Collaborative Research: Mitigating the Damaging Effects of Key Exposure

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Project Abstract:Systems are only as secure as their weakest point of attack. Indeed,the only way to increase the security of a system as a whole is toimprove the resilience of its most vulnerable component. Muchsuccessful research has focused on developing cryptographic protocolswhich are secure as long as some information (i.e., a key) is keptsecret from the adversary. However, as such algorithms areincreasingly deployed on inexpensive, mobile, and unprotected devices(e.g., laptops, mobile phones, and PDAs), the risk of key exposure isbecoming a serious threat to the security of many real-worldsystems. This project aims to develop new paradigms and to designefficient algorithms for maintaining security even in the event of akey exposure attack. Among other topics, the project will focus on (1)forward-secure public-key encryption; (2) forward secrecy inkey-exchange protocols; and (3) protecting signcryption schemesagainst key exposure attacks. The techniques developed as part of thisresearch are expected to help improve the security of a number ofdifferent systems, from handheld devices to ad-hoc networks.Graduate students will be involved in all aspects of this project, andundergraduate involvement will be encouraged as well. The techniquesstemming from this research will be incorporated into undergraduateand graduate courses in cryptography and computer security. In theseways, the project will help train future scientists in the importantarea of information security.