Sami Dahoux

Within the Secure Systems and Architectures laboratory of Mines de Saint-Étienne, I designed and developed SCABox, an open-source test bench for evaluating the robustness of cryptographic algorithms against side-channel attacks.

Main missions:

- Hardware and software design of a complete attack bench based on FPGA (Zybo card).

- Low-level embedded development in C to control the attack via the bench.

- Python client application for remote control, signal analysis and key extraction.

- Collaboration with the research team, integration of a scientific POC for publication purposes.

- Writing technical and scientific documentation, open-sourcing the project on GitHub.

- Winner of the best hardware demo award at the IEEE HOST 2022 conference.

Context:

SCABox makes it possible to trigger and analyze physical attacks (in particular on the electrical consumption of an FPGA executing cryptography) from a remote machine. The tool can target cloud environments (e.g. Amazon EC2), collect data and process it remotely to extract encryption keys, such as those used in the AES implementation of OpenSSL.

I served as the lead engineer, in charge of the complete architecture, from hardware prototyping to software orchestration and signal analysis.

Skills mobilized:

Embedded systems, FPGA, signal processing, physical security, hardware prototyping, serial communication, Python, C, hardware hacking, cryptography, applied research project.

System Engineer – Automatic Metro (CBTC) at Alstom

At Alstom, a world-renowned player in the rail sector, I contributed to the development of the new generation CBTC system Urbalis Fluence, intended for line 20 of the Shenzhen metro (China), in an environment with a very high population density.

Main missions:

- Definition of the functional architecture and writing of system specifications.

- Requirements management: traceability, refinement, alignment with the signaling and validation teams.

- Software pre-design for new system components, in collaboration with architects.

- Support for software teams, with detailed presentations of functional developments and impact analyzes.

- Monitoring of V&V (Verification & Validation) compliance with functional requirements.

- Analysis of change requests and resolution of technical problems.

- Particular focus on the driver interface in semi-automatic mode, crucial during tests and special missions.

Context:

The Fluence system represents a major advance in CBTC thanks to train-to-train communication, allowing a rate of 30 seconds between two trains. My role allowed me to work at the interface between several teams (system, software, test, signaling), with a strong focus on technical rigor, traceability and robustness of the design.

Skills mobilized:

Embedded systems, requirements engineering, functional design, technical project management, digital mobility, railway signaling, CBTC, behavioral modeling.

Within Aletiq, publisher of an innovative SaaS Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution dedicated to complex industries, I occupied a central role in the design, development and technical evolution of the platform.

Main missions:

- Development of new features on a complex application, from specification to deployment.

- Design of backend and frontend architectures, including database modeling, API design, as well as user interface components.

- Technical referent on key features of the platform.

- Technical supervision of new employees, with reinforced support for junior profiles.

- Automation of the customer onboarding process, reducing the time to market by one week, with secure deployments on a large scale.

- Guarantor of code quality, through code reviews and the implementation of good development practices.

- Privileged technical interface with the Customer Success team for customer onboarding.

Context:

I joined the startup at its beginnings as the 2nd engineer, in a team of 4 people. My role naturally evolved towards technical referent responsibilities, then technical project manager as the company grew (20 employees, fundraising). In particular, I led structuring projects and supported the team's skills development in technical and organizational aspects.