Privacy, theory

As companies collect consumer data in increasingly larger quantity and mine the data more deeply, trade-offs arise with respect to companies' practices about information privacy. A company may choose practices that augment targeted advertisements or services. However, the financial rewards associated with privacy practices are highly uncertain, since they are affected by a company's competition with rivals.

Ubiquitous computing technologies such as "smart" door locks, thermostats, fitness trackers and video monitors can help make users' lives safer and more efficient. These devices automatically collect data about users and their activities within their homes, which are then combined and processed by algorithms on a cloud server owned by the service provider. This enables beneficial system functionality that would not be possible from the devices in isolation.

Security and privacy are prominent concerns in modern communications. Although cryptographic approaches have been widely studied to protect a message's content from deciphering by an eavesdropper, there are many times when hiding the very existence of the communication is critical. The hiding of communication, termed covert (private) communication, is important in many domains such as covert military operations, and removing the ability of users to be tracked in their everyday activities.

The proliferation and increasing sophistication of censorship warrants continuing efforts to develop tools to evade it. Yet, designing effective mechanisms for censorship resistance ultimately depends on accurate models of the capabilities of censors, as well as how those capabilities will likely evolve. In contrast to more established disciplines within security, censorship resistance is relatively nascent, not yet having solid foundations for understanding censor capabilities or evaluating the effectiveness of evasion technologies.

Most cryptographic applications crucially rely on secret keys that are chosen randomly and are unknown to an attacker. Unfortunately, the process of deriving secret keys in practice is often difficult, error-prone and riddled with security vulnerabilities. Badly generated keys offer a prevalent source of attacks that render complex cryptographic applications completely insecure, despite their sophisticated design and rigorous mathematical analysis.