Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen

Professional

I’m a cryptographer – one of those people who professionally build and sometimes break cryptosystems. Here’s a recent CV and a clickable list of publications.

Since January 2023, I have been a Professor of Practice (työelämäprofessori) at Tampere University, associated with the Network and Information Security Group (NISEC) and the SoC HUB. I also hold the title of Docent, Information Security and Cryptography. I supervise Ph.D. and M.Sc. students interested in cryptography and related mathematical and engineering topics.

Current Projects (Fall 2026)

• I maintain the ngcc.dev website tracking cryptanalytic attacks against the Chinese Next Generation Commercial Cryptographic (NGCC) program algorithms. Initial write-up went out on September 29: Chinese NGCC Algorithms: The First Week of AI Cryptanalysis.

• Other AI-assisted cryptanalytic attacks: HOVER on TII-252 McEliece, Two-Anchor Holdout/Hermite on TII-254 McEliece. BSI stopped recommending McEliece on September 29, 2026 (I am cited there twice!)

• We have released the karu64 open application processor core (and related karudeb Debian Linux support.) I am currently updating karucore.com with relevant technical information.

PQCrypto 2024 and 2025

• I was a Program Co-Chair of PQCrypto 2025 with Ruben Niederhagen. PQCrypto 2025 was held at Academia Sinica in Taipei on April 8-10, 2025. PQCrypto 2025 proceedings: Part I - LNCS 15577 and Part II - LNCS 15578.

• I was a Program Co-Chair of PQCrypto 2024 with Daniel Smith-Tone. PQCrypto 2024 was held at the University of Oxford Mathematical Institute on June 12-14, 2024. PQCrypto 2024 proceedings: Part I - LNCS 14771 and Part II - LNCS 14772.

Conference Papers and Presentations (2021-)

• Paper accepted to ACM CCS 2026 (November 15-19, 2026): “Lemur: Scalable Post-Quantum Synchronized Multi-Signatures” (Y. Lin, M. F. Esgin, A. Sakzad, R. Steinfeld, and M.-J. O. Saarinen.) Implementation: https://github.com/lemur-sig/lemur.

• Paper accepted to ACM CCS 2026 (November 15-19, 2026): “LoTRS: Practical Post-Quantum Structured Threshold Ring Signatures from Lattices” (N. Jagganath, M. F. Esgin, R. Steinfeld, A. Sakzad, M.-J. O. Saarinen and D. Liu.) Implementation: https://github.com/lotrs-sig/lotrs.

• Paper accepted to NORDSEC 2026 (November 11-12, 2026): “HOVER: Higher-Order Vanishing Endomorphism Recovery” (M.-J. O. Saarinen). Artifact: https://github.com/mjosaarinen/tii-solved.

• Talk at WAC 8 (August 16, 2026). Slides: “On AI & Cryptanalysis (HAWK Guessing Game is not Polynomial-Time / Other Recent AI Adventures)”.

• Paper at USENIX Security 2026 (August 12-14, 2026): “mmCipher: Batching Post-Quantum Public Key Encryption Made Bandwidth-Optimal” (H. Wang, R. Steinfeld, M.-J. O. Saarinen, M. F. Esgin, and S.-M. Yiu).

• Journal Article: “A Practical Neighborhood Search Attack on Oracle MLWE” (H. Wang, M. F. Esgin, R. Steinfeld, M.-J. O. Saarinen, and S.-M. Yiu.) IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 3, no. 1, May 4, 2026.

• Talk at EUCA 2026 (March 26, 2026). Slides: “Where Are We With the CRA Cryptography Requirements?”.

• Talk at IACR Real World Crypto 2026 (March 10, 2026). Slides: “CRA and Cryptography: The Story Thus Far”. Related preprint: IACR ePrint 2025/2092.

• Paper at SSR 2025 (December 4-5, 2025). “CRA and Cryptography: The Story Thus Far” (M.-J. O. Saarinen). Also IACR ePrint 2025/2092. Slides 2025-12-05.

• Talk at ENDR Conference Tampere 2025 (December 3, 2025). Slides: “Chip related security and availability”.

• Talk at RISC-V Summit North America 2025 (October 23, 2025). Slides: “PQCP Support for RISC-V Vector, Future Keccak ISE”. Related mlkem-native GitHub.

• Talk at Florida Atlantic University (October 17, 2025). Slides: “It’s The Law: Some Technical Things All Hardware Security Architects Ought to Know About CRA, EUCC”.

• Talk at hardwear.io USA 2025 (May 30, 2025). Slides: “Why “Adams Bridge” Leaks: Attacking a PQC Root-of-Trust”. Related GitHub.

• Talk at EUCA 2025 (March 27, 2025). Slides: “On Certifying PQC Implementations at “High” Assurance Level”.

• Keynote talk at AusQRC 2024 (November 18, 2024). Slides: “PQC Transition in Hardware: Processors, SoCs, IoT, Secure Elements”.

• Two talks at RISC-V Summit 2024 (October 21-23, 2024). Slides: “Marian: An Open-Source Implementation of the RISC-V Vector Cryptography Extension” and “Making the Case for a Keccak Instruction: Post-Quantum Cryptography on RVV”.

