QUT | Staff Profiles | Leonie Simpson

Name

Dr Leonie Simpson

Position(s)

Senior Lecturer
Science and Engineering Faculty,
School of Computer Science

Discipline *

Data Format

Phone

+61 7 3138 2126

Email

lr.simpson@qut.edu.au

Location

View location details (QUT staff and student access only)

Identifiers and profiles

Qualifications

PhD (Queensland University of Technology), BAppSc(Hons) (Queensland University of Technology), BA (University of Queensland), DipTeach(Secondary) (Brisbane College of Adv. Ed.)

Professional memberships and associations

Member of

International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS)
Australian Information Security Association (AISA)

Keywords

Information Security, Cryptography, Symmetric Encryption, Stream Ciphers, Block Ciphers, Authenticated Encryption, Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data, Key Derivation Functions, Cryptanalysis, Communications Security

* Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008

Dr Leonie Simpson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a cryptographer with a passion for information security.

Leonie’s doctoral thesis (QUT, 2000) examined the design and analysis of certain types of stream ciphers. However, her research interests have broadened to the design and analysis of symmetric encryption algorithms, particularly those used for real-time communications (such as phone and internet transmissions) and the associated key management.

She is particularly interested in:

encryption algorithms to secure communications between small devices in the Internet of Things (IoT)
investigating the security and efficiency of authenticated encryption algorithms, and security-efficiency trade-offs
the application of Boolean functions in cipher design to provide cyber attack resistance

Over the past 20 years, Leonie has published 55 articles and three book chapters on the analysis and design of symmetric ciphers. Her analysis and design experience covers a range of aspects, including knowledge of many types of cryptanalytic attack and the relationship between the structural features of a design and both the vulnerability to various attacks and the efficiency of operation.

This information has been contributed by Dr Leonie Simpson.

Teaching discipline: Computer Science

Current teaching:

Leonie is a Senior Lecturer and is currently the unit coordinator for the following QUT units:

IFN642 Applied Crypto and Network Security (Semester 1)
- Postgraduate unit, around 75 students enrolled
CAB240 Information Security (Semester 2)
- Undergraduate unit, around 500 students enrolled

Research supervision:

During her time at QUT, Leonie has supervised ten PhD students to completion and one Masters by Research student to completion.

She is currently supervising three PhD students and one Masters by research student in the areas of:

Cryptographic applications of Boolean functions
Applying cryptography to secure vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications
Cybersecurity information sharing

This information has been contributed by Dr Leonie Simpson.

Collaborative research and grants

Dr Simpson was part of a team, along with Prof Ed Dawson (QUT) and Prof Lynn Batten (Deakin), for an Australian Research Council (ARC) project titled ‘Efficient and Secure Word-based Stream Ciphers for Wireless Encryption’. Project funding $150,000 over 3 years.

Dr Simpson was a team member in other funded research projects in the more general field of information security:

CRC Smart Services Information Queensland – Aggregation of geospatial information ($212,500)
CRC SIT IE 12 – Legal and technical security framework across multi-agency information repositories ($327,000).

Industry collaboration

Dr Simpson has, in a team with other QUT researchers, been consulted to perform security analysis of symmetric cryptographic algorithms for several organisations ($18,000 in 2004, $9,500 in 2017), and in 2008-2009 was consulted as an expert witness for a Federal Court case involving the application of cryptographic algorithms for telecommunications, producing a report detailing the processes involved with the transmission of encoded and encrypted information.

Editorial board membership

Dr Simpson is an active editorial board member of a new international peer-reviewed open access journal: Cryptography. http://www.mdpi.com/journal/cryptography. First edition online in June 2017.

Referee experience

Dr Simpson’s other academic experience includes acting as a referee for a number of journals, and a reviewer for national and international conferences, including:

Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society
Designs, Codes and Cryptography
IEE Electronics Letters
IEEE Communications Letters
Journal of Mathematical Cryptography
Cryptography
Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT
Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms and Error Correcting Codes
Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy – ACISP
CRYPTO 2017

Conference organisation

Dr Simpson has been a member of conference committees, including:

Organising Committee for Active Media Technology AMT06, Brisbane 7-9 June 2006
Organising Committee for Sequences and Their Application (SETA 2014) – Melbourne, November 2014.
Program Committee for Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP) – 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019.

Program Co-chair for ACISP 2013 – Brisbane, 1-3 July 2013.
Program Committee for Australasian Computer Science Week Conference – Health Information Knowledge Management (HIKM) Conference – 2018, 2019.

Program Committee for SAC2019.

This information has been contributed by Dr Leonie Simpson.

Al Hamdan A, Bartlett H, Dawson E, Simpson L, Wong K, (2014) Weak key-IV pairs in the A5/1 stream cipher, Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC 2014) [Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Volume 149] p23-36
Bartlett H, Al Hamdan A, Simpson L, Dawson E, Wong K, (2014) Weaknesses in the initialisation process of the Common Scrambling Algorithm Stream Cipher, Sequences and Their Applications - SETA 2014: th International Conference, Proceedings [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 8865] p220-233
Al Mashrafi M, Bartlett H, Dawson E, Simpson L, Wong K, (2013) Indirect message injection for MAC generation, Journal of Mathematical Cryptology p253-277
Chuah C, Dawson E, Simpson L, (2013) Key derivation function: The SCKDF Scheme, Security and Privacy Protection in Information Processing Systems: 28th IFIP TC 11 International Conference Proceedings [IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Volume 405] p125-138
Sahama T, Simpson L, Lane B, (2013) Security and privacy in eHealth: is it possible? A sociotechnical analysis, Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE 15th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom 2013) p249-253
Simpson L, Boztas S, (2012) State cycles, initialization and the Trivium stream cipher, Cryptography and Communications p245-258
Simpson L, Henricksen M, Yap W, (2009) Improved cryptanalysis of the common scrambling algorithm stream cipher, Information Security and Privacy: 14th Australasian Conference, ACISP 2009 Proceedings [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 5594] p108-121
Al Hinai S, Dawson E, Henricksen M, Simpson L, (2007) On the Security of the LILI Family of Stream Ciphers Against Algebraic Attacks, Lecture Notes in Computer Science p11-28
Chen K, Henricksen M, Millan W, Fuller J, Simpson L, Dawson E, Lee H, Moon S, (2005) Dragon: A Fast Word Based Stream Cipher, Lecture Notes in Computer Science p33-50
Simpson L, Dawson E, Millan W, Golic J, (2001) LILI Keystream Generator, Selected Areas of Cryptography, SAC 2000 p248-261

For more publications by this staff member, visit QUT ePrints, the University's research repository.

Dr Leonie Simpson

Grants and projects (Category 1: Australian Competitive Grants only)

Current supervisions

Completed supervisions (Doctorate)