Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Teaching Old Crypto New Tricks

Objective

The bulk of the research in modern cryptography goes into constructing new schemes for which stronger security guarantees can be proven. However, often it is not clear if simple existing schemes already provide the required security, and we just don’t know how to prove it. As these new schemes are usually less efficient, they are not being applied resulting in a large discrepancy between the security that applied schemes are supposed to provide and what is actually proven. This project aims at closing this gap in different contexts: we will revisit simple schemes (including widely deployed ones) using new tools, developed by us and others in the last years, towards proving much stronger security properties than what is currently known. Three research directions in which we have already made substantial progress and which we will further investigate are:
Adaptive Security: Often we can prove a scheme secure against selective adversaries, while in practice stronger adaptive security is required. Until recently this was the case for constrained PRFs, the popular LKH multicast encryption and all known proxy re-encryption schemes. Last year we introduced the “nested hybrids” proof technique, which allowed us to prove adaptive security of these schemes. We will further develop and apply this technique.
Symmetric Cryptography: Although symmetric schemes are the work horses of crypto, for most of them we only have non-tight security proofs which leave a huge gap to the best known attacks. We recently proved tight security bounds for HMAC (used for authentication in SSL/TLS, SSH and IPsec) and the Sponge family used in the SHA3 standard.
Pseudoentropy: Computational notions of entropy have found many applications in the last few years. The tools available to manipulate pseudoentropy yield poor quantitative bounds, resulting in impractical schemes. We will continue our research towards establishing the exact necessary security degradation for manipulating pseudoentropy.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-CoG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AUSTRIA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 882 244,00
Address
Am Campus 1
3400 KLOSTERNEUBURG
Austria

See on map

Region
Ostösterreich Niederösterreich Wiener Umland/Nordteil
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 882 244,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0