Helsinki System Security Lab Internship (1H/2025 or summer 2025)

EUDI Wallet implementation analysis for HarmonyOS

European Union (EU) has embarked on an epic journey to roll out European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallets for EU citizens [1]. With an EUDI Wallet application in their mobile devices end user can authenticate with selective disclosure, and release other relevant credentials about themselves (e.g., driving license class, university diploma, etc.) both face to face and online in Internet. Selective disclosure means end user can decide what identifying data or other credentials about themselves they release to the third party. This is also known as Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) meaning end user is in full control of their identity. If you're passionate about Security technology and want to contribute to this exciting area, we'd love to invite you join us!

HarmonyOS [2] is Huawei’s next generation operating system for devices. It is highly scalable from full-fledged personal computers and laptops via mobile and wearable devices like phones and smart watches to small sensors. The operating system has a wide range of APIs that developers may use to implement their applications to run on HarmonyOS devices. This also applies to EUDI Wallets as it is expected that device vendors are not the only ones providing the EUDI Wallet functionality with their own wallet implementations (e.g., Apple Wallet, Google Wallet). It is actually required that the APIs of mobile device (e.g., Android, iOS, HarmonyOS) can fully support the functionality of a third party EUDI Wallet including all the necessary security and regulatory requirements, certifications of implementations, and periodic audits of the systems. This is to ensure that the operating system and the EUDI Wallet implementation is secure enough to be part of the EUDI Wallet ecosystem.

In this work, the intern to HSSL will together with our experts participate in a project where the EUDI Wallet requirements and capabilities are mapped to HarmonyOS APIs. From student’s perspective the task will start with a study of the EUDI Wallet requirements [3] and understand their practical meaning and requirement on the mobile device platform. This is followed by mapping the required functionality Harmony OS capabilities, i.e., how the requirements can be implemented in HarmonyOS and they can be certified and audited. The final report should describe how the EUDI Wallet can be implemented on top of HarmonyOS.

[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet

[2] https://www.harmonyos.com/en/

We are looking for:

• A M.Sc. thesis worker (i.e. you write the thesis for your university, in an industry-sponsored manner). In special cases we also may consider this topic to be a summer internship, in that case the applicant should have completed most of their M.Sc. Courses (CS/E.Eng).
• Background (courses) in platform security, cryptography, security protocols, or equivalent
• Good/excellent skills to absorb material, and interact in English
• Good teamwork skills

The following we count as advantage:

• Familiarity with standardization and EUDI Wallet.
• Familiarity with a mobile platform, preferably HarmonyOS.
• Coding experience with some programming language.
• An interest to do research and explore new challenges.

Location and internship period: This is a 6-month internship based at our Helsinki, Ruoholahti office.

The Helsinki Systems Security Laboratory in Huawei Finland (HSSL) drives renewal and mastery in the field of platform / device related security technologies for the mobile device. Our topical expertise lies in hardware-assisted isolation and system protection (hypervisor, TEE, kernel hardening) as well as functions like device key management, attestation and integrity.