Two PhD Positions in Systems Security at Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

* Summary:

The DistriNet research group of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium has two scholarships available for PhD-students (4 years) in the area of systems security, more specifically in the area of defense against low level attacks. The goal of this scholarship is to design and implement countermeasures for attacks that exploit vulnerabilities resulting from memory management errors in C or C++. These attacks take advantage of several vulnerabilities like buffer overflows, integer errors, format string vulnerabilities, etc. DistriNet has extensive experience in this area which resulted in several countermeasures that further the state of the art by efficiently protecting against attacks using these vulnerabilities. DistriNet is active in building these types of countermeasures for numerous architectures ranging from desktop to mobile and embedded devices.

The successful candidate will have the following tasks and responsibilities:
- Study the state of the art of the domain
- Design and implement countermeasures for both mobile and desktop systems
- Perform extensive evaluation of these countermeasures in terms of performance, memory overhead and security
- Provide verbal and written reports of both the state of the art and own results

To implement these countermeasures changes could be made to the compiler, the operating system, the underlying architecture or even the language itself. An important design goal is to design countermeasures that have as little impact on performance as possible. Some of the technologies that are currently being used to implement these countermeasures are GCC, Xen, Qemu, Linux, Openmoko, Phoenix, etc.

These countermeasures will be designed in close collaboration with other PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and professors.

* Profile and Skills:

- Bachelor or Master's degree in the area of Computer Science or Computer Engineering.
- Good working knowledge of C or C++
- Proficiency in English and excellent communication skills, both oral and written
- Team player; capability to work in an international research team

* About DistriNet

The “Distributed systems and computer Networks” (DistriNet) research group was founded in 1984 as part of the Department of Computer Science at the K.U.Leuven. DistriNet’s research focus and scope is twofold: distributed software – obviously including middleware – and secure software. The group works on a wide range of topics including network and software security, embedded systems, computer networks, internet architectures, middleware and multi-agent systems. DistriNet’s research is always application driven and often conducted in collaboration with industry partners.

Currently DistriNet totals 60 members (8 professors, 12 post-docs and 45 junior researchers) and participates in about 30 national and international research projects. The annual budget amounts to approximately 5MEuro. More information on projects and publications can be found on the DistriNet web pages: http://distrinet.cs.kuleuven.be/

The open positions are situated within a team that has been established to build countermeasures for attacks on vulnerabilities in native code. These countermeasures target all types of systems ranging from large scale servers to mobile and embedded devices. This team has extensive experience with designing and implementing these types of countermeasures and is looking to expand the research. DistriNet is an equal opportunity employer and offers competitive scholarships.

* Application details
Applications will be considered until the position is filled, but those received on or before September 1st, 2008 will have priority.

The PhD positions are for 4 years, the start date is negotiable (October 1st, 2008 at the earliest).

To apply you should send your:
- Curriculum Vitae
- Motivation
- Relevant research experience
- Study curriculum with rankings
- English proficiency (for foreign students)
- Pdf of diploma and transcripts (translation if necessary)
- Names (and e-mail) of 2 reference persons and the nature of contact with them

by e-mail to Yves Younan and Wouter Joosen: Yves.Younan@cs.kuleuven.be, Wouter.Joosen@cs.kuleuven.be

Informal inquiries: Wouter Joosen (Wouter.Joosen@cs.kuleuven.be) or
Yves Younan (Yves.Younan@cs.kuleuven.be)