Research – USF Crypto

USF Center for Cryptographic Research

USF Research

Welcome to the USF Center for Cryptographic Research!

Hardware Security

The Crypto Center is involved in the design, implementation, and optimization of crypto-systems in embedded hardware and software. In addition, we actively work on emerging topics in side-channel analysis attacks and countermeasures. The research work platforms utilized are broad, e.g., ASIC/FPGA and embedded processors. Moreover, security of a number of sensitive and constrained applications are considered including low-power and energy-constrained RFID/NFC technology-based applications and wireless sensor networks. The Crypto Center is actively involved in providing reliability approaches for vulnerable implementations of crypto-systems to natural/malicious faults. Differential fault analysis attacks, VLSI defects, and faults injected to launch denial-of-service attacks are considered.

Embedded
Security Systems

We conduct research on emerging areas in embedded systems security. High-performance, low-power, lightweight, and low-energy implementations for cryptographic solutions providing various security mechanisms/properties are proposed in different platforms, applicable to constrained, sensitive nodes in different applications ranging from industrial networks to implantable and wearable medical devices deeply embedded in human body. Particularly applicable approaches are explored where crypto-measures are not feasible due to extreme constraints in sensitive applications in terms of performance and implementation metrics.

Applied Crypto-graphy

We collaborate on the design, analysis and application of cryptographic tools and protocols to enhance the security of computer networks and systems. The current research interest of the members of the Crypto Center include the following topics: privacy enhancing technologies (e.g., dynamic symmetric and public key based searchable encryption, oblivious random access memory), light-weight cryptography, authentication and integrity mechanisms for internet of things and systems, security in cloud computing, efficient cryptographic protocols for critical cyber-infrastructures, specifically for aerial drones and smart-grid systems.

Post-Quantum Cryptography

All members of the Crypto Center actively contribute to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), which is the design and analysis of a new generation of crypto-systems capable of resisting attacks from quantum computers. The recent advances in quantum computing have placed PQC at the center of cryptography innovation. Indeed, since 2015-2016, a plurality of stakeholders have made significant investment in the development of quantum-safe technology. For example, the NSA has announced an imminent revision of its suite-B of cryptographic algorithms to counter this threat, while the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has started a multi-year standardization process of digital signatures and KEMs (which is now in its 3^rd phase). The timely transition to quantum-safe cryptographic products is all the more important that certain applications require long term security. This means that data encrypted today could be at risk in the future, when quantum computers are eventually available.

Coding Theory

Protecting information against transmission errors is a crucial stake in communications. The members of the Crypto Center actively work on the design of efficient ways to introduce the right amount of redundancy to protect digital information. In particular, a major challenge in coding for distributed storage is to provide high availability of data while limiting node access. Coding theory is also at the center of quantum information science which relies on redundancy to protect quantum systems from the interference of the environment. At the moment, no solution exist to maintain error-free quantum information durably. Coding theory also enables some of the most promising proposals for quantum-safe crypto-systems. Indeed, one can describe all essential cryptographic primitives by relying on the hardness of decoding random codes, thus making this discipline very attractive for information security in general.

Computational Number Theory

Public key cryptosystems strongly rely on computational number theory. For example, RSA, one of the most widely available public-key cryptosystem, uses pairs of keys that are exponents that are inverse of each other modulo the number theoretical Euler phi function. For public key cryptography to work, we need to be able to describe computational problems that are difficult in general, but easy for someone holding the secret key. The members of the Crypto Center actively perform research on some of the most relevant problems in computational number theory for cryptography, including the factorization of large integers, the search for short vectors in Euclidean lattices, the search for isogenies between elliptic curves, the resolution of the discrete logarithm problem, and the decoding of random codes. The study of the computational hardness of these problems directly applies to the description of secure parameters for the crypto-systems that use them, which is crucial to ensure we strike the right balance between security and efficacy of cryptographic schemes.

Digital Solutions Against Pandemics

The USF, and in particular the Center for Cryptographic Research, is at the forefront of the fight against pandemics. Members of the Crypto Center are pursuing bold interdisciplinary research projects with faculty members from the College of Behavioral Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Business, and College of Medicine. These projects include secure and private digital contact tracing mobile applications to anticipate exposure. The Crypto Center also works on secure ways to handle geolocalization data to identify hotspots of disease transmission. Finally, members of the Center for Cryptographic Research actively develop blockchain protocols relying on self-sovereign digital identities to offer resilient, private and accessible services during pandemics, including access to care, proofs of immunization, and securing the supply chain of essentials goods in times of crises (medical supplies, food etc …).