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New Foundations for Real-World Cryptography

Project description

Cryptography: aligning theory with practice

To date, there is a large discrepancy between the theoretical and practical aspect of cryptography. The EU-funded REWORC project aims to narrow this gap. To achieve it, it will lay the theoretical foundation for real-world cryptography and develop new tools and models for the design and analysis of practical cryptography in the post-quantum setting, amongst other things. The work of the project will have a long-term impact on theoretical protocol design, influence ongoing standardisation efforts in post-quantum cryptography and settle doubts about the security of important cryptography used in practice.

Objective

Almost half a century after the invention of public-key cryptography, there is still a vast discrepancy between
the theory and practice of cryptography. With some notable exceptions, research from the cryptographic theory
community focuses on problems of great theoretical interest, albeit completely disconnected from the real world. On the other hand, widely used real-world cryptographic protocols are being neglected because they are either mathematically ugly, their solutions appear uninteresting, or they simply do not cross the mind of theoreticians. The current state can be summarized as follows:
• Several well-established theoretical cryptographic concepts fall short from properly modeling the way practitioners think about real-world cryptography
• There exists a surprisingly large amount of modern cryptographic primitives and standards with unclear provable security status.

The central objective of the REWORC project is thus to narrow the gap between theory and practice of cryptography, providing a solid theoretical groundwork for real-world cryptography. To this end, we will
• lay a new theoretical foundation for real-world cryptography in the elliptic curve setting
• develop new tools and models for the design and analysis of practical cryptography in the post-quantum setting
• revisit the concrete security of legacy cryptography from the 2000s, recently established standards, and forthcoming standards.

REWORC will have a substantial long-term impact on theoretical protocol design, influence ongoing standardization
efforts in post-quantum cryptography, and settle doubts about the security of important cryptography
used in practice.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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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.

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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

(opens in new window) ERC-2021-ADG

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Host institution

RUHR-UNIVERSITAET BOCHUM
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.

€ 2 485 000,00
Address
UNIVERSITAETSSTRASSE 150
44801 Bochum
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Arnsberg Bochum, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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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.

€ 2 485 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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