a train to get to Finse. Check Vy for Minipris tickets to keep your travel costs low.

There is Wifi internet access at Finse.

Funding

COINS students/faculty: COINS covers travel and accommodation using the least expensive practical alternative. COINS will book the hotel rooms. You need to pay for your travel and will be reimbursed later following the usual procedures. Depending on the total number of participants, students may be asked to share rooms. If you have preferences on sharing, please let us know.

SWITS/MyPhD/COINS partner students: COINS covers travel and accommodation under the same conditions as for COINS students. The offer is limited to a certain number of students. Students need to write a travel report reflecting on their experience and need to send us a picture of them wearing a COINS hoodie/t-shirt in a winter school session.

Other students/faculty/participants from industry/public sector: COINS covers accommodation at Finse under the same conditions as for COINS partner students, but participants have to cover their travel themselves. In addition, a fee of 5,000 NOK is to be paid for the first participant from an organisation. Additional participants from the same organisation are requested to pay a fee of 9,000 NOK. If you would love to attend, but could not because of a lack of funds, please get in touch with us. We have a limited support budget for students that do research in the field of computer and information security and who make a compelling case on why their attendance would contribute to the winter school.

The title of her thesis is “Low-Latency Key Exchange and Secure Channels” and the given topic for his trial lecture was “Functional encryption”.

In this growing and changing world, flexibility and adaptability in communication are
increasingly prioritized. As such, security demands must also adapt, and there is an
ever-present challenge to achieve optimal security in these new settings. Consequently,
Britta Hale’s thesis addresses security considerations under non-traditional settings. She starts by considering data sent before a key exchange, progressing to data sent in parallel to a protocol, and then to varying data and channel demands after a key exchange has taken place. These results are meaningful for researchers and implementors alike, providing constructions and models and enabling identification of the strengths and weaknesses of cryptographic schemes and protocols.

The following committee has been appointed to evaluate her thesis, trial lecture and defense:

First external opponent: Dr. Jan Camenisch, IBM Research, Zürich, Switzerland.
Second external opponent: Adjunct Professor Michel Abdalla, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.
Committee member and administrator: Professor Kristian Gjøsteen, Department of Mathematical Sciences, NTNU, Norway.

Britta Hale carried out her PhD work at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU in Trondheim. Her main supervisor was Professor Colin Boyd, Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU Trondheim, Norway.

Congratulations!

The Secure Cloud Services and Storage Workshop 2017 was held in Oslo, Norway on the 10th of September 2017.

COINS supported three students to attend the Secure Cloud Services and Storage Workshop 2017s in Oslo, Norway.

Here are their pictures and reflection reports:

• Britta Hale
• Martin Strand
• Ijlal Loutfi

The northernmost crypto workshop ever organised, Arctic Crypt 2016, took place in the period of July 17-22 in spectacular arctic surroundings under the midnight sun in Longyearbyen, Svalbard at 78° north.

The program was constructed around a series of 10-12 invited tutorial talks on any cryptographic topic including, but not limited to:

• Foundational theory
• The design, proposal, and analysis of cryptographic primitives
• Crypto protocols, side-channel attacks, and other aspects of implementation
• Information theoretic approaches to digital security
• Recent trends in cryptography.

COINS supported 7 students to attend the Arctic Crypt 2016 in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Here are their travel reports:

1. Britta Hale
2. Martin Strand
3. Herman Galteland
4. Tetiana Yarygina
5. Stian Fauskanger
6. Bjørn Greve
7. Shahram Rasoolzadeh

The COINS Research School of Computer and Information Security organizes a research course in Information Security at Finse, April 24 – 29, 2016. The course is open for PhD students in information security as well as for researchers in academia, government and industry in Norway needing an advanced knowledge of information security. The research course has been organized annually since 2008, previously supported by NISNet and FRISC.

The lecturers are leading international researchers in their field and they provide the participants with a unique opportunity to listen to world famous keynote speakers and to interact with international experts in information security.

Important dates:

Applications via the registration form

Please register before 15 March 2016 Open until fully booked – update 2016-04-20: we are fully booked, there is a waiting list

Winter school: Sunday 24/4 to Friday 29/4

Location

Finse is a very beautiful and scenic area close to the Hardangerjøkulen glacier. The winter school will be held at the hotel Finse 1222 (located on the railway station Finse) between Bergen and Oslo, 1222 meters above sea level. Finse is located 2.5 hours from Bergen (or 4 hours from Oslo) and can only be reached by train. During the winter school, even if this is in end of April, there is still winter season and excellent cross-country skiing conditions. We plan to have talks in the morning and early in the
evening with time for skiing in between.

Lecturers

Ed Dawson, University of Queensland, Australia – Authorization Frameworks for Airports of the Future
László Erdödi, University of Agder, Norway – Ethical Hacking
Turid Herland, Conax, Norway – Cryptographic Applications in Industry
Audun Jøsang, University of Oslo, Norway – Cyber Warfare and Big Data Security Analytics
Nasir Memon, New York University, USA – User to Device Authentication
Katerina Mitrokotsa, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden – Security and Privacy in Wireless Communications
Kenneth Paterson, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK – Authenticated Encryption and Secure Channels
Anders Paulshus, Conax, Norway – Cryptographic Applications in Industry
Per Thorsheim, God Praksis, Norway – Passwords and related topics
Gene Tsudik, University of California, Irvine, USA – Security and Privacy in Content-Centric and Information-Centric Networking

