SaTC: CORE: Medium: A Concrete Look at Advanced Cryptography

该项目研究先进的通用技术，以保护隐私的方式完成任务。例如，这些技术使两个或多个互不信任的实体能够通过网络进行交互，对它们的私有数据执行联合计算，而不会向彼此透露这些数据。这些工具中的许多都是在理论密码学的背景下开发的，直到最近才开始寻找被采用的方式。该项目的新颖之处在于这些工具开发中的新观点和新技术，这些工具的灵感来自于对更传统的使用中的加密功能（如加密）的分析。该项目的影响是验证现有解决方案，开发更有效和更安全的解决方案，并启动新的理论研究路线。更具体地说，该项目引入了零知识证明和多方计算的新前景，旨在理解这些协议的具体效率和具体安全性之间的权衡。目标是分析现有的解决方案，同时提出具有更好的安全性和/或效率的新解决方案。虽然原则上可以重新审查许多现有的分析以使其具体化，但该项目侧重的问题也抓住了在提供尽可能精确的具体保证过程中遇到的具有挑战性的技术障碍，这反过来又激发了新的理论研究方向。在这个项目中开发的具体分析进一步通知和指导了所研究的高级加密技术的部署。作为更广泛影响的一部分，调查人员有一个外联部分，旨在培训教师和大使，以促进使用密码学的STEM研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project studies advanced general techniques to accomplish tasks in a privacy-preserving manner. For example, these techniques enable two or more mutually distrusting entities to interact over a network to perform a joint computation on their private data, without revealing this data to each other. Many of these tools have been developed in the context of theoretical cryptography, and only recently started finding their way towards adoption. The project’s novelties are new viewpoints and techniques in the developments of these tools which take inspiration from the analysis of more conventional in-use cryptographic functionalities (like encryption). The project’s impacts are the validation of existing solutions, the development of more efficient and more secure solutions, and initiating new lines of theoretical research.More concretely, this project introduces a new vista on zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation, aimed at understanding the trade-off between the concrete efficiency and the concrete security of these protocols. The goal is to analyze existing solutions, but also to propose new ones with better security and/or efficiency. While, in principle, many existing analyses can be re-examined to be made concrete, the project focuses on questions that also capture challenging technical barriers encountered in the process of giving concrete guarantees which are as precise as possible, and this, in turn, motivates new lines of theoretical research. The concrete analysis developed in this project further informs and guides the deployment of the advanced cryptographic techniques examined. As part of the broader impacts, the investigators have an outreach component aimed at training teachers and ambassadors to promote studies in STEM using cryptography.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.