About
Hi, my name is Thomas Hiscock. I am an engineer/researcher in the field of embedded system security. I am currently working at CEA-Leti (Grenoble, France), since 2014. Some of my current and past activities includes:
- 2014 -> 2021: Design and implementation of security extensions for processors (memory encryption, control-flow integrity, pointer tagging, cache randomization). On the MIPS architecture during my PhD and then on RISC-V.
- 2018 -> now: Lead developper of a security test bench for side-channel analysis, fault injections and micro-architectural attacks.
- 2019 -> now: Research in side-channel analysis and fault injections.
- 2019 -> now: Security analysis of products for different companies (automotive, IoT).
- 2019 -> now: Supervising internships and PhD students.
- 2022 -> 2023: Work-package leader in the Exfiles European European project.
As a good Grenoble citizen, when I am not working, I like spending hours running in mountains around Grenoble!
List of Publications
I try to maintain an up-to-date list of publications below (with PDF and BibTex entry). You can also check my Scholar profile for up-to-date information. Feel free to contact me is you need a PDF access to some of these.
- “A Study of Soft Analytical Side-Channel Attacks on Secure Hash Algorithms.” Julien Maillard, , Maxime Lecomte, and Christophe Clavier. Cryptology ePrint Archive (2024) [LINK].
- “Cache Side-Channel Attacks Through Electromagnetic Emanations of DRAM Accesses.”, Julien Maillard, , Maxime Lecomte, and Christophe Clavier. 2023, Cryptology ePrint Archive [LINK].
- “Fit The Joint Moments How to Attack any Masking Scheme.”, Cristiani, Valence, Maxime Lecomte, , and Philippe Maurine. IEEE Access, 2022. [PDF]
- “Towards Fine-grained Side-Channel Instruction Disassembly on a System-on-Chip”, Julien Maillard, , Maxime Lecomte, Christophe Clavier. DSD 2022.
- “Noise-Free Security Assessment of Eviction Set Construction Algorithms with Randomized Caches.” Jaamoum, Amine, , and Giorgio Di Natale. Applied Sciences 12.5 (2022): 2415.
- “Code Polymorphism Meets Code Encryption: Confidentiality and Side-Channel Protection of Software Components.” Courousse, Damien, Lionel Morel, and . Digital Threats: Research and Practice (2021).
- “Scramble Cache: An Efficient Cache Architecture for Randomized Set Permutation.” Amine Jaamoum, , Girgio Di Natale. DATE 2021.
- “Confidaent: Control FLow protection with Instruction and Data Authenticated Encryption.” Savry, Olivier, Mustapha El-Majihi, and . In Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD) 2020.
- “A Bit-Level Approach to Side Channel Based Disassembling.”, Cristiani, Valence, Maxime Lecomte, and . In International Conference on Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications (CARDIS) 2019. [PDF][BIB]
- Book (In French), “Sécurité Matérielle des Systèmes”, Olivier Savry, , Mustapha El-Majihi. Best technical book award at the European Cyberweek (Rennes) 2019.
- “Adaptive Masking: a Dynamic Trade-off between Energy Consumption and Hardware Security.”. Montoya, M., , Bacles-Min, S., Molnos, A. and Fournier, J. (2019, November). In International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD) 2019.
- “Lightweight instruction-level encryption for embedded processors using stream ciphers.”, , Olivier Savry, and Louis Goubin. In Microprocessors and Microsystems Journal 2019.
- “Energy-efficient Masking of the Trivium Stream Cipher.”, Maxime Montoya, , Simone Bacles-Min, Anca Molnos, and Jacques JA Fournier. In International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS) 2018.
- “On the Design of a Processor Working Over Encrypted Data.” , Olivier Savry, and Louis Goubin. Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD) 2018.
- “Lightweight software encryption for embedded processors.” , Olivier Savry, and Louis Goubin. Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD) 2017.
- PhD Thesis. “Microcontrôleur à flux chiffré d'instructions et de données”. , Université de Paris-Saclay, 2017. Supervised by Olivier Savry and Louis Goubin [PDF] [BIB]
Teaching
- 2023, 2024: “Theory and practice of side-channel attacks”, 20 hours course, École des Mines de Saint-Etienne.
- 2023: Introduction to side-channel analysis, 3 hours, ARCHI-2023
- 2023: Introduction to side-channel analysis, 3 hours, Cyber in Sophia
Supervising
In my current job at CEA, I have the opportunity to supervise great students!
PhDs:
- Since 2024: Ulysse Vincenti. Improving fuzzing on embedded systems.
- Since 2022: Julien Maillard. Side-channel analysis for reverse-engineering.
- 2019-2022: Amine Jaamoum. Methods for securing a memory hierarchy against software side-channel attacks.
Internships:
- 2023: Thibault Coudroy (2nd year engineering school, 3 months), Fuzzing tools for embedded systems.
- 2023: Tobias Da Silva Olivieras (M2, 6 months), Control-flow reconstruction from side-channel analysis measurements.
- 2022: Lucas Malandrino (2nd year engineering, 3 months). Implementation of tools and algorithms for side-channel analysis in Rust.
- 2021: Julien Maillard (M2, 6 months). Side-channel based instruction disassembling on complex Systems-on-Chip (SoC).
- 2020: Dimitri Lesnoff (M2, 6 months). Error correction and control flow reconstruction from side-channel based instruction disassembler.
- 2019: Valence Cristiani (M2, 6 months). Side-channel based instruction disassembling on microcontrollers.