Schedule

Sunday 24/4 Travel to Finse by train (skiing is also an option, technically), common dinner 2100

Monday 25/4
0900-1100 Gene Tsudik: Security and Privacy in Content-Centric and Information-Centric Networking (I)
1100-1230 Ed Dawson: Authorization Frameworks for Airports of the Future part 1, part 2
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1900 Per Thorsheim: Passwords and related topics

Tuesday 26/4
0900-1100 Kenneth Paterson: Authenticated Encryption and Secure Channels (I)
1100-1230 Gene Tsudik: Security and Privacy in Content-Centric and Information-Centric Networking (II)
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1800 Ed Dawson: Authorization Management in Business Process Environments
1800-1900 Presentations by the participants
Christoph Busch: IKTPLUSS project SWAN
Martin Stokkenes: Secure and Privacy Preserving Biometrics for Online Authentication
Edlira Martiri: Biometric Template Protection – A Deception-Based Mechanism

Wednesday 27/4
0900-1030 Kenneth Paterson: Authenticated Encryption and Secure Channels (II)
1030-1230 László Erdödi: Ethical Hacking (I)
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1830 Presentations by the participants
Bo Sun: Preventing Cross-VM Chache Side-Channel Attacks Through Dynamic Software Diversity (abstract)
Christian Otterstad: Reading memory, without reading memory (abstract)
Shao-Fang Wen: Hyper Contextual Software Security Knowledge Management
Pankaj Wasnik: Presentation Attack Detection for Biometric Systems
1830-1900 Hanno Langweg: COINS courses as part of the taught component of Ph.D. programmes

Thursday 28/4
0900-1100 Audun Jøsang: Cyber Warfare and Big Data Security Analytics
1100-1230 Presentations by participants
Dmytro Piatkivskyi: Blockchain and cryptocurrencies – application and advancements
Håkon Gunleifsen: Security threats of interconnecting Internet Service Providers domains for distributed network applications
Vasileios Gkioulos: Protecting Tactical Service Oriented Architectures (abstract)
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1830 Turid Herland: Cryptographic Applications in Industry (I)
1830-1900 Britta Hale: Stateful Authentication and AEAD Experiments – Constructing a Bridge in the Analysis of TLS

Friday 29/4
0900-1030 Anders Paulshus: Cryptographic Applications in Industry (II)
1030-1200 László Erdödi: Ethical Hacking (II)
1200-1230 Final discussions
1230-1400 Lunch
Departure

Programme committee

Tor Helleseth, COINS steering committee, UiB (chair)
Britta Hale, COINS Ph.D. student, NTNU
Hanno Langweg, COINS Scientific Director, NTNU

IMT6002 3 ECTS

Participants can register for the IMT6002 COINS Winter School course at NTNU in Gjøvik. Successful completion is documented with 3 ECTS that can be used towards the taught component of a Ph.D. programme. COINS students can register free of charge for IMT6002. Students outside of COINS might be subject to an administrative fee. Please contact us if you are interested.

Students enrolling in IMT6002 need to actively participate in the winter school and document this participation. This comprises:

• A presentation of the student’s own research. Depending on the stage of the student, the presentation should focus on research questions, research methods, and/or results. Students need to be able to discuss their presentation with the audience. Before the presentation, students need to provide an extended abstract of their presentation, 2 pages A4, submitted as pdf to [email protected] no later than Monday 2016-04-18T2359.
• Students need to ask at least one question per day and need to document the question and answer in a reflection report.
• A report on the winter school, summarizing all sessions, establishing connections between the topics of the session and the impact on the student’s own Ph.D. project. Minimum 6 pages A4, submitted as pdf to [email protected] no later than Monday 2016-05-23T2359.

Contributions will be graded on a pass/fail basis.

Practical information

For all practical purposes, you will need to take a train to get to Finse. Check NSB for Minipris tickets to keep your travel costs low.

There is Wifi internet access at Finse.

Funding

COINS students/faculty: COINS covers travel and accommodation using the least expensive practical alternative. COINS will book the hotel rooms. You need to pay for your travel and will be reimbursed later following the usual procedures. Depending on the total number of participants, students may be asked to share rooms. If you have preferences on sharing, please let us know.

SWITS/MyPhD/COINS partner students: COINS covers travel and accommodation under the same conditions as for COINS students. The offer is limited to a certain number of students. Students need to write a travel report reflecting on their experience and need to send us a picture of them wearing a COINS t-shirt in a winter school session.

Other students/faculty/participants from industry/public sector: COINS covers accommodation at Finse under the same conditions as for COINS partner students, but participants have to cover their travel themselves. In addition, a fee of 5000 NOK is to be paid for the first participant from an organisation. Additional participants from the same organisation are requested to pay a fee of 9000 NOK. If you would love to attend, but could not because of a lack of funds, please get in touch with us. We have a limited support budget for students that do research in the field of computer and information security and who make a compelling case on why their attendance would contribute to the winter school.

The conferences were co-located with the COINS Ph.D. student seminar.

Here are their pictures and reflection reports.

• Andrii Shalaginov

• Dijana Vukovic

• Ambika Shrestha Chitrakar

• Huihui Yang

• Britta Hale

• Leonardo Iwaya

• Tetiana Yarygina

• Håkon Gunleifsen
• Stian Fauskanger

Students: Answer her poll on http://foodl.org/foodle/COINS-Design-Change-54f47 and email your suggestions to Britta.

(The picture shows the current 2013 version of t-shirts.)