Design and Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols for Secure Communication

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Innovations in computer and communications technologies are making it easierand faster to do things but also bring with them new security risks. Thisproposal is concerned with cryptography, which is an important component in theprovision of security in the electronic world. A cryptographer designsschemes, or protocols, for tasks such as data authentication, data encryption,identification, and key distribution which are implemented and incorporatedinto the computer systems and are responsible for imbuing data and transactionswith attributes like privacy and integrity. Providing high-quality,cost-effective cryptography is a challenge because cryptographic protocols areeasy to specify but hard to analyze, and notorious for containing bugs thattake a long time to be discovered. The goal of this project is to identify andtackle practical problems in cryptographic protocol design and analysis basedon theoretical techniques, delivering real-world usable protocols backed bytheoretically sound security analyses, and thereby impact implementation, usageand standardization of cryptography in the computer and communicationsindustry.The specific research proposed here is on three broad topics: anonymity,authenticated encryption and asymmetric identification protocols. The term``anonymity'' is broadly used to refer to issues regarding keeping private theidentities of parties engaging in electronic transactions. The researcherswill investigate anonymity for mix-nets, anonymous encryption, and blindsignatures. In each case they will look at both foundational issues such asdefinitions, and then the possibility of practical, proven secureconstructions. In the authenticated encryption domain they will investigate thesecurity of the popular encrypt-with-redundancy paradigm. Finally they willconsider the design of identification protocols secure against attackers havingthe powerful capability of resetting the internal state of the client machineand also seek improved transformations of identification protocols to digitalsignature schemes.