Conferences  >  Mathematics  >  Cryptography, Blockchain and Information Security

Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik GmbH

IT Security plays a vital role in our society. For example, when multiple parties communicate via a mobile phone or chat, or during online shopping, security takes a decisive part in protecting the users, the service operators, and in maintaining public confidence in the system. Cryptography is an essential concept to be implemented in the underlying system. Modern cryptography can be divided into two distinct subareas, symmetric cryptography (where all parties share the same secret key) and asymmetric cryptography (where all parties are in possession of a public key and a private key). We plan to discuss in detail timely topics related to the design and analysis of symmetric cryptographic schemes.

The International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS)

While lattice-based cryptography has been successful, a consensus is forming that we have reached a limit of what we can do from such well-established problems. Thus, researchers are introducing novel variants of these presumed-hard problems to develop quantum-safe privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). Many PETs lack efficient lattice-based or other efficient post-quantum constructions. Examples include advanced encryption schemes with fine-grained access control, blind signatures, anonymous credentials, oblivious PRFs, and threshold constructions. Adopting novel hardness assumptions reflects a long-standing tension in cryptography: more structure enables advanced functionalities but may offer flexibility to solve presumed-hard problems, invalidating their hardness. As these assumptions proliferate, the risk grows that they remain understudied and may lack the robustness to serve as foundations for a privacy-respecting post-quantum digital society.