Artificial intelligence has become increasingly important in all aspects of digital services. OEM or service providers can invest a lot of money into the training of their Neural Networks (NN) which are then loaded into connected devices for inference purpose. They can be executed on a CPU, GPU or dedicated neural network processor depending on the type of chip. As the neural network has a lot of value, it is thus an asset that deserves protections against various types of attacks aiming at its extraction.
Side-channel analyses usually target cryptographic secret keys. But they can be used to extract a fixed code structure or data in the device. Side-channel is therefore a threat that could disclose valuable data such as: a neural network structure, its weights and biases, or its inputs and outputs. Recent research has shown that the technique is efficient: a survey can be found here.
The purpose of this internship is, inspired by existing reports from the side-channel community, to showcase a practical example. Guided by eShard experts, the intern will start with hands-on implementation of a Neural Network application using an IoT accelerator. Then, mount side-channel analysis to qualify the implication on neural network applications. Finally, mitigation directions and their effectiveness will be studied.
Your day-to-day would be:
You will be in charge of the following missions:
- Create a knowledge notebook giving an overview of state-of-the-art attacks published in the literature.
- Understand and summarize the operation of the NN accelerator, and how it is used in a typical application.
- Identify attack scenarios and mount proof of concept side-channel extractions
- Study the mitigation aspect and identify directions to solve the issues.
You’re perfect for us, if…
- You are preparing a master degree and are in your last year of study
- You have developed a particular interest in:
- Python
- Deep-Learning based on Neural Networks
- You have some knowledge of side-channel, signal processing and statistics
- You are hacker minded, responsive and have the spirit of initiative
- You demonstrate autonomy in your assignments
- You demonstrate good interpersonal skills that will allow you to work as a team effectively
- You have a good writing level in English
Benefits
- Support from professionals in a cutting-edge and booming business sector
- Dynamic work environment within a young and friendly team
- High performance work equipment
- Flexible working hours
- Space dedicated to talent development
- Mutual health insurance with good medical and dental coverage
- “Tickets restaurant” covered up to 50%
- Annual events, snacks and drinks