• Poster by T. Szymkowiak, E. Isufi, and M.-J. O. Saarinen at ACM CCS 2024 (October 14-18, 2024): “Marian: An Open Source RISC-V Processor with Zvk Vector Cryptography Extensions”. There’s a three-page abstract as an IACR e-Print. This will also appear in the proceedings.

• Invited talk at OPTIMIST 2024 (September 4, 2024). Slides: “Artifact Evaluation and Reproducibility (at CHES)”.

• Paper at CRYPTO 2024 (August 18-22, 2024): “Accelerating SLH-DSA by Two Orders of Magnitude with a Single Hash Unit” (M.-J. O. Saarinen). Artifact. GitHub. IACR e-Print. Slides 2024-08-22.

• Paper at EUROCRYPT 2024 (May 26-30, 2024): “Threshold Raccoon: Practical Threshold Signatures from Standard Lattice Assumptions” (R. del Pino, S. Katsumata, M. Maller, F. Mouhartem, T. Prest, and M.-J. O. Saarinen). IACR e-Print.

• Talk at NIST PQC 2024 (April 11, 2024). Slides: “Accelerating SLH-DSA by Two Orders of Magnitude with a Single Hash Unit”.

• Talk at Real World Crypto 2024 (March 25, 2024). Slides: “RISC-V Cryptography Evolution: High Assurance and Post-Quantum Cryptography” (M.-J. O. Saarinen, G. R. Newell, and N. Brunie).

• Talk at RISC-V Summit 2023 (November 8, 2023). Slides: “Benchmarking RISC-V Post-Quantum Crypto”.

• Talk at ICCC 2023 (November 1, 2023). Slides: “Post-Quantum vs. AVA_VAN”.

• Paper at PQCrypto 2023 (August 16-18, 2023): “WrapQ: Side-Channel Secure Key Management for Post-Quantum Cryptography” (M.-J. O. Saarinen). Slides 2023-08-18.

• Paper at SAC 2023 (August 16-18, 2023): “Mask Compression: High-Order Masking on Memory-Constrained Devices” (M.-J. O. Saarinen and M. Rossi). Slides 2023-08-16.

• Presentation in RISC-V Technical Sessions (June 29, 2023) Slides: “RISC-V Cryptography and Hardware Security”.

• Talk at RISC-V Summit Europe 2023 (June 5, 2023) Slides: “Cryptography Extensions Update”.

• Submission to NIST Call for Additional PQC Signatures (June 1, 2023): “Raccoon: A Side-Channel Secure Signature Scheme”. (R. del Pino, T. Espitau, S. Katsumata, M. Maller, F. Mouhartem, T. Prest, M. Rossi, and M.-J. O. Saarinen.)

• Submission to NIST Call for Additional PQC Signatures (June 1, 2023): “LESS: Linear Equivalence Signature Scheme”. (M. Baldi, A. Barenghi, L. Beckwith, J.-F. Biasse, A. Esser, K. Gaj, K. Mohajerani, G. Pelosi, E. Persichetti, M.-J. O. Saarinen, P. Santini, and R. Wallace.)

• Talk at IEEE SP 2023 (May 22, 2023) Slides: “High-Order Masking of Lattice Signatures in Quasilinear Time”. (R. del Pino, T. Prest, M. Rossi, and M.-J. O. Saarinen.)

• Talk at NIST PQC Seminars (April 4, 2023). Slides: “Intro to Side-Channel Security of NIST PQC Standards”.

• Talk at ETSI/IQC QSC9 (February 13-15, 2023). Slides: “PQC Side-Channel Leakage Assessments in the Semiconductor Industry”.

• Talk at RISC-V Summit 2022 (December 13-14, 2022). Slides: “RISC-V Zkt: Portable Timing Attack Resistance via Dynamic Taint Analysis”.

• Talk at ICMC 2022 (September 14-16, 2022). Slides: “Post-Quantum Crypto Side-Channel Tests and a CSP Walk-Through”.

• Short WiP paper at HOST 2022 (June 27-30, 2022): “WiP: Applicability of ISO Standard Side-Channel Leakage Tests to NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography” (M.-J. O. Saarinen).

• Paper at Security Standardisation Research (SSR) ‘22 (June 6, 2022): “SP 800-22 and GM/T 0005-2012 Tests: Clearly Obsolete, Possibly Harmful” (M.-J. O. Saarinen).

• Paper in J. Cryptographic Engineering (January 2022): “Development of The RISC-V Entropy Source Interface” (M.-J. O. Saarinen, G. R. Newell, and B. Marshall).

• Paper at AsianHOST 2021 (December 16-18, 2021): “On Entropy and Bit Patterns of Ring Oscillator Jitter” (M.-J. O. Saarinen). Some code examples are available in the bitpat repo. December 2021.

• The RISC-V Scalar Crypto specification is freely available and free for anyone to use. This was ratified in November 2021.

• ECW / Implementing PQC Workshop. Rennes, France (November 18, 2021). Slides: “Specifying and Testing PQC Hardware Modules”.

• CHES 2021 (13-17 September, 2021): Paper: “The design of scalar AES Instruction Set Extensions for RISC-V” (B. Marshall, G. R. Newell, D. Page, M.-J. O. Saarinen, and C. Wolf).

• Real World Crypto ‘21 (January 13, 2021). Slides: “RISC-V Scalar Crypto” (M.-J. O. Saarinen and B. Marshall).

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