Associate Professor
Leonie Simpson
Faculty of Science,
School of Computer Science
Biography
Dr Leonie Simpson is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science, within the Faculty of Science. She is a cryptographer with a passion for information security, particularly the application of cryptography in control measures to provide confidentiality, integrity assurance and authentication, and the management of cryptographic keys.She is interested in exploring broader issues of information security management that enable individuals and organisations to use information in secure ways. Leonie's doctoral thesis (QUT, 2000) examined the design and analysis of certain types of stream ciphers. However, her research interests have broadened and include 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
- information security management and threat information sharing
Personal details
Positions
- Associate Professor
Faculty of Science,
School of Computer Science
Keywords
Information Security, Cryptography, Symmetric Encryption, Stream Ciphers, Block Ciphers, Authenticated Encryption, Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data, Key Derivation Functions, Cryptanalysis, Communications Security
Research field
Cybersecurity and privacy, Distributed computing and systems software
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
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)
Teaching
Teaching discipline: Computer Science
Current teaching: Leonie is an Associate Professor and is currently the unit coordinator for the following QUT units:
- IFB240 Cyber Security (2023 - present)
- Undergraduate unit, offered in both Semester 1 and Semester 2. Over 1,000 students in 2023.
Past teaching: Leonie has previously developed and taught these units at QUT:
- CAB240 Information Security (2014 - 2022)
- Undergraduate unit, increasing number of students enrolled per offering, over 500 students in 2020 and in 2021
- IFN541 Information Security Management (2021-2023)
- Postgraduate unit
- IFN648 Applied Cryptography (2020)
- Postgraduate unit
- IFN553 Introduction to Security and Networking (2020, Semester 1 and 2)
- Postgraduate micro unit (6cp), also development of the associated online unit IFQ533
- IFN642 Applied Cryptography and Network Security (2017 - 2019)
- Postgraduate unit, approximately 75 students per offering
Research supervision: During her time at QUT, Leonie has supervised twelve PhD students to completion and one Masters by Research student to completion. She is currently supervising four 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
- Cyber resilience in rapidly changing environments
- Authentication in industrial control systems
Experience
Collaborative research and grants
Dr Simpson is currently the Theme Leader for Theme 1.1 Resilient Systems, in the Cyber Security CRC. She was Project Lead for a Research project within this theme: Using Metadata Analysis to Detect Anomalies in Key Management Activities, and is currently leading a work package examining data trustworthiness in digital agriculture. 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 an 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:
- Program Co-chair for ACISP 2013 – Brisbane, 1-3 July 2013.
- Program Co-chair for ACISP 2023 – Brisbane, 5-7 July 2023.
- 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, 2021, 2022.
- Program Committee for Australasian Computer Science Week Conference – Health Information Knowledge Management (HIKM) Conference - 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023.
- Program Committee for SAC2019.
Publications
- 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], 23–36. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/64105
- 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], 220–233. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/74378
- Al Mashrafi, M., Bartlett, H., Dawson, E., Simpson, L. & Wong, K. (2013). Indirect message injection for MAC generation. Journal of Mathematical Cryptology, 7(3), 253–277. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/64776
- 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], 125–138. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/62388
- 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), 249–253. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/62247
- Simpson, L. & Boztas, S. (2012). State cycles, initialization and the Trivium stream cipher. Cryptography and Communications, 4(3-4), 245–258. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/54604
- 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], 108–121. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/27578
- 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, 4586, 11–28. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/15211
- 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, 3506, 33–50. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/10107
- Simpson, L., Dawson, E., Millan, W. & Golic, J. (2001). LILI Keystream Generator. Selected Areas of Cryptography, SAC 2000, 248–261. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/9659
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Leonie, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Supervision
Looking for a postgraduate research supervisor?
I am currently accepting research students for Honours, Masters and PhD study.
You can browse existing student topics offered by QUT or propose your own topic.
Current supervisions
- Applying NIST-Specified Lightweight Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data to Embedded Automotive Data Communications
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Geoff Walker - Developing a National Cybersecurity Threat Information Sharing Framework
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Hasmukh Morarji - The Role of Customizable Agents and Gender Dynamics on User Experiences in VR Training
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Adjunct Professor Peta Wyeth, Dr David Conroy - A Framework for Authentication of Internet Connected Critical Infrastructure
MPhil, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Zahra Jadidi - Deep Learning for Source Code Vulnerability Detection using Code Graphs
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Yue Xu, Adjunct Associate Professor Ernest Foo, Dr Zahra Jadidi
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- Security analysis of shift-register based keystream generators for stream ciphers (2022)
- Privacy-Preserving Authentication and Key Management for Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (2021)
- Analysis of Authenticated Encryption Based on Stream Ciphers (2018)
- Analysis of Selected Block Cipher Modes for Authenticated Encryption (2018)
- Designing and Implementing an Information Accountability Framework for Usable and Useful eHealth Systems (2017)
- Key Derivation Function Based on Stream Ciphers (2014)
- Secure Stream Cipher Initialisation Processes (2014)
- Analysis of Nonlinear Sequences and Stream Ciphers (2013)
- Analysis of Stream Cipher Based Authenticated Encryption Schemes (2012)
- Analysis of Linear Relationships in Block Ciphers (2010)
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.