Cryptographic Foundations of Cyber Trust

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal Number: NSF-0430450 TITLE: Cryptographic Foundations of Cyber Trust Principal Investigator: Shafi Goldwasser Protecting the electronic information world is paramount to the success and stability of modern society. This includes protecting the integrity and privacy of stored and communicated data, guaranteeing security of complex electronic transactions, and maintaining availability of the existing infrastructure. At the core of any trustworthy and resilient solution to these problems lies a set of cryptographic protocols that are guaranteed to preserve explicitly stated security requirements under some cryptographic hardness assumptions in the face of malicious attacks. The design of cryptographic protocols is a complex endeavor, which must be accompanied by a security analysis which rests on sound theoretical foundations. This research will address challenges that arise in the the design of cryptograhic protocols at multiple levels, from the mathematical underpinnings of computational difficulty, through modeling and analysis of protocols, to deployment and run-time issues. The following objectives will be pursued: diversifing cryptographic hardness assumptions; adequate modeling and analysis of cryptographic protocols in complex environments; analyzing the security of current practices; and designing new cryptographic protocols which achieve stronger levels of security. The diversity of the challenges addressed will have a significant impact on the design and practice of cryptographic protocols in the future.