Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog. I am Hosein Hadipour, a researcher at Ruhr University Bochum under the supervision of Prof. Gregor Leander. I work in the field of symmetric-key cryptanalysis, focusing on developing methods to understand and analyze the security of cryptographic systems.

About My Research

My research centers on cryptanalysis using mathematical and computational approaches to systematically study cryptographic primitives. I am particularly interested in:

• Mathematical and computational approaches to systematically study cryptographic primitives.
• Unified frameworks to study various cryptanalytic techniques and their interconnections. I am particualrly interested in the links between different attacks such as differential, linear, impossible-differential, integral, and zero-correlation attacks.
• Automated methods to convert cryptanalytic problems into forms that can be solved by computers, such as SAT/SMT solving, mixed integer linear programming (MILP), and constraint programming (CP).
• Analyzing new symmetric-key primitives to evaluate their security and identify potential vulnerabilities.
• Designing cryptographic tools to facilitate research and experimentation in the field.
• Designing cryptographic primitives to address specific security and performance goals.

My Background

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at Graz University of Technology in 2024, where I worked with Dr. Maria Eichlseder. Before that, I studied mathematics at the University of Tehran and have dual bachelor’s degrees in applied mathematics and electrical engineering from K. N. Toosi University of Technology.

Some of my recent work includes papers at CRYPTO 2024 on differential-linear attacks and EUROCRYPT 2023 on automated search methods for cryptanalytic attacks.

What to Expect

In this blog, I plan to share:

Research insights – Explaining concepts from my papers in accessible ways, discussing what I learned from different projects, and sharing thoughts on current trends in cryptanalysis.

Technical tutorials – Step-by-step guides for using tools like SageMath for cryptographic computations, setting up CP/MILP/SAT/SMT solvers for cryptanalysis, and implementing basic attacks on simplified ciphers.

Conference notes – Summaries of interesting talks and papers from conferences like CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, and FSE, along with my personal takeaways.

Collaborative work – Stories from joint projects with colleagues around the world, what makes for good research partnerships, and lessons learned from working across different institutions.

Looking Forward

Cryptanalysis continues to evolve as new ciphers are proposed and new mathematical tools become available. I find it fascinating how techniques from seemingly unrelated areas of mathematics and computer science can suddenly become relevant to analyzing cryptographic primitives.

I hope this blog will be useful for fellow researchers, students getting started in cryptography, and anyone curious about how we analyze the security of the systems that protect our digital world.

Thank you for visiting, and I look forward to sharing this journey with you.

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You can find more details about my work on my research papers page, recent presentations, and full CV.