cryptocafe

Crypto Café at FAU Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Our regular Crypto Café seminars take place every other Monday 10 am-11 am during the semester. We invite local and international experts on topics in Mathematics and Computer Science related to Cryptography and Information Security.

Come and join us for freshly brewed coffee and interesting conversations on the most exciting topics in cryptography.

Where: SE-43 (Charles E. Schmidt College of Science) - Room 215 and via Zoom


You can catch up on any missed meetings by following the below link:

Upcoming Presentations

Spring, 2024 Crypto Cafe Schedule:

March 25, 2024, 10:00 am +Zoom (click here)

Speaker: Xinxin Fan, IoTeX

Title : Zero-Knowledge Proofs - An Industry Perspective

Abstract : Driven by the rapid growth of blockchain and web3, zero-knowledge proofs have gained considerable development during the past few years. In this talk, I will give a state-of-the-art overview of zero-knowledge proofs and their potential use cases from an industry perspective and highlight a number of research challenges that need to be further investigated.   

Bio: Dr. Xinxin Fan is the Head of Cryptography at IoTeX, a Silicon Valley-based technology platform that empowers the emerging machine economy with innovative combination of blockchain and IoT. He is responsible for directing the company’s strategy and product roadmaps as well as developing the core technologies and IP portfolio. Before joining IoTeX, he was a senior research engineer of the Security and Privacy Group at Bosch Research Technology Center North America. Dr. Xinxin Fan received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2010. He has published 60+ referred research papers in top-tier journals, conferences and workshops in the areas of cryptography and information security and is an inventor of 17 patent filings for innovative information security and privacy-enhancing technologies. He is also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) from (ISC)^2 and a (co-)chair of IEEE P2418.1 and IEEE P2958 standards working groups.

Recent Presentations

March 11, 2024, 10:00 am   +Zoom (click here)

Speaker: Dr. Jason LeGrow, Virginia Tech 

Title: Post-Quantum Blind Signatures from Group Actions

Abstract: Blind signatures are a kind of cryptographic scheme which allows a User to receive a Signer’s signature on a message, in such a way that the message is not revealed to the Signer. Blind signatures can be used in many applications, such as a electronic voting and anonymous purchasing. To resist attacks by quantum computers, we must design blind signature schemes based on computational problems which are believed to be hard for quantum computers: so-called post-quantum protocols. I will discuss techniques for constructing post-quantum blind signatures from cryptographic group actions in the setting of isogeny-based cryptography and code-based cryptography.

Video recording

February 26, 2024, 4:30 pm   +Zoom (click here)

Speaker: Dr. Lukas Koelsch, Assistant Professor, University of South Florida 

Title: A general and unifying construction for semifields and their related maximum rank distance codes

Abstract   : Semifields are algebraic structures that can be for instance used to construct nondesarguesian planes in finite geometry, as well as maximum rank distance (MRD) codes with special parameters (more precisely, every element in the code will be a square matrix with full rank). Many constructions of MRD codes are rooted in ideas from semifield theory. Interestingly, many known constructions of semifields only exist in even dimension (i.e. the dimension over the prime field is even), leading to MRD codes in even dimension or MRD codes in odd dimension over a field of even degree. In this talk, we present a unifying construction for almost all semifields of this type, including semifields found by Dickson, Knuth, Hughes-Kleinfeld, Taniguchi, Dempwolff, Bierbrauer, Zhou-Pott in the last 120 years. Our construction recovers all these semifields, and gives many new examples.

Video Recording

February 12, 2024, SE 43 - room 215, 10 am   +Zoom (click here)

Speaker: Merve Karabulut, Florida Atlantic University

Title: Number Theoretic Transform: A Python-based Speed Enhancement

Abstract: Our proposal involves a Python-based solution that utilizes Numba's just-in-time compilation capabilities. We aim to optimize the control flow of the Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) operation to exploit parallelism in modern CPUs. Our solution leverages multi-core processing, multi-threading, and cache memory.

Speaker biography: Merve is a computer engineering graduate from Yildiz Technical University, with experience in full-stack development and blockchain, especially with Hyperledger. At FAU, she is working towards a Ph.D., focusing on PQC with Dr. Reza Azarderakhsh. Her goal is to create secure solutions resistant to quantum computing and efficient implementation of algorithms.

Video Recording


 

 Organizers