The teams of Shin Donghyun Kim and Youngbeom Kim (advisor: Seokchung Seo) from the Department of Information Security and Cryptography at Kookmin University, and Jaejin Lee, Seungjun Baek, and Kiyoon Kim (advisor: Jongsung Kim) from the Department of Information Security and Cryptography at Kookmin University, won the top prize, the National Intelligence Officer Award, at the 2024 National Cryptography Competition held on Thursday, October 24, at Yangjae El Tower.

The KU team won the top prize for their paper on optimizing quantum-resistant ciphers that ensure security in quantum environments for IoT embedded devices to achieve high performance, and their paper on developing a heuristic search framework for optimizing S-box circuits and finding the most efficient S-box circuit for the international standard block cipher AES.

Kookmin University students won not only the grand prize, but also two excellent prizes (Kim Joo-hwan, Han Jae-seung, Cho Hong-rae, advisor: Han, Dong-Guk), an encouraging prize (Kim Min-gi and others, advisor: SEO SEOGCHUNG), and a special prize (Baek Seung-joon, Kim Ki-yoon, Jeon Jeon-jin, advisor: Jongsung Kim). The National Cryptography Competition has been held annually since 2005, organized by the Korea Cryptography Forum and sponsored by the National Intelligence Service, and aims to strengthen national cryptographic technology capabilities and foster outstanding human resources. The winning papers have been recognized at global conferences such as Eurocrypt and TCHES, hosted by the International Association for Cryptographic Research (IACR). The awards ceremony also recognized the graduates of the 2024 National Cryptography Professional Training Program run by the Korea Cryptography Forum and the National Security Technology Institute. Kookmin University's Gunhee Choi won the first prize and Sejun Park won the second prize.

In addition, students from the Department of Information Security and Cryptography won the top prize at the 2024 Cryptanalysis Competition Award Ceremony held at the 777th Command on Thursday, October 10th. The competition was organized by the Korea Information Security Society and sponsored by the 777th Command with the goal of improving cryptanalysis technology and discovering talent in the field of cryptanalysis. The 2024 competition was held in six categories, including artificial intelligence security, side-channel attacks, digital forensics, public-key cryptography, and cryptographic implementation.

“It is very significant that KU graduate students won the top prize at the highest level of cryptography competition in the defense field, as well as that a single institution won all the major cryptography competitions in the public and defense fields,” said an official from KU. ”This is an achievement that clearly imprints KU's status and role in the field of quantum security, which is a key issue for the Global G2 and national security, on the national intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Defense, academia, and the research community.”

The students' specific achievements include

[National Cryptography Competition]

* In the field of cryptographic source technology

Special Prize “A Novel Linearization Framework for Unkeyed Permutations: Improved Preimage Attacks on Round-Reduced Ascon-Xof” (Seungjun Baek, Kiyoon Kim, Jaejin Lee)

* Cryptographic Technology Applications and Uses

Grand Prize “PQ-MSP: Faster Keccak, Kyber, and Dilithium on MSP430 Microcontroller for Quantum-Secure IoT Communication” (Donghyun Shin, Youngbum Kim)

Grand Prize “A Framework for Generating S-Box Circuits with Boyer-Peralta Algorithm-Based Heuristics, and Its Applications to AES and Saturnin” (Jongjin Lee, Seungjun Baek, Kiyoon Kim)

Honorable Mention “Tiny Security Hole: First-Order Vulnerability of Masked SEED and Its Countermeasure”” (Juhwan Kim)

* KpqC Algorithm

Best Paper: “Secret Key Recovery Side-Channel Attack on KpqC Two-Round Electronic Signatures”” (Jae-Seung Han, Hong-Rae Cho)

Honorable Mention “Optimization Methods of NTT-Unfriendly Ring Based PQC Algorithms on 16-bit MSP430 MCU” (Kim, Min-Ki, Shin, Dong-Hyun, Ko, Woo-Hyung, Young-Beom)

[Cryptanalysis Competition]

Grand Prize (Yongjin Lee, Donghyun Kim) *Department of Information Security and Cryptography

Excellence Award (Seungjun Baek, Kiyoon Kim, Jongjin Lee)

Honorable Mention (Sejun Park, Donghyun Shin)

Special Prize (Hyunjun Ahn)

[National Treasure Specialized Human Resources Training Program]

Grand Prize (Gunhee Choi)

Honorable Mention (Sejun Park)