[HGI-News] SHARCS Registration is open

[hgi-news at lists.ruhr-uni-bochum.de]

Dear Collegues, registration for:

    SHARCS -- Special-Purpose Hardware for Attacking Cryptographic
Systems
                      February 24 -25, 2005, Paris

has started. You can register from the main page:
	
    www.sharcs.org

or directly at:

   sharcs.crypto.rub.de/registration.php


Regards, Christof Paar

************************************************************************
*

   SHARCS -- Special-Purpose Hardware for Attacking Cryptographic
Systems
                          www.sharcs.org

                   February 24 -25, 2005, Paris


The SHARCS Workshop is the first open meeting ever devoted entirely to
the challenging subject of special-purpose cryptanalytical machines.

Much of the earlier work in this area was done on key searches for
symmetric-key algorithms, with a particular emphasis on attacks against
DES. More recently there has been interest in hardware architectures for
sieving methods for attacking the RSA scheme. However, it seems that
much work remains to be done including, for instance, special purpose
hardware crackers for:

    * index calculus algorithms
    * elliptic curve based schemes
    * lattice based schemes
    * specific block and stream ciphers

In addition to algorithmic issues, it is also the workshop's goal to
make advances on implementational issues such as:

    * optical devices for cryptanalysis
    * analog computers for cryptanalysis
    * digital architecture for cryptanalysis

The ultimate objective of SHARCS is to determine whether special purpose
hardware poses a real threat for today's cryptographic algorithms, and
whether there are advantages over software-based attacks. Since this is
an intrinsically interdisciplinary subject, it is hoped that the
workshop can bring together researchers with different backgrounds for
discussing and advancing this exciting field.

The workshop will consist of invited keynote presentations and some
contributed presentations. We welcome submissions of extended abstracts
(at least 3 pages.) We would like to stress that we do *not* aim at
receiving contributions on side channel attacks nor on attacks carried
out on conventional computer platforms with conventional attack
algorithms. Furthermore, at this point we exclude quantum cryptologic
devices.  Theoretical papers analyzing the feasibility and costs of
attacks using specialized hardware are, however, very much welcomed.

For more information on the workshop visit: www.sharcs.org

The workshop is organized by ECRYPT, the European Network of Excellence
in Cryptography (www.ecrypt.eu.org). The workshop is an activity of
ECRYPT's VAMPIRE - Virtual Application and Implementation Research Lab.

The SHARCS dates were chosen to have SHARCS immediately after Fast
Software Encryption (FSE) 2005, which runs from February 21-23. SHARCS
will be held in ENSTA, the same location that is used for FSE.

Program Committee:

 	* Gerhard Frey (Essen)			* Elisabeth Oswald
(Graz)
 	* Tanja Lange (Copenhagen)		* Christof Paar	(Bochum)
 	* Arjen Lenstra (Lucent/Eindhoven)	* Nigel Smart (Bristol)


So far the following speakers have confirmed giving invited talks:

 	* Dan Bernstein		   * Adi Shamir
 	* Arjen Lenstra		   * Eran Tromer
 	* Jean-Jacques Quisquater  * Mike Wiener
 	* Tony Sale

============================================
Prof. Christof Paar
Chair for Communication Security
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Information Sciences
Ruhr-University Bochum
44780 Bochum, Germany
www.crypto.rub.de

mobile phone: 0170 790 3393