Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB): Open Journal Systems
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Molyneux’s answer: Situated predictive processing
No full textMolyneux’s problem asks whether a person blind from birth, upon gaining sight, could immediately recognize and distinguish objects by sight alone that were previously known only by touch. Historical and contemporary empirical studies have explored this question with inconclusive results due to empirical limitations. More recently, Held and colleagues (2011) found that treated congenitally blind individuals cannot immediately recognize objects previously familiar through touch. Piller and colleagues (2023) further reported the absence of visual illusions in blind and recently visually-restored individuals. Nevertheless, cross-modal mappings gradually develop post-sight restoration. These findings suggest a reluctance of the mind to make cross-modal inferences, aligning with the predictive processing (PP) framework. PP posits that the mind generates top-down predictions about sensory stimuli, updating internal models through prediction errors when expectations are not met. With no prior visual experience, generative models in congenital blind individuals fail to produce accurate predictions. PP’s representational claims have been challenged by 4E cognitivists, who emphasize embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive aspects of cognition. This paper proposes a Situated Predictive Processing (SPP) framework that integrates PP with 4E cognition through the concept of situated mental representations, offering a new perspective on the Molyneux’s problem and emphasizing the role of experience and situatedness in the gradual development of visual-tactile mappings post-sight restoration
Philosophizing as a Praxis of Variation: A Contribution to a Theory of the History of Philosophy in Philosophy Education
Get PDFThe article argues that, before asking particular questions concerning the relevance of history of philosophy for philosophy teaching at the pre-university level, we need a reference theory that explains the relationship of doing philosophy and history of philosophy in general terms and in a way that is suitable for the context of philosophy education. The formulation of the underlying metaphilosophical problem takes its depart from Hegels philosophy of the history of philosophy. Subsequently, the article proposes to understand doing philosophy and the history of philosophy as two aspects of a structurally unified play of variations. In developing this thesis, the article makes use of Jan Assmann’s Theory of Cultural Memory and Hans Blumenberg’s theory and practice of history of philosophy
English Mini-Workshops: Creating an English Teaching Offer for University Staff Members
Get PDFImmer wieder wird betont, dass unsere Hochschulen in Deutschland internationaler werden (müssen). Wir finden spannende Partnerschaften innen- und außerhalb Europa, mit denen wir interessante Projekte durchführen können, und wir bieten immer mehr Studiengänge auf Englisch an, damit ausländische Studierende die Möglichkeit haben, ihr Studium bei uns in Deutschland zu machen.
Doch dafür müssen wir an Hochschulen mit den „Konsequenten“ umgehen. Was ist, wenn ein Student oder eine Studentin eine Frage für das Prüfungsamt hat und das nicht auf Deutsch kann? Oder wenn eine Lehrperson ihre Vorlesung auf Englisch unterrichten muss, weil das ab sofort so vorgesehen ist, obwohl er oder sie bisher ausschließlich auf Deutsch unterrichtet hat? „Englisch kann ja jeder“ – nicht unbedingt. Wenn unsere Studierende „englischer“ werden, dann müssen wir das auch. Und das ist nicht selbstverständlich. Wir müssen die Plattform dafür bieten. Daniel Walker ist seit November 2020 als Englisch Referent für Mitarbeitende und Lehrende an der Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences tätig. Seine Aufgabe ist es, ein Englischangebot so zu konzipieren, dass dieses für jede Person nützlich und relevant ist – sei das eine Professorin oder ein Sekretär. In diesem Artikel schreibt Daniel über sein bisher beliebtes Angebot, das den Lehrpreis „Gute Sprachlehre an Hochschulen“ in der Kategorie „Förderung von Handlungsorientierung und Praxisbezug“ gewonnen hat: die Englisch-Mini-Workshops für Hochschulangehörige.It is repeated over and over again that German universities are becoming, or must become, more international. We are starting to find more and more exciting partnerships within and outside of Europe for carrying out interesting projects, and we are offering more and more degree programmes in English so that foreign students have the opportunity to study with us in Germany. But in order to do this, we have to deal with the "consequences". What if a student has a question for the examination office but can’t ask it in German? Or what if a teacher has to teach their lecture in English because this is now required, even though they have only ever taught in German? It is often assumed that everyone can speak English – but that is not necessarily the case. If our students become more "English", then so must we. And that\u27s not a given. We have to provide the platform for it. Daniel Walker has been working as an English consultant for staff members and lecturers at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences since November 2020. His job is to design an English programme that it is useful and relevant for everyone – be it a professor or a secretary. In this article, Daniel writes about his most popular offer to date, which won the "Gute Sprachlehre an Hochschulen” teaching award in the category "Förderung von Handlungsorientierung und Praxisbezug": The English mini-workshops for university staff
Transforming Faith: Mualaf and Hijrah in Post-Suharto Indonesia
Get PDFThis research delves into two conversion forms in post-Suharto Indonesia: mualaf (conversion to Islam) and hijrah (“migration”, meaning Muslims who reaffirm their faith). Both are integral to contemporary Indonesian Islam, with the hijrah movement’s influence significantly contributing to the increase in the number of mualaf. This study examines the key motives behind urban Indonesians’ conversions, their community involvement, and the formation of spiritual kinship, which is a type fictive kinship. Ethnographic field research and discourse analysis of media reports are employed alongside theoretical debates on community, kinship, and identity. The paper argues that the phenomena of mualaf and hijrah have mutually influenced the growth of new Muslim communities that campaign for a piety movement aimed at a strengthened practice of Islam. Additionally, the involvement of *mualaf* and hijrah followers in recitation groups implies the formation of spiritual kinship and a unique Islamic identity through the imagination of the ummah and the negotiation of urban lifestyles. This results in the alignment of religiosity and modernity. However, as these groups develop, their emergence, which adds variety to the face of Indonesian Islam, must engage in contestation with other Islamic groups and with the state in terms of religious freedom
Key Committing Attacks against AES-based AEAD Schemes
No full textRecently, there has been a surge of interest in the security of authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) within the context of key commitment frameworks. Security within this framework ensures that a ciphertext chosen by an adversary does not decrypt to two different sets of key, nonce, and associated data. Despite this increasing interest, the security of several widely deployed AEAD schemes has not been thoroughly examined within this framework. In this work, we assess the key committing security of several AEAD schemes. First, the AEGIS family, which emerged as a winner in the Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability, and Robustness (CAESAR), and has been proposed to standardization at the IETF. A now outdated version of the draft standard suggested that AEGIS could qualify as a fully committing AEAD scheme; we prove that it is not the case by proposing a novel attack applicable to all variants, which has been experimentally verified. We also exhibit a key committing attack on Rocca-S. Our attacks are executed within the FROB game setting, which is known to be one of the most stringent key committing frameworks. This implies that they remain valid in other, more relaxed frameworks, such as CMT-1, CMT-4, and so forth. Finally, we show that applying the same attack techniques to Rocca and Tiaoxin-346 does not compromise their key-committing security. This observation provides valuable insights into the design of such secure round update functions for AES-based AEAD schemes
Finding Impossible Differentials in ARX Ciphers under Weak Keys
No full textImpossible differential cryptanalysis is very important in the field of symmetric ciphers. Currently, there are many automatic search approaches to find impossible differentials. However, these methods have two underlying assumptions: Markov cipher assumption and key independence assumption. Actually, these two assumptions are not true in ARX ciphers, especially lightweight ones. In this paper, we study the impossible differentials in ARX cipher under weak keys for the first time. Firstly, we propose several accurate difference propagation properties on consecutive two and three modular additions. Then, these properties are applied to four typical local constructions composed of two consecutive modular additions, two modular additions with a rotation operation, xoring secret key or constant in the middle, to find impossible differentials under weak keys or special constants. What’s more, we propose a more accurate difference propagation property on three consecutive modular additions. It can be used to find impossible differentials on more complex local constructions under weak keys or special constants. In practical ciphers, these impossible differentials on local constructions can be used to find contradictions. Lastly, combining our new findings with traditional automatic search methods for impossible differentials, we propose a framework to find impossible differentials in ARX ciphers under weak keys. As applications, we apply the framework to SPECK-32/64, LEA and CHAM-64/128. As a result, we find two 8-round impossible differentials for SPECK-32/64 under 260 weak keys, and one 11-round impossible differential for LEA under 2k−1 weak keys, where k is the key size. These impossible differentials can start from any round. Furthermore, we find two 22-round impossible differentials for CHAM-64/128 under 2127 weak keys starting from certain rounds. As far as we know, all these impossible differentials are longer than previous ones
Multiplex: TBC-Based Authenticated Encryption with Sponge-Like Rate
No full textAuthenticated Encryption (AE) modes of operation based on Tweakable Block Ciphers (TBC) usually measure efficiency in the number of calls to the underlying primitive per message block. On the one hand, many existing solutions reach a primitive-rate of 1, meaning that each n-bit block of message asymptotically needs a single call to the TBC with output length n. On the other hand, while these modes look optimal in a blackbox setting, they become less attractive when leakage comes into play, since all these calls must then be equally well protected to maintain security. Leakage-resistant modes improve this situation, by generating ephemeral keys every constant number of calls. However, rekeying is inherently suboptimal in primitive-rate, since a TBC call can only be used either to refresh a key or to encrypt a block. Even worse, existing solutions achieving almost n bits of security for n-bit secret keys have at most a primitive-rate 2/3. Hence the question: Can we design a highly-secure TBC-based rekeying mode with “nearly optimal” primitive-rate? We answer this question positively with Multiplex, a new mode that has primitive-rate d/(d + 1) given a TBC with a dn-bit tweak. Multiplex achieves n − log2(dn) bits of security for both (i) misuse-resilience CCA confidentiality security in the blackbox setting and (ii) Ciphertext Integrity with Misuse-resistant and unbounded Leakage in encryption and decryption (CIML2). It also provides (iii) confidentiality with leakage up to the birthday bound. Furthermore, Multiplex can run d + 1 calls in parallel in each iteration. The combination of these features gives a mode of operation that inherits most of the good implementation features and flexibility of a sponge construction – therefore paving the way towards sound comparisons between TBC-based and permutation-based AE
Cryptanalysis of Full-Round BipBip
No full textBipBip is a low-latency tweakable block cipher proposed by Belkheyar et al. in 2023. It was designed for pointer encryption inside a new memory safety mechanism called Cryptographic Capability Computing (C3). BipBip encrypts blocks of 24 bits using a 40-bit tweak and a 256-bit master key and is composed of 11 rounds. n this article, we provide a Demirci-Selçuk Meet-in-the-Middle (DS-MITM) attack against the 11-round (full) variant that breaks the security claim of the designers
A Highly-efficient Lattice-based Post-Quantum Cryptography Processor for IoT Applications
No full textLattice-Based Cryptography (LBC) schemes, like CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, have been selected to be standardized in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standard. However, implementing these schemes in resourceconstrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is challenging, considering efficiency, power consumption, area overhead, and flexibility to support various operations and parameter settings. Some existing ASIC designs that prioritize lower power and area can not achieve optimal performance efficiency, which are not practical for battery-powered devices. Custom hardware accelerators in prior co-processor and processor designs have limited applications and flexibility, incurring significant area and power overheads for IoT devices. To address these challenges, this paper presents an efficient lattice-based cryptography processor with customized Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data (SIMD) instruction. First, our proposed SIMD architecture supports efficient parallel execution of various polynomial operations in 256-bit mode and acceleration of Keccak in 320-bit mode, both utilizing efficiently reused resources. Additionally, we introduce data shuffling hardware units to resolve data dependencies within SIMD data. To further enhance performance, we design a dual-issue path for memory accesses and corresponding software design methodologies to reduce the impact of data load/store blocking. Through a hardware/software co-design approach, our proposed processor achieves high efficiency in supporting all operations in lattice-based cryptography schemes. Evaluations of Kyber and Dilithium show our proposed processor achieves over 10x speedup compared with the baseline RISC-V processor and over 5x speedup versus ARM Cortex M4 implementations, making it a promising solution for securing IoT communications and storage. Moreover, Silicon synthesis results show our design can run at 200 MHz with 2.01 mW for Kyber KEM 512 and 2.13 mW for Dilithium 2, which outperforms state-of-the-art works in terms of PPAP (Performance x Power x Area)
Impeccable Keccak: Towards Fault Resilient SPHINCS+ Implementations
No full textThe standardization of the hash-based digital signature scheme SPHINCS+ proceeds faster than initially expected. This development seems to be welcomed by practitioners who appreciate the high confidence in SPHINCS+’s security assumptions and its reliance on well-known hash functions. However, the implementation security of SPHINCS+ leaves many questions unanswered, due to its proneness to fault injection attacks. Previous works have shown, that even imprecise fault injections on the signature generation are sufficient for universal forgery. This led the SPHINCS+ team to promote the usage of hardware countermeasures against such attacks. Since the majority of operations in SPHINCS+ is dedicated to the computation of the Keccak function, we focus on its security. At the core, hardware countermeasures against fault injection attacks are almost exclusively based on redundancy. For hash functions such as Keccak, straightforward instance- or time-redundancy is expensive in terms of chip area or latency. Further, for applications that must withstand powerful fault adversaries, these simple forms of redundancy are not sufficient. To this end, we propose our impeccable Keccak design. It is based on the methodology presented in the original Impeccable Circuits paper by Aghaie et al. from 2018. On the way, we show potential pitfalls when designing impeccable circuits and how the concept of active security can be applied to impeccable circuits. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to provide proofs of active security for impeccable circuits. Further, we show a novel way to implement non-linear functions without look-up tables. We use our findings to design an impeccable Keccak. Assuming an adversary with the ability to flip single bits, our design detects all attacks with three and less flipped bits. Attacks from adversaries who are able to flip four or more bits are still detected with a high probability. Thus, our design is one of the most resilient designs published so far and the only Keccak design that is provably secure within a bit-flip model. At an area overhead of factor 3.2, our design is competitive with state-of-the-art designs with less resilience