Gaëtan Cassiers

Postdoc researcher

Crypto Group

UCLouvain

CryptoExperts

Maxwell Building
Place du Levant 3/L5.03.02
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium
gaetan.cassiers@uclouvain.be
CV (pdf)
Google Scholar page Github Account DBLP page

Publications

Talks

Software

Career

Awards

Teaching

Service

I am a FNRS postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain, in the Crypto Group.

My main research interest is the secure implementation of cryptographic algorithms in embedded systems, in particular regarding physical security issues. My goal is to design implementations that reach high security levels by being open-source, formally proven and end-to-end verified. My current research is focused on securing such implementations against physical attacks. I am mainly working on design, implementation and automated verification of masking schemes with provable security and competitive performance.

I am a co-founder and contributor of the SIMPLE-Crypto non-profit association whose goal is to develop and maintain embedded cryptographic implementations with strong physical security guarantees.

Publications

2024

  1. Vedad Hadzic, Gaëtan Cassiers, Robert Primas, Stefan Mangard, Roderick Bloem, Quantile: Quantifying Information Leakage, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2024, no. 1, pp. 433–456, 2024. [link] 
  2. Gaëtan Cassiers, Loïc Masure, Charles Momin, Thorben Moos, Amir Moradi, François-Xavier Standaert, Randomness Generation for Secure Hardware Masking - Unrolled Trivium to the Rescue, IACR Commun. Cryptol., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 4, 2024. [link] 
  3. Gaëtan Cassiers, Barbara Gigerl, Stefan Mangard, Charles Momin, Rishub Nagpal, Compress: Generate Small and Fast Masked Pipelined Circuits, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2024, no. 3, pp. 500–529, 2024. [link] 
  4. Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Corentin Verhamme, Low-Latency Masked Gadgets Robust against Physical Defaults with Application to Ascon, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2024, no. 3, pp. 603–633, 2024. [link] 
  5. (unpublished) Gaëtan Cassiers, Charles Momin, The SMAesH dataset, IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch., pp. 1521, 2024. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  6. Thomas Wedenig, Rishub Nagpal, Gaëtan Cassiers, Stefan Mangard, Robert Peharz, Exact Soft Analytical Side-Channel Attacks using Tractable Circuits, Forty-first International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2024, Vienna, Austria, July 21-27, 2024, 2024. [link] 

2023

  1. Gaëtan Cassiers, Olivier Bronchain, SCALib: A Side-Channel Analysis Library, J. Open Source Softw., vol. 8, no. 86, pp. 5196, 2023. [link] 
  2. Aikata, Andrea Basso, Gaëtan Cassiers, Ahmet Can Mert, Sujoy Sinha Roy, Kavach: Lightweight masking techniques for polynomial arithmetic in lattice-based cryptography, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2023, no. 3, pp. 366–390, 2023. [link] 
  3. Melissa Azouaoui, Olivier Bronchain, Gaëtan Cassiers, Clément Hoffmann, Yulia Kuzovkova, Joost Renes, Tobias Schneider, Markus Sch\onauer, François-Xavier Standaert, Christine van Vredendaal, Protecting Dilithium against Leakage Revisited Sensitivity Analysis and Improved Implementations, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2023, no. 4, pp. 58–79, 2023. [link] 
  4. Gaëtan Cassiers, Henri Devillez, François-Xavier Standaert, Balazs Udvarhelyi, Efficient Regression-Based Linear Discriminant Analysis for Side-Channel Security Evaluations Towards Analytical Attacks against 32-bit Implementations, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2023, no. 3, pp. 270–293, 2023. [link] 
  5. Gaëtan Cassiers, Loïc Masure, Charles Momin, Thorben Moos, François-Xavier Standaert, Prime-Field Masking in Hardware and its Soundness against Low-Noise SCA Attacks, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2023, no. 2, pp. 482–518, 2023. [link] 
  6. Loïc Masure, Gaëtan Cassiers, Julien M. Hendrickx, François-Xavier Standaert, Information Bounds and Convergence Rates for Side-Channel Security Evaluators, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2023, no. 3, pp. 522–569, 2023. [link] 
  7. (unpublished) Sonia Belaïd, Gaëtan Cassiers, Camille Mutschler, Matthieu Rivain, Thomas Roche, François-Xavier Standaert, Abdul Rahman Taleb, Towards Achieving Provable Side-Channel Security in Practice, IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch., pp. 1198, 2023. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  8. Sonia Belaïd, Gaëtan Cassiers, Matthieu Rivain, Abdul Rahman Taleb, Unifying Freedom and Separation for Tight Probing-Secure Composition, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2023 - 43rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2023, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 20-24, 2023, Proceedings, Part III, vol. 14083, pp. 440–472, 2023. [link] 

2022

  1. Gaëtan Cassiers, Composable and efficient masking schemes for side-channel secure implementations, PhD thesis, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 2022. [PDF]  [link] 
  2. Gaëtan Cassiers, Probing Model, Encyclopedia of Cryptography, Security and Privacy, pp. 1–3, 2022. [PDF]  [link] 
  3. Olivier Bronchain, Gaëtan Cassiers, Bitslicing Arithmetic/Boolean Masking Conversions for Fun and Profit with Application to Lattice-Based KEMs, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2022, no. 4, pp. 553–588, 2022. [PDF]  [link] 
  4. Yaobin Shen, Thomas Peters, François-Xavier Standaert, Gaëtan Cassiers, Corentin Verhamme, Triplex: an Efficient and One-Pass Leakage-Resistant Mode of Operation, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2022, no. 4, pp. 135–162, 2022. [PDF]  [link] 
  5. Charles Momin, Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Handcrafting: Improving Automated Masking in Hardware with Manual Optimizations, Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design - 13th International Workshop, COSADE 2022, Leuven, Belgium, April 11-12, 2022, Proceedings, vol. 13211, pp. 257–275, 2022. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  6. Corentin Verhamme, Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Analyzing the Leakage Resistance of the NIST's Lightweight Crypto Competition's Finalists, Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications - 21st International Conference, CARDIS 2022, Birmingham, UK, November 7-9, 2022, Revised Selected Papers, vol. 13820, pp. 290–308, 2022. [link] 

2021

  1. Charles-Henry Bertrand Van Ouytsel, Olivier Bronchain, Ga\ etan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, How to fool a black box machine learning based side-channel security evaluation, Cryptogr. Commun., vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 573–585, 2021. [PDF]  [link] 
  2. Gaëtan Cassiers, Benjamin Grégoire, Itamar Levi, François-Xavier Standaert, Hardware Private Circuits: From Trivial Composition to Full Verification, IEEE Trans. Computers, vol. 70, no. 10, pp. 1677–1690, 2021. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  3. Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Provably Secure Hardware Masking in the Transition- and Glitch-Robust Probing Model: Better Safe than Sorry, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2021, no. 2, pp. 136–158, 2021. [PDF]  [link] 
  4. (unpublished) Olivier Bronchain, Gaëtan Cassiers, François- Xavier Standaert, Give Me 5 Minutes: Attacking ASCAD with a Single Side-Channel Trace, IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch., pp. 817, 2021. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  5. Gaëtan Cassiers, Sebastian Faust, Maximilian Orlt, François-Xavier Standaert, Towards Tight Random Probing Security, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2021 - 41st Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2021, Virtual Event, August 16-20, 2021, Proceedings, Part III, vol. 12827, pp. 185–214, 2021. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  6. Charles Momin, Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Unprotected and Masked Hardware Implementations of Spook v2, Security and Implementation of Lightweight Cryptography Workshop, Proceedings, 2021. [PDF]  [link] 

2020

  1. Davide Bellizia, Francesco Berti, Olivier Bronchain, Gaëtan Cassiers, Sébastien Duval, Chun Guo, Gregor Leander, Gaëtan Leurent, Itamar Levi, Charles Momin, Olivier Pereira, Thomas Peters, François-Xavier Standaert, Balazs Udvarhelyi, Friedrich Wiemer, Spook: Updates on the Round-2 Submission, NIST Lightweight Cryptography Round 2 Candidates, 2020. [PDF]  [link] 
  2. Weijia Wang, Pierrick Méaux, Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Efficient and Private Computations with Code-Based Masking, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2020, no. 2, pp. 128–171, 2020. [PDF]  [link] 
  3. Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Trivially and Efficiently Composing Masked Gadgets With Probe Isolating Non-Interference, IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur., vol. 15, pp. 2542–2555, 2020. [PDF]  [link] 
  4. Davide Bellizia, Francesco Berti, Olivier Bronchain, Ga\ etan Cassiers, Sébastien Duval, Chun Guo, Gregor Leander, Gaëtan Leurent, Itamar Levi, Charles Momin, Olivier Pereira, Thomas Peters, François-Xavier Standaert, Balazs Udvarhelyi, Friedrich Wiemer, Spook: Sponge-Based Leakage-Resistant Authenticated Encryption with a Masked Tweakable Block Cipher, IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol., vol. 2020, no. S1, pp. 295–349, 2020. [PDF]  [link] 
  5. Weijia Wang, Chun Guo, François-Xavier Standaert, Yu Yu, Gaëtan Cassiers, Packed Multiplication: How to Amortize the Cost of Side-Channel Masking?, Advances in Cryptology - ASIACRYPT 2020 - 26th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, Daejeon, South Korea, December 7-11, 2020, Proceedings, Part I, vol. 12491, pp. 851–880, 2020. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  6. Davide Bellizia, Olivier Bronchain, Gaëtan Cassiers, Vincent Grosso, Chun Guo, Charles Momin, Olivier Pereira, Thomas Peters, François-Xavier Standaert, Mode-Level vs. Implementation-Level Physical Security in Symmetric Cryptography - A Practical Guide Through the Leakage-Resistance Jungle, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2020 - 40th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2020, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, August 17-21, 2020, Proceedings, Part I, vol. 12170, pp. 369–400, 2020. [PDF (preprint)]  [link] 
  7. Olivier Brochain, Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Secure and Efficient Masking of Lightweight Ciphers in Software and Hardware (with Application to the Spook AEAD), NIST Lightweight Cryptography Workshop 2020, 2020. [PDF]  [link] 

2019

  1. Gaëtan Cassiers, François-Xavier Standaert, Towards Globally Optimized Masking: From Low Randomness to Low Noise Rate or Probe Isolating Multiplications with Reduced Randomness and Security against Horizontal Attacks, IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst., vol. 2019, no. 2, pp. 162–198, 2019. [PDF]  [link] 
  2. Gilles Barthe, Sonia Belaïd, Gaëtan Cassiers, Pierre-Alain Fouque, Benjamin Grégoire, François-Xavier Standaert, maskVerif: Automated Verification of Higher-Order Masking in Presence of Physical Defaults, Computer Security - ESORICS 2019 - 24th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Luxembourg, September 23-27, 2019, Proceedings, Part I, vol. 11735, pp. 300–318, 2019. [PDF]  [link] 
  3. Gaëtan Cassiers, Chun Guo, Olivier Pereira, Thomas Peters, François-Xavier Standaert, SpookChain: Chaining a Sponge-Based AEAD with Beyond-Birthday Security, Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering - 9th International Conference, SPACE 2019, Gandhinagar, India, December 3-7, 2019, Proceedings, vol. 11947, pp. 67–85, 2019. [PDF]  [link] 

Selected talks

Academic Career and Education

Academic Career

Education

Grants and awards

Service

I was a PC member for the CHES 2022 and 2024 artifacts, for CRYPTO 2023, CCS 2023, FSiC 2024, Asiacrypt 2024, CASCADE 2025, as well as editor for JCEN (2023-2024), TCHES 2025, CiC 2025.

I have been a reviewer or external reviewer for the following journals and conferences: Journal of Cryptographic Engineering, Cryptography and Communications, TCHES, HOST 2020, Eurocrypt 2020, Asiacrypt 2021, CRPTO 2022, Eurocrypt 2023, TCHES 2023, Eurocrypt 2024, TCHES 2024, Eurocrypt 2025.

I have co-organized the Spook SCA Challenge for CHES 2020 and the SMAesH challenge for CHES 2023.