Welcome to the Finse winter school 2019

The COINS Research School of Computer and Information Security organizes a research course in Information Security at Finse, May 5 – 10, 2019. 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 5/5 to Friday 10/5
Applications via the registration form


Please register before 14 March 2019. Open until fully booked.
Event is fully booked, you can be placed on the waiting list or you may want to consider alternative COINS events.

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

• Dietmar Bremser, German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
• Lilya Budaghyan, UiB
• Joan Daemen, Radboud University in Nijmegen and STMicroelectronics
• László Erdődi, UiO
• Bart Preneel, University of Leuven
• Adi Shamir, Weizmann Institute of Science
• Martijn Stam, Simula UiB

Schedule

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

Monday 6/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-0905 Øyvind Ytrehus, Simula UiB, Welcome
0905-1015 Dietmar Bremser, German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Security Certification and Standardization Caught in the Act – A Briefing beyond the Lecture Book’s Onepager
1015-1045 Coffee break
1045-1230 Dietmar Bremser, German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), POWED – A critical discourse on the Economics of Security Standardization and Certification
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1900 László Erdődi, UiO, Ethical hacking
1900-2030 Dinner

Tuesday 7/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1030 Joan Daemen, Radboud University in Nijmegen, Symmetric cryptography 2.0
1030-1100 Coffee break
1100-1230 László Erdődi, UiO, Ethical hacking
1230-1400 Lunch
1400-1530 Visit of “Rallarmuseet” (local railway museum)
1700-1840 Presentations by the participants (I)

• Jan William Johnsen, “Digital Forensics Report for Dagens Næringsliv”
• Mazaher Kianpour, “Modeling and Simulating Information Security Economics for Business Decision Making”
• Merve Bas Seyyar, “Privacy by Design (PbD) in Large Scale Digital Forensics”
• Benjamin J. Knox, “Cyber Power Praxis: a study of ways to improve understanding and governance in the Cyber Domain”
• Eivind Kristoffersen, “Towards a Smart Circular Economy – how companies can use digital technologies to leverage the transformation to more data-driven and circular business models”

Each presentation ca. 20 min., incl. questions
1900-2030 Dinner
2030-2150 Presentations by the participants (II)

• Farzane Karami, “Information-flow security”
• Jin Zhang, “Challenges in testing and verifying NN-based safety-critical control software”
• Muhammad Mudassar Yamin, “Detecting Windows Based Exploit Chains by Means of Event Correlation and Process Monitoring”
• Ali Khodabakhsh, “Automated Authentication of Audiovisual Contents: A Biometric Approach”

Wednesday 8/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1030 Joan Daemen, Radboud University in Nijmegen, Symmetric cryptography 2.0
1030-1100 Coffee break
1100-1230 Martijn Stam, Simula UiB, Differential Power Analysis with Key Ranking/Enumeration (slides 1/2, slides 2/2)
1230-1400 Lunch
1415-1530 COINS steering committee meeting
1700-1840 Presentations by the participants (III)

• Shuang Wu, “Hash Time Lock Contract Analysis”
• Åvald Åslaugson Sommervoll, “Genetic algorithm attack on the Enigmas plugboard”
• Isaac Canales-Martinez, “On the cryptanalysis of LFSR based stream ciphers”
• Diana Davidova, “Niho bent functions and o-equivalence”
• Thor Tunge, “Voting with Commitments”

Each presentation ca. 20 min., incl. questions
1900-2030 Dinner
2030-2150 Presentations by the participants (IV)

• Adam Szekeres, “Human motivation and the security of Internet of Things”
• Ahmed Amro, “Communication and Cybersecurity of Autonomous Passenger Ferry”
• Georgios Kavallieratos, “Cyber-attacks against the autonomous ship”
• Nektaria Kaloudi, “Cybersecurity, safety, and resilience of smart cities”

Thursday 9/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1100 Adi Shamir, Weizmann Institute of Science, The Insecurity of Machine Learning: Problems and Solutions: Related paper
1100-1130 Coffee break
1130-1230 Bart Preneel, University of Leuven, Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Consensus 1/2
1230-1400 Lunch
1700-1900 Bart Preneel, University of Leuven, Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Consensus 2/2
1900-2030 Dinner

Friday 10/5
0800-0900 Breakfast
0900-1030 Lilya Budaghyan, UiB, On Optimal Cryptographic Functions
1030-1100 Coffee break
1100-1228 Martijn Stam, Simula UiB, Untagging Tor: Modelling Onion Encryption
1228-1230 Øyvind Ytrehus, Simula UiB, Conclusion/farewell
1230-1400 Lunch
Departure

Printable version of the schedule

Programme committee

Øyvind Ytrehus, Simula UiB (chair)
Tor Helleseth, COINS steering committee, UiB
Hanno Langweg, COINS Scientific Director, NTNU

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 info@coinsrs.no no later than Tuesday 2019-04-30T2359.
• 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 info@coinsrs.no no later than Monday 2019-05-27T2359.

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 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.