Please join us in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the Technological Institute for an hour-long Meet the Faculty seminar with Professor Jakub Szefer.

Student Introduction by Henry Abrahamson.

Abstract: Research on quantum computer security has been advancing and gaining attention since early 2020s. Much of the early security work at the beginning of this decade focused on NISQ (Noisy-Intermediate Scale Quantum) computers which in the last years became easily reachable via the internet. Cloud-based quantum computing brough promise of accessibility to many users who do not have a physical quantum computer, but also opened many new security threats and attacks, such as crosstalk and reset gate attacks developed by our research group. As quantum computing is now transitioning to FTQC (Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing) new threats are emerging, and our recent research has explored the new threats and security attacks in the emergent FTQC paradigm, especially new types of side channel attacks on lattice surgery operations. Across both NISQ and FTQC, quantum computing stack includes quantum computer controllers that manage all the operations of the quantum computers. The controllers have emerged as yet a new attack surface and vulnerability of quantum computing systems, which we have studied in our research group. This talk will present various security threats and mitigations across the quantum computing stack, from controllers to the QPUs (Quantum Processing Units). The talk will highlight recent research results as well as the larger challenges and opportunities in future work for advancing the security of the quantum computing stack.

Bio: Jakub Szefer is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northwestern University where he leads the Computer Architecture and Security Lab (CASLAB). His research focuses on security attacks and defenses at the computer architecture and hardware levels of computer systems. His work encompasses security of processor architectures, reconfigurable logic, post-quantum cryptographic accelerators, and quantum computers. He is the author of the "Principles of Secure Processor Architecture Design" book, published in 2018, and co-editor of the "Security of FPGA-Accelerated Cloud Computing Environments" book, published in 2023. He received his BS degree with highest-honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and MA and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.