Systems Biology:

• Data generation/analysis
• Motif compendium
• Genetic networks/inference

Systems Biomedicine:

• Compendium (micro-array) data analysis
• Probabilistic graphical models
• Computations/statistical genetics

• Matrix/tensor algebra
• Subspace methods
• Measurement error modeling
• Classification

• magnet reson. spectroscopy
• EEG analysis
• Neonatal signal analysis
• Cancer diagnosis

• Optimisation, linear algebra, probabilistic methods
• System indentification and control
• Support vector machines and kernel based learning

• Data mining
• Neural networks, nonlinear systems, complex systems
• Quantum information theory

• Speech communications
• Public address systems
• Hearing aids/cochlear implants (with U.Z.Leuven)

• Wireline ADLS/VDSL
• Wireless communications

Symmetric cryptography, also known as secret-key or conventional cryptography, is the oldest branch in the field of cryptography. Symmetric primitives all start from the assumption that the users share some piece of information unknown to the adversary, called a secret key, and make use of this fact to protect the communication channel between the users. Our group deals with constructing these building blocks, analyzing them, and trying to understand their security. We have been an active participant during the development and the assessment of the Advanced Encryption Standard. The selected cipher, Rijndael, was designed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, who are a former and a current member of COSIC respectively. During the NESSIE project and the eSTREAM competition (done as part of the EU project ECRYPT), we have contributed several promising candidates and analyzed others. Our research can be divided into three main themes:

• Designing and analyzing new primitives,
• studying Boolean functions with cryptographic properties,
• and applying provable security to symmetric primitives.

Public key cryptography (PKC) or asymmetric cryptography is the main enabler of common security objectives such as authentication and non-repudiation. The research of the PKC group is focused on all aspects of elliptic and hyperelliptic curve cryptography, provable security, applications of bilinear pairings and distributed cryptography. More specifically the PKC group has international-level expertise in the design and analysis of fast algorithms for (hyper)elliptic curve key generation and scalar multiplication; provably secure cryptographic primitives, including digital signature and encryption schemes with special properties; new pairings on elliptic curves; secret sharing schemes and multiparty computation.

A growing application area in the security field is trusted platforms and embedded systems. In short, we develop secure and efficient hardware implementations for a broad range of processors: smart cards, FPGAs and ASICs. We analyze the resistance of implementations against side channel attacks (power consumption, electromagnetic radiation, timing analysis) and fault attacks.

COSIC also develops and tests various countermeasures against these attacks at the circuit, gate, algorithm and protocol level. For trusted platforms we investigate how existing solutions can be enhanced in terms of increased flexibility and privacy.

The Privacy subgroup of COSIC has an interest in privacy enhancing technologies, identity managment, censorship resistance, anonymity, traffic analysis and profiling. We do both theoretical research on the nature of identity and privacy protection, but also more applied work and consultancy related to identity card schemes and anonymity infrastructures.

Our research interests are:

• Anonymous communications are necessary for safe electronic elections, cash and auctions, and can be used as a building block for a variety of security protocols. We research the foundations of anonymity and anonymous communications, and the trade offs between secure and practical systems.
• Anonymous credentials are necessary for allowing the anonymity gained by means of anonymous communication to be maintained, even in environments where mutual trust between participants is required. Anonymous credentials are a generalization of electronic cash, PK certificates, and group signatures. Just as anonymous communication, they are an important building block for building privacy respecting and secure protocols.
• Identity architectures try to balance secure authentication and the need for privacy. Our research interests span from electronic national identity card systems to privacy preserving and minimal disclosure authentication.
• Privacy policies, despite being at the heart of personal data protection are often difficult to define correctly, expensive to enforce through appropriate controls, and very difficult to audit. We are researching novel ways in which technology can assist us in these tasks.

Within the emerging field of IDM (identity management) one can find many applications of cryptography. However, since it is not immediately a branch in cryptology we are confronted with many technologies and systems that impose complex requirements with regard to security and privacy guarantees. Fulfilling these requirements is not straightforward and solving the problems that occur in contemporary IDM systems demand an integrated approach. Therefore, the IDM group aims to bring together people from different working groups that seek collaboration and want to exchange knowledge within this field. The major sub domains of interest are authentication, both of users and data, as a manifestation of a user's identity and existence, and the management of personal data and the communication thereof. As a secondary objective, the identity management group tries to identify directions for future research and new applications of basic research results.

The age of a ubiquitous computing world is approaching due to technology advances in wireless networking, and the future pervasive computing environment is a complex system formed by heterogeneous networks. To provide guaranteed security and privacy protection for various applications in such a system is an intricate task and the main research objective of the MobiSec group. More in detail, MobiSec is active in the following research domains: anonymity in wireless networks, key management in ad-hoc networks, secure location based services and authentication, mobile software agent migration, secure routing, and the application of light-weight cryptographic primitives in mobile applications and sensor networks.

The Software Security working group within COSIC is composed of both PhD students and programmers. Its members actively research a wide range of topics, covering most aspects of software security including software confidentiality, integrity, diversity and analysis.

Confidential topics include obfuscation, rendering programme analysis more difficult, White box Cryptography, an implementation of cryptographic algorithms precluding the extraction of secret keys, computing on encrypted data, and computing with encrypted functions.
Software integrity topics researched include tamper resistance, protecting software against malicious manipulation, mobile software agents, and Trusted Computing.
Software diversity aims to increase software's resistance to automated analysis and tampering attacks and borrows techniques from software integrity and confidentiality.
Software analysis research focuses on automating vulnerability analysis and provably certifying properties of implementations.

The software security working group is currently involved in a number of Belgian and European projects.

• Postgraduate courses on XML applications
• Design for all and (web) accessibility for people with disabilities