Cryptography, theory

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Visible to the public TC: Small: The Design of Secure Hash Functions and Block Ciphers

While the mathematical study of cryptography has yielded a rich theory, and while the use of cryptography has become quite widespread, there is unfortunately still a significant gap between the theory and practice of cryptography. The goal of this project is to bridge this gap. The emphasis will be on the design and analysis of fundamental cryptographic primitives, such as hash functions and block ciphers, as well as other primitives derived from them, that are practical and yet theoretically sound. Indeed, hash functions and block ciphers are used in almost any cryptographic application.

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Visible to the public SaTC: Small: New Challenges in Functional Encryption

Recent trends in computing have prompted users and organizations to store an increasingly large amount of sensitive data at third party locations in the cloud outside of their direct control. In order to protect this data, it needs to be encrypted. However, traditional encryption systems lack the expressiveness needed for most applications involving big and complex data.

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Visible to the public CRII: SaTC: Computational Correlations: A New Tool for Cryptography

Understanding the computational hardness of securely realizing cryptographic primitives is a fundamental problem in cryptography. One such vital cryptographic primitive is oblivious transfer and understanding the essence of implementing it has significant consequences to cryptography, like bringing secure multi-party computation closer to reality. This research develops a new theory to explore this broad concept, namely the theory of computational correlations.

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Visible to the public CRII: SaTC: Automated Proof Construction and Verification for Attribute-based Cryptography

This project develops a comprehensive proof construction and verification framework for a well-defined class of cryptographic protocols: attribute-based cryptosystems. In particular, existing automated proof construction and verification frameworks, such as EasyCrypt and CryptoVerif, are extended to provide support for attribute-based cryptography. The extensions consist of libraries of simple transformations, algebraic manipulations, commonly used abstractions and constructs, and proof strategies, which will help in generation and verification of proofs in attribute-based cryptography.

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Visible to the public CRII: CPS SaTC: Securing Smart Cyberphysical Systems against Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

Cyber-physical systems have increasingly become top targets for hackers around the world. We are also seeing proliferation of internet-connected critical infrastructures that allow for easy monitoring, visualization, and control. In February 2013, US president signed an executive order "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity" that underscores the urgent need for securing such critical infrastructure against malicious attacks.

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Visible to the public TWC: Frontier: Collaborative: CORe: Center for Encrypted Functionalities

The Center for Encrypted Functionalities (CORE) tackles the deep and far-reaching problem of general-purpose "program obfuscation," which aims to enhance cybersecurity by making an arbitrary computer program unintelligible while preserving its functionality.

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Visible to the public TC: Large: Collaborative Research: Practical Secure Two-Party Computation: Techniques, Tools, and Applications

Many compelling applications involve computations that require sensitive data from two or more individuals. For example, as the cost of personal genome sequencing rapidly plummets many genetics applications will soon be within reach of individuals such as comparing one?s genome with the genomes of different groups of participants in a study to determine which treatment is likely to be most effective. Such comparisons could have tremendous value, but are currently infeasible because of the privacy concerns both for the individual and study participants.

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Visible to the public TWC: Small: Collaborative: Computation and Access Control on Big Multiuser Data

This project is developing new foundational cryptographic techniques for outsourcing data and computations on it, which fully preserve data privacy. The focus is on real-world settings involving multiple users where privacy with respect to all other users is required, as well as privacy from the service provider. The project will aim to minimize the interaction between users in the system, making the computational complexity for each client independent of the total number of users.

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Visible to the public TWC: Small: Algorithms for Number-Theoretic Problems Arising in Cryptography

This project studies several questions that have applications to cryptography. One goal is to develop classical cryptosystems that are secure against quantum computers. In particular, the project explores the security of some of the recently proposed lattice-based systems. Another goal is to make systems that are currently being used more efficient. The project aims to improve some of the algorithms for constructing curves that can be used in cryptosystems. This project will have implications for understanding which cryptosystems should be used now or in the future.

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Visible to the public TWC: Small: Noisy Secrets as Alternatives to Passwords and PKI

In order to establish a secure communication channel, each communicating party needs some method to authenticate the other, lest it unwittingly establish a channel with the adversary instead. Current techniques for authentication often rely on passwords and/or the public-key infrastructure (PKI). Both of these methods have considerable drawbacks since passwords are frequently breached, and PKI relies on central authorities which have proven to be less than reliable. Thus there is a need to use other sources of information for the communicating parties to authenticate each